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.)

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Week 4: Put up your resume in HTML and PDF formats

Apologies for the delay, folks, but after a bit of a holiday break, I’m back. This post is the fourth 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 and third posts if you missed them. Check back next week for more.

For this week’s task, we’re going for focus on resumes – both in HTML and PDF forms.

We’re doing this for a couple reasons. We want to make it easy for a recruiter to do two things:

• Scan your resume on your actual site
• Download a copy of it and print it out

And since we’re going to take the time to do this, it’s a good idea to give that resume a bit of a facelift if it needs one. (I’ve found it’s convenient to do this now, rather than in the fall when you’re under a deadline crunch for internship applications.)

Part 1: Give your resume a facelift

So, here are some tips via Twitter.

1. Ditch the Word template, go into InDesign

Lauren Rabaino (@laurenrabaino) said:

Don’t use a word template. Show you know a liitle Photoshop/indesign … http://is.gd/18A5w

Andrew Spittle (@andrewspittle) had a similar message:

Do: create something personal, something yours. Dont: just use an out of the box look that hundreds of others are using.

I totally agree. If you have access to InDesign, it can really add a visual punch to the design of your resume. (If you’re stuck with Word, at least do some minor tweaks.)

It can also help you fit more information on without making your resume look cluttered.

Lauren’s blog post has some great examples of resumes with a bit of flair, but not so much that it gets out of hand.

This blog post also has examples of some tastefully designed resumes. (Straying too far into Crazytown can land your … um, “artistic”? … resume in a recruiter’s trash can, so don’t get too wild.)

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Week 3: Write first blog post and About page

This post is the third 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 and second posts if you missed them. Check back next week for more.

This week you’re going to get comfortable with the basics of creating content on your blog.

You can create two basic types of entries on WordPress: blog posts and pages.

Blog posts are just what they sound like. You’re reading one right now.

Pages are used for things like your resume, portfolio or blogroll. The tabs across the top of my Web site all link to individual pages.

So, now that we know what each is meant for, let’s create some content.

Write your first blog post

You might want to use your fist blog post to introduce yourself, give readers a little insight into why you are making your site and foreshadow what you plan to blog about.

Go to www.YourDomain.com/wp-admin and log in.

On the upper left hand side, you’ll see a button that says “Add new” underneath the “Posts” tab. Click it.

Now you’ll want to give your blog entry a title.

In the body field, you’ll obviously put the body of your post.

Some basic buttons you'll use

To style your text, pay attention to the blog and italics buttons, as well as the drop-down menu that says “Paragraph.” “Heading 3″ tends to be the one you’ll want to use for subheads.

You also may want to use the bulleted list and numbered list buttons, plus the quoted material button and indent buttons.

Speaking of all this stuff, allow me to go on a very important tangent for a moment.

Writing for the Web: Just the basics

Some things to keep in mind about writing for the Web:

1. Link. Link. Link.

• If you refer to an article online, link to it.
• If you mention someone who has a personal Web site, link to it.
• If you mention your favorite movie, link to its IMDB page.

I cannot underscore the importance of links. They help your Google search rankings, and more importantly, they make you look like you actually understand the Web. Get friendly with this button.

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Week 2: Find a theme, install it and customize it

This post is the second 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 kickoff post if you missed it. Check back next week for more.

So, now that you’ve done everything that’s covered in Week 1, you should be ready for your next step: find a design for your site and install it.

Now I know what you might be thinking: “Wait, find a site design? You mean you didn’t make yours from scratch?”

Well, no. I’m not that talented.

WordPress has a fabulous community of designers who pride themselves in creating designs that you can download (often for free) and use on your own site.

In WordPress terminology these ready-made designs are called themes.

So, this week we are going to learn how to find free, professional themes and install them.

What do you need out of your theme?

Before you go pick a theme, consider what you will be using your site for.

• Is it going to house your photography portfolio?
• How about video packages?
• Maybe text stories with some multimedia?
• A mix of all of the above?
• Will you blog frequently?
• Do you want a classic color scheme or a bright one?

Some themes work better for certain tasks than others. Keep that in mind when you’re looking. (For instance, if you’re a visual journalist, do you want to have a big header image in your theme so you can play your photos big?)

Check out some themes

The best way I know to find a good theme is to look at oodles and oodles of them, download quite a few and try them out.

(Sidenote: Many many many WordPress themes are free. Some cost a bit – usually starting at around $20 and up. I’ve paid for a theme before, but the one I use now was free. Lesson learned: You very likely can find a free theme that you’ll love. If you want to pay up, you can, but you certainly don’t have to.)

Most themes will have a “live demo” or “preview” link somewhere. Meta-Morphosis here on the right is a good example of what you’ll often find.

If you like it, click the “Download” link that is most likely very near the “live demo” link. That will get you the zipped file for the theme.

So, where do you start looking? Here are some places to check out.

For everyone: 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009

For photogs and designers, specifically: 21 Premium-like Free Photoblog Themes for WordPress

For everyone: Google search

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Week 1: Buy a domain and install WordPress

This post is the first in a weekly series that will take journalists through how to set up a professional-looking portfolio Web site. Check back next week for more.

First things first: If you know anything about me and how-to guides, you know that I’m a bit of a screen cap nut. I’m a big believer in showing you what you should click, so apologies if this post looks a bit gargantuan. Also, some of the screen caps were too wide to fit on my blog at their full size. If you’re having problem seeing what they say, click them and they should pop up in full size so you can read what they say.

Also, I promise this isn’t too hard. This is a huge post, but only because I’m just trying to make sure I don’t leave any steps out.

Step 1: Choose a domain

You need to get a domain. You can register a domain through tons of Web sites. (I use GoDaddy and have few complaints, so that’s what I will use to walk you through things. If you want to use another host, go right ahead.)

(Update: Check the comment section for some suggestions for alternative hosts.)

One you think of a domain you like, go ahead and do a search on GoDaddy’s home page to see if it’s available.

I’d recommend you a .com domain that is derived from your name. EmilyIngram.com wasn’t taken when I set mine up. If your FirstnameLastname.com domain is taken, just stick to something professional sounding that you’ll be happy to keep for many years to come.

Some alternatives for you to consider:

• www.byJohnDoe.com – Joey Baker’s www.byjoeybaker.com is one example of this.
• www.DoeReporter.com or www.DoeDesign.com or www.DoePhotography.com – Andrew Dunn’s www.dunnreporter.com is one that comes to mind.
• www.JohnADoe.com – See Andy Boyle’s www.andymboyle.com.

Find one you like that no one else has laid claim to? Awesome.

Step 2: Buy it before someone else does

(I already have a GoDaddy account, so I hope that my instructions here are the same if you don’t have one. That said, if GoDaddy is trying to get you to add on anything I don’t mention here, you probably don’t need it.)

So you’ve found a domain you want and it’s available. Now, it’s time to buy it. GoDaddy will try to get you to buy all sorts of additional domains, such as the .net and .biz alternatives of what you picked. You don’t need them.

(Update: Adam made a good point in the comments below. Though you certainly don’t need to buy the .net or .info or .biz versions of your domain, you can buy them if you want to block other people from doing so. It’s definitely not a bad idea, but it’s up to you.)

Click the orange “Proceed to Checkout” button.

This next screen will likely be another attempt by GoDaddy to get you to buy more domains that you don’t need. Just click “No thanks.”

Now you’ll need to put in your personal information to create an account with GoDaddy. Then click “Continue.”

On this next screen, you’ll want to choose how long you want to register your domain for. (I go on a year-to-year basis, and GoDaddy will call you when you’re near the end of that year so you know you need to renew.)

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How to build a portfolio Web site: A new blog series

For a while now, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a series of blog posts that takes my blog readers, who are mostly journalists, step by step through the process of setting up a personal Web site with WordPress on their own server space.

But I didn’t know if it’d be of any use, so I posed the question to my friends on Facebook. The overwhelming response was that it would be, so here I go.

What you can expect

This will be a weekly blog series. In each post, I’ll take you through the details of getting one step closer to having a personal portfolio Web site much like mine. If you have questions, leave a comment and I’ll find you an answer or at least start you in the right direction to finding one on your own.

What you’ll need

• A little cash: A domain and server space will run you about $60/year based on the rates from GoDaddy, the host that I’ll be talking about in my blog posts and the host I use for my site. (You can use another host if you want, too. No big deal.)
• A little time: I built my site in my free time last summer, so this is absolutely something you can accomplish on your own. No need to hire a Web designer or quit your day job.

One caveat: The free option

I’m going to talk you through setting up a site on your own server space because I honestly think it’s the best option if you’re OK with investing a few bucks into the project.

That said … you can go the free route and go straight to WordPress.com and set up a site that way. WordPress takes you through the pros and cons of either option.

Personally, I look at my site as an investment well worth the $5/month I pay in hosting, and I think the extra skills I’ve learned through having to host it on my own come in handy. (I can go into interview now and say that I know what it means to transfer a file via FTP. I couldn’t do that before.)

Plus, as an journalism and advertising double major, I think it’s important to be able to market yourself in a professional manner when you’re applying for jobs and internships. Having a short and simple URL for my site allows me to do that.

So that’s my two cents. If you or someone you know might get some use out of this series, feel free to send them a link here.

Chat: How can students use the summer to set themselves apart?

I just wrapped up a great chat with the folks over at Poynter. (If you’re not already devouring all the news and tidbits Poynter has to offer, I’d recommend starting now.)

Poynter faculty member Sara Quinn, along with a handful of Poynter College Fellows, joined in for a lively discussion centering on one question: How can students use the summer to set themselves apart?

If you didn’t get a chance to participate in the chat, Poynter has your back. All chats are archived so you can read them at your leisure. (The full chat archive page is a great resource.)

Sidenote: The opportunity to host this chat came about from a tweet I sent Ellyn Angelotti, Poynter’s interactivity editor and adjunct faculty member. Consider that my Reason No. 428 to use Twitter.

Off to Minneapolis

I’ll be hitting the road later this afternoon, headed for Minneapolis for the 2009 American Copy Editors Society National Conference.

Can’t make it to conference this year? Check the ACES Web site for resources from speakers and panelists. (Click on Schedule at the top of the page.) Some sessions already a PDF or PowerPoint posted.

Happy editing!

BIG Omaha cuts price in half for first 99 students

Talk about a discount, folks.

BIG Omaha promises to be a fabulous event. Just look at the lineup of speakers. It’s not often that even one of these thinkers and doers comes to Nebraska. The organizers behind the first-ever BIG Omaha are pulling them in all at once for the event on May 7-8.

Not bad.

What’s better, though, is they’re making students quite a deal: $99 registration for the first 99 to register.

That’s half-off the current registration price of $199.

Look at the schedule.

• Entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk who draw huge crowds at South By Southwest Interactive will be there.
• Heck, one of the speakers, Matt Mullenweg, founded the company that produces the open-source software that runs my site.
• Love Threadless tees? Yep, they’ve got people coming.
• Think Basecamp’s simplicity is genius? 37Signals’ Jason Fried will be in town.
• That’s just the beginning, though. There’s not a weak spot to be found in their schedule.

The bottom line

If nothing else, ask yourself this: How could this conference not be an awesome opportunity when they managed to work cows into the logo for an event targeting entrepreneurs, creatives and innovators?

A lesson for all you event planners out there: If a cow is in your logo, I’m there.

You should be, too.

Register today to ensure you’re among the first 99 students.

Register for journalism entrepreneurship workshop

Any student journalist with half a brain can see that things in the industry aren’t pretty right now.

Layoffs are turning colleagues into former colleagues, and the lucky ones who get to stick around are finding they have a week or so more free time thanks to furloughs. Bottom line: The business model is broken.

Fear and hand-wringing accomplishes nothing, though. I’d rather do something about it.

If my fellow students and I want to find jobs after graduation, we may just have to create our own opportunties.

To learn how, UNL’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications is offering us a little help.

The J-school is partnering the the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship to host a one-day workshop in Andersen Hall.

The basics:

• What: Envision Your Own Endeavor: Entrepreneurship in Mass Communications
• When: Friday, April 24 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Where: Andersen Hall on the UNL City Campus
• Cost: $15 for students, $25 for others
• Topics include:
  
  • “Own Your Future”
  • “Guts and Glory of Entrepreneurship”
  • “Nuts and Bolts of a Startup”
  • “What the Center for Entrepreneurship Can Do For You.”
• Registration forms are available online. (Turn in your forms soon, too! The registration deadline is Tuesday, April 21.)

One of the college’s newer professors, Carla Kimbrough, has been planning this event, and as a UNL student, I’m so happy to see someone spearheading this effort to bring the entrepreneurial spirit into the J-school.

Register now!