Help! My Website Has Taken Over My Medula Oblongata!!!

Is anyone else suffering from this disorder? I mean, first you decide that you are going to create a teacher website site. So, you follow all of the steps that help you to create a sensible "mental plan". But....once you begin creating buttons, banners, deciding on colors, and even down to choosing the right pictures, that's when it happens. Your Medula Oblongata gets taken Over by your website! (Kinda like when you're planning a wedding)

According to an online medical dictionary

medulla oblongata (mdul´ oblôngä´t),
n the direct upward extension of the spinal cord that lies at the junction between the cerebrum and the spinal cord and is considered to be in a group with the pons and midbrain because the nuclei of all the cranial nerves except one are situated within this structural group. Its functions are associated with the nuclei of the glossopharyngeal, vagal, spinal accessory, and hypoglossal nerves. It controls the reflex actions of the pharynx, larynx, and tongue, which are related to deglutition, mastication, and speech, as well as the visceral reflexes of coughing, sneezing, sucking, vomiting, and salivating, and other secretory functions.

So here I am WASTING so much time on creating buttons and banners on free websites that I actually cannot control my reflexes :). The only other time that I remember feeling this way is when I became obsessed with making "aesthetically pleasing" PowerPoint presentations. The moral of this story is to REALLY create a mental plan for your website so that you don't get your Medulla Oblongata taken over like me!

Moving Right Along...

For the most part, I really enjoyed creating my first website. There were some obvious issues though. Once my medulla oblongata was taken over, I had created so many banners that I became fatigued and settled for the one that I had. In a perfect world, I would have asked a graphic designer to create my buttons and banners so that I would not have to endlessly and hopelessly search for things that simply are not there. One site though, www.cooltext.com had the best buttons and I finally figured out how to make the background of my button blend in with the background of my website. Hip Hip Hooray!!

Also, I have learned to appreciate web designers. This is a very long process, but it was worth the headache because now I have a deeper understanding of my role as an instructional designer working on a team. It is important to know the processes and the language that other designers use so that we can be an effective design team. In fact, most companies want you to have some basic knowledge of website building because there may be times when they might need me to update their sites and know a little html code (which I am very proud to say that I am more html literate)

Lastly, in my experience, I would also like to comment that although their are some nice free sites out there, I would have preferred to use a program that had all the "bugs" worked out. I tried to create a calendar on my course information page and could not view it until I previewed the site by clicking on "browse". Once I saw the calendar, it had mysteriously floated to the top of the webpage and made my header appear to be off-centered. I eventually had to look at the html code and delete the calendar.

This is my final product that I submitted after finally calling itech at USM who reported that I did not have my ocean account activated: http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w442784/.