Week 5: Add portfolio materials and install plugins

This post is the fifth in a weekly series that will take journalists through how to set up a professional-looking portfolio Web site. Find out more about the series and read the first, second, third and fourth posts if you missed them. Check back next week for more.

It’s Week 5 of the blog series, and now that you’ve done some groundwork, it’s time to put up your clips. Luckily for you, the entire WordPress community is going to be there to help you: They won’t write your articles or take your photos, but they will provide you with lots of plugins to make things easier.

So, gather up those articles, photos, audio slideshows, headlines, page designs, videos, podcasts and interactive graphics, and let’s get rolling.

How to upload your clips

You can do this one of two ways: Individually uploading them using the Upload/Insert tool on your WP Admin or by dragging and dropping them onto your server using your FTP program. (That’s the same one you used to install your theme.)

If you use the latter, just make sure you aren’t uploading files into your theme’s folder. That should be reserved for items that actually make up your site’s design.

For videos, I recommend Vimeo for hosting. There are some limits on how much you can upload per week for free accounts (paid “Plus” accounts with much higher limits are $60/year), but the quality is better than YouTube by leaps and bounds, as evidenced by this screen grab. (Watch the amazing video it’s from while you’re at it.)

For text stories, link to the online version on a news outlet’s site or post the text on your own site and provide a link to the original. What I’m trying to say: Don’t post loads and loads of PDFs of print stories if you can help it. They’re just not as reader-friendly online as they could be.

Granted for copy editing clips, there’s not really a way around the PDF issue when posting print clips, at least that I’ve found. Sorry.

For photographs and page designs, my guess is you’ll want to post a handful of your best photos and make them into a gallery of some sort. I’ll get back to how to do that in a second when we cover plugins.

(A general warning: Don’t rely on your former employer’s site to be the only source for your clips – especially if it’s a college outlet. If you’re simple going to link on a story on the DailyGazette.com’s Web site, I’d save a copy of the story on your server, too. When content management systems are updated, these can be lost or unpublished. I speak from first-hand experience.)

Give us a reason to click on ‘em

I also think it matters how you present those clips, and Vadim Lavrusik does a fabulous job of telling users why each of his clips are special. Here’s what he does:

After each clip’s link, he includes tidbits that highlight why it stands out, such as “in-depth and computer assisted reporting” or “includes self-produced slideshow.”

Not a bad idea, and one worth considering as you are designing your portfolio section.

So, what goes where, then?

Everyone’s portfolio page (or, likely, pages) will be a bit different. I think a good rule of thumb is to keep things simple and try to eliminate any extra clicks for users. In other words: If you can put a good amount of your clips all on one page and still make it look simple, do it.

Know how annoying it is to go to a newspaper’s Web site and have to load an entirely new page for each photo in a 50-photo slideshow? It’s the same concept.

For me, I have a main portfolio page and a few sub-pages within it. Those sub-pages don’t show up in my navigation bar, though because I want to keep that simple, too. I’ll show you how to do that in a moment.

(Your page structure controls things like drop-down menus, so if your theme has those kinds of menus, this is important. When you’re editing a page, look over to the right under the “Attributes” heading. You’ll see a pull-down menu where you can set the page’s Parent, or the existing page that you want your new one to fall under. It will default to having that parent be your site as a whole, so for most pages, you won’t need to change it.)

The basics about WordPress plugins

To really customize your site, you’re going to want to use plugins, which are add-ons, written in code, that expand what WordPress can do.

I realize that’s an incredibly vague description, but it’s tough to put all plugins under one umbrella. Some post your latest Tweets in your sidebar, others create a simple contact form so users can get in touch with you, and still others block spammers. That’s what three do. There are 5,000+ more.

In short, plugins make it easy for you to do more on your site and do it more easily.

Ways to find good plugins

• Browse through the WordPress plugin directory.
• Click on “Add New” under Plugins in your left sidebar of your WP Admin. There you’ll see a tagcloud that’ll guide you to relevant plugins, plus options at the top to see featured or most popular plugins.
• When in doubt, Google “WordPress plugin [insert whatever you want here].”

How to install them

On the left sidebar of your WP Admin, there’s a section for Plugins. Click “Add New.” From there you can do one of two things:

• Search for a term, such as Flickr or Twitter, to find relevant plugins. Click “Install” over to the right of whichever one looks like the best bet.
• Or upload a .zip file from your desktop. You’ll download those zipped files from a listing in the WordPress Plugin Directory, such as this one.

Once it’s installed, you’ll have to activate it. (Plugins can be saved on your server without actually being in use.) For some plugins, you’ll also have to tweak some settings. Settings for plugins are listed under the “Settings” section on your WP Admin’s left sidebar.

Plugins that might help you out

Some of these have obvious applications to your actual portfolio materials, others are handy to have for your site in general.

(Ed’s note: This is in no way a complete list of plugins you’ll want or need. Some of these may not be applicable to your site, others will. But I can guarantee you there are probably at least a handful not on this list that you’d love. Also, I’ve starred ones I use, in case you’ve ever wondered how I got such-and-such to show up on my site.)

*All in One SEO Pack – Does all sorts of things to make your site more SEO-friendly

*Akismet – Blocks spammy spammers who like to hit your site with their spamification

This is a must-have. Check the settings on your Discussion page and make sure you’re allowing comments. Despite the bad rep comments get on many sites, I’ve found that’s not the case on my site. My guess is it’d be similar on yours. Of course, by being open to comments, you’re at risk for spam. Akismet is across-the-board the standard for spam blockers on WordPress.

Contact Form 7 or *Contact Form ][ - Adds a form to your site to make it easy for users to send you a question and have it delivered to you via e-mail

I think every portfolio site should make it stupidly simple to contact its author. This does that. I've used these forms on other bloggers' sites, and I've gotten e-mails from readers via mine.

*My Page Order - Easily reorder pages by dragging and dropping them in a list

If you want your resume page to be the third link in your nav bar rather than the second, or something like that, this is a great pick.

*Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - Adds auto-generated list of related posts you have at bottom of your blog entry

If you're even a decent amount of blogging, I'd highly recommend this. You want to make it easy for a user to find content that they're interested in. If they read a whole post, bets are that they might read another on the same topic.

*Fancy Box - Add the ability to click on image and get larger version to pop up within the same window

Tons of plugins for popup image galleries are discussed in Plugins for Portfolio Sites and Ultimate Guide to Using WordPress for a Portfolio. (Scroll post the theme suggestions to get to the plugin section.)

Exclude Pages - If you want to keep your top navigation bar uncluttered, this is for you. It allows you to leave certain pages off your nav bar.

My theme works best with just a few tabs up top, but I have a handful more pages. This helps me keep by navigation bar simple, but allows me the freedom to create pages galore.

*WPtouch - Detects when someone is viewing your site on an iPhone or iPod Touch and displays a mobile-friendly version of your site, which it also generates.

*Video Widget - Adds ability to easily embed videos to your sidebar.

You could easily use this as a way to get more clicks on your videography clips.

Audio Player - Allows you to embed an audio player.

If you've got clips of radio newscasts or online audio stories, this may be a good fit.

Author Exposed - When you click on an author's name, this makes a little popup that displays bio info and an avatar. (This is a great pick for multi-author blogs, but it certainly could be used for single-author ones, too.)

*Easy Twitter Links - Automatically creates links to person's Twitter profile if you put in @username on your site. (This won't show up on your back-end editor, but it will on your actual site once you publish a post.)

If you reference lots of people on Twitter, this is a huge time-saver.

*Sociable - Adds links to bottom of your posts so users can easily share or bookmark them

*WP Greet Box - Adds box at top of posts that you can customize depending on if someone finds your site through Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, etc. The boxes look something like this:

Sideposts Widget - Shows excerpts from a certain category of posts in your sidebar

Featured Content Gallery - Makes rotating image gallery that you can use to select and promote certain pages or posts

A few last thoughts

The process of trying out new plugins is never-ending. I'm still fiddling with things, and because of the huge volume of plugins out there, it may take you months to stumble upon some gems that you never even knew you needed.

Two final questions

If you already have a site, what plugins do you swear by?

For everyone, what topics should I cover in the next couple weeks? (CSS tweaks were mentioned a while back, and they're one of the only things still left on my to-do list. If you want something else, let me know.)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.