Women In Digital Skills 13.0 – Week 6

Session 1

The 6th and final week of Women In Digital Skills 13.0 kicked off on 5th July 2021. The students continued with the creation of their websites. Individuals who had issues reached out to the trainer and his assistant. There were corrections on previous pages on websites as students edited their websites to suit their satisfaction. Students who lost their work because they weren’t saved, unfortunately, had to start again.

Later, the students had a mock presentation where each of them individually presented to the class the progress they had made on their websites. Most of the websites created by the students were centered on fashion, restaurants, and beauty. Majority of the students, especially those who weren’t able to present, waited behind after class. The trainer and his assistant took them through the process of creating their websites again. Other Students who waited behind focused on completing their websites. 

The trainer encouraged the ladies to try and work through their assignments at home and also encouraged them to reach out to him via WhatsApp if they required additional assistance.

For the second day of the first session, The students had more time to work on their web pages. As students modified their websites to their satisfaction, they required help from their Trainer, who was going around trying to meet all their needs. Some ladies had issues with creating logos for their websites, while others faced challenges in editing the fonts and images on their sites.

About 80% of the students stayed behind after the class had ended to continue with their work. Kearl, the Teaching assistant was available to help the ladies who were struggling with the whole process from the fundamentals.

A major challenge faced today was the struggle for some ladies to log on to their website admin account. For the ladies who had to start their projects all over due to technical challenges, there was some disappointment. They were unhappy about starting over but they were assured of assistance from the trainer and his assistant. The trainer continued to encourage the ladies to try and finish their work. 

Session 2

For the first day of training, the trainer, Mr. Jerry recapped the previous lessons on how to use ‘Local’ in creating websites and the fact that, it will be unable to access the website on another device. He explained the difference between the domain name and the hosting service to the students. He introduced the class to ProFree Host. Explaining it as a server on which students can create websites online, as well as making changes to it on other devices. ProFreeHost is a web hosting platform that is aimed at providing free servers and tools to its members for both personal and commercial use.

Students started by creating accounts with their emails and passwords. They later logged into their emails to activate their accounts. Mr. Jerry mentioned that, with this hosting service, your website can be online for a long time as far as it gets visitors. However, if no one visits your website within 2 weeks, it will be taken down. This hosting service gives you the opportunity to create three accounts, that is, only three websites with your email address. After which the trainer created a website with “unaux.com” as their domain name.

The majority of students came late and missed what had been taught earlier. The trainer nominated students who were already in class from the beginning to give a recap on what had been taught, and also explain to their colleagues the steps they took to create their websites. Later, the students proceeded to create the websites by clicking on the control panel button to enable them. They clicked on “softaculous installer” and then installed “WordPress”. Students created and installed a WordPress account by inputting a memorable username and password, their site name, and their site identity. Students were automatically given links to their admin pages where they can create and make changes on their websites and links to their websites that people can easily search using their domain names. An example of an admin link is “http://bluewave.unaux.com/wp-admin/” whereas others can view the website using “http://bluewave.unaux.com”.

At the end of the class, students were later asked to send the details of their projects, which should include the business name, group members, and URL of the business website. The trainer also helped those who had their projects on ‘Local’ by taking them through the “All-in-one wp migration” to enable them to export their website. This is a plugin which exports your WordPress website including the database, media files, plugins, and themes with no technical knowledge required.

For the second day of class, The ladies continued to work on their websites as soon as the class began. Their trainer gave them some time to finish up their projects so they could later do a mock presentation to prepare them for the final day. The trainer went around helping the ladies with their challenges such as how to edit fonts sizes and colors, photos, text, and the like.

At about 12:30 pm the ladies began their presentation. Even though the majority of them had not completed their projects, the trainer encouraged them to still present the progress they had made. After the first group presented the website, the trained pointed out a few mistakes and gave them some tips on making their websites look professional. This process continued with all six groups. The trainer commended most of the groups on the good work they had done and gave them some pointers to make their work better.

At the end of the class, the trainer encouraged the ladies to finish up their web pages at home as their work is already online. He gave them some tips and tricks to get a more professional website.