The problem that I chose to solve was that of informational websites either being too cut and dry with no aesthetic appeal and the information being presented in plain text, or informational websites being too colorful and feeling as if though the websites are catering to a young audience. The problem with these two scenarios is that if a user were to visit the website that has no aesthetic appeal, they would look at the home page and immediately click off because they might find it to be too bothersome to be scrolling through a website with plain text to find what they are looking for. On the other hand, if a user were to visit the website that seemingly caters to a young audience, they might click off because they will assume that they will not be able to learn anything of value because the website was designed with a young audience in mind.
My solution will add to a hypothetical company the value of creating an information website about the 50 states in the United States of America where knowledge will be easy to read, and pictures will be added to create a visual representation of a state’s description, a state’s flag, and a state’s flower. With this information, it will help cater to a wide audience of both young and older users. This would be beneficial to a company because it would mean more users would visit the website and it would help the company generate revenue if it chose to implement ads for users to see on the website.
From this project, I intend to learn more about how to develop a database in a way that is functional and can be displayed on a website in an appealing manner, as well as to create a website that is nicely organized and can be used to learn more about the country of the United States in terms of its regions, and the states that are in those regions.
I have chosen the topic of the 5o states in the United States because I find that although many of us have grown up here, and/or many of us have lived here for a while, we do not know a significant amount about the very states or regions that are near us. Because of this, I feel that it is important to at least have some knowledge about each of the 50 states so that we can better care about the country along with the knowledge that every state should not feel so separated.
What I intend to achieve with my website is to create an informational website that combines both the information of the relevant topic that I have chosen (the 50 states in the U.S.) alongside images to draw in users of a larger audience along with helping those users to better grasp the knowledge about the subject that they wish to learn more about. To do this, I will create a database in SQL by using phpMyAdmin and displaying the database in a table by using PHP and HTML, with the style changes being implemented using CSS.
Below is an itemized list of the main elements of the problem organized in order of their significance.