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 When content management systems are updated, these can be lost or unpublished.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.)

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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.

2. Make your posts easy to scan.

• Keep your paragraphs short, much like you do in news articles.
• Use bulleted lists when applicable.
• Use subheads to break up large chunks of text and make your organization stand out.

3. Use visuals when you can. Flickr often has good Creative Commons-licensed photos that you can use if you don’t have your own photos. Just make sure to credit them appropriately.

4. Especially when writing headlines, think about SEO, or search engine optimization.

This means that you should write your blog titles with Google search in mind. A months-old entry of mine titled “Getting Google to recognize my blog” still gets a decent amount of hits thanks to people searching that phrase in Google.

• Kill the cute stuff. Keep titles literal. Plays on words or puns don’t tend to work well.
• Be specific and use keywords. Nouns are especially important in Web headlines, while verbs tend to get more of an emphasis in print headlines.
• Be clear and concise.

OK, done with that tangent. Back to writing your first blog post.

You’ll want to type in whatever and hopefully add a photo, which you can do by clicking the icon that has a square on it. (It’s at the top of the bar with all those buttons.) There, you can upload a photo from your desktop or place one that’s already online.

You can also scale the photo down in side and add a caption to it if you want. Remember to credit photos appropriately if you’re not using your own. Once you have all that done, just click “insert into post” and it should appear.

When you’re done with your post, you can click the “Save draft” button on the upper right hand side to save it so you can come back to it later. You can also click “Preview” to double check that everything looks OK without actually making the post go live.

And once you’re ready, you want to click “Publish.”

Once you do that, you should see your first post when you go to www.YourDomain.com.

So, now that you have that wrapped up. It’s time to add another page to your site. For our purpose this week, we’ll start simple.

Create your about page

Most every blog should have an about page. It’s an easy way for someone who stumbles onto your site to find out who you are and what your schtick is.

So, to create a new page, go to your left hand sidebar in your Admin and click “Add new” under “Pages.”

You’ll notice that the controls for creating a page look very similar to those used to create a blog post. I’d recommend fiddling around a bit just to get comfortable with them. Remember, you can always click “Preview” to see what it looks like without saving it and making it go live.

So, what should you include in your About page?

Here are my suggestions. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.

• Where do you go to school, and what is your year and major?
• Where have you worked or interned? (Remember to link to the Web sites of those news organizations, too.)
• What jobs titles have you had in journalism? (I might want to know if you’ve been a photographer at XYZ newspaper or a features columnists or editor-in-chief.)
• Are you active on social media? If so, link to your page on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Wired Journalists, Publish2, etc.
• What do you look like? (I think including a photo makes it a bit more personal. You are now a face rather than just a name.)
• Is there something that makes you memorable? Including a fact that sticks out in people’s minds is never a bad idea.
• Are you looking for internships or freelance opportunities? It probably wouldn’t hurt to mention that, just in case.

Here are some examples of about pages by other student journalists or recent graduates:

• Josh Halliday, student at University of Sunderland in the U.K.
• Greg Linch, recent graduate from the University of Miami
• Vadim Lavrusik, student at Columbia University Graduate School
• UNL’s very own Alina Selyukh
• Albert Sun, student at University of Pennsylvania

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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

Other options

• You can go to Delicious and do a search for WordPress themes to see what users have bookmarked. (I have a few under my account.)
• You can also use WordPress’s own search to find themes, but there are literally thousands to choose from. I like it when someone else has done some of the filtering for me. Nevertheless, the search is there if you want to use it.

Now that you’ve downloaded a few themes, it’s time to put them on your Web server space that you bought last week. To do that, we’ll use an FTP client.

Download an FTP client

Don’t know what FTP even means? Don’t worry.

Basically an FTP client is a program will take files from your computer and put them on your hosting space.

It gets things from here to there. (It’s much like when you copy and paste something from one folder on your hard drive into another.)

In our case, what we’re going to be transferring is a folder containing your WordPress theme.

Sidenote: Your hosting company probably has an FTP program built into its site somewhere. (Godaddy does, but quite frankly it’s not the easiest way to do things in the long run.) In my opinion at least, it’s much easier to download a handy dandy program on your computer that allows you to do the same thing but with fewer clicks.

So, what program should you get? (I’m sticking with free options for now. You can pay for higher-end FTP programs, but I’m trying to give you a bare-bones how-to on setting up a site for cheap.)

If you’re a Mac user, I’ll talk you through Cyberduck, the FTP program I use and love.

If you’re a PC user, I’ll give you some resources for how to use Filezilla.

(Ed’s Note Part A: I’ll apologize now to my PC-using friends. Because I’m a Mac user with no access to a PC right now, your instructions may be less detailed than those for your Mac-using counterparts. Sorry. I’ll always try to find online documentation to help you along wherever I can’t.)

(Ed’s Note Part B: You can use whatever FTP program you want. I’ll talk you through one that you can use on whichever operating system you’re on, but by no means are these the only two options. Thanks! -Emily)

For Mac users:

Download Cyberduck.

Once you download it and install it on your computer. You’re going to want to start the program and then select File->Open Connection.

This will ask for your server number, username and password. All of this can be found by logging into GoDaddy with your username and account there at the top of the homepage. Then go under Hosting->My Hosting Account and then clicking “Manage Account” next to the domain you bought.

Your server IP address should be listed in that first screen that will pop open. It will be something like 123.456.789.01. Copy that and paste it into Cyberduck’s Open Connection window where it says Server. Then put your GoDaddy username and password in where it asks for them.

This, hopefully, should get you logged in.

Sweet. Now you’re ready to install a theme.

Hopefully you’ve downloaded a ZIP file of some theme you like (really any will do for the purpose of just learning how to install one). If so, unzip it.

Now, that Cyberduck screen is much like a Finder window on your Mac. It shows you what files are on your server space. So, we want to find the right folder to drag and drop that theme folder. It’s going to be in one of two places. If you installed WordPress directly into your root folder (the base level of your server), you’ll find it by going here:

wp-content/themes/

If, however, you installed wordpress within a folder itself, you’ll need to go to:

wordpress/wp-content/themes/

Either way is fine and dandy. Once you get to that folder, you’ll likely see two other folders inside it: classic and default. Those themes come already installed with WordPress.

All you need to do is drag and drop that theme folder you unzipped over on top of that Cyberduck window. It’ll bring up a screen that shows the status of the upload and you’ll see when it’s reached 100%.

For PC users:

Download Filezilla and install it.

Go here for more instructions on how to use it. (I’m suggesting you use Filezilla mostly because these instructions are about as detailed as I try to make mine for Mac users.)

Some of the instructions on that page are probably more advanced than you’ll need. Going on a pure educated guess here, I’d bet that the portions that will be most useful will be under the following headings:

• • Using the Quick Connect bar
  • Navigating on the server
  • Navigating on your machine
  • Transferring files

Just like your Mac-using friends, you’ll be putting your theme folders under one of two places depending on where you installed WordPress. You’ll either be putting them in:

wp-content/themes/

or

wordpress/wp-content/themes/

Either is perfectly fine. Once you get to that folder, you’ll see two folders already inside it: classic and default. Those themes come packaged with WordPress when it’s installed.

That’s how you get your theme from your desktop to your server. Now you need to activate it. (This takes just a couple clicks, I promise.)

Activate your theme

Open Firefox or whatever browser you’re using and go to www.YourDomainHere.com/wp-admin/

Log in using your username and password that you picked when you installed WordPress.

Now, off to the left hand side, you should see a light blue bar that says Appearance. Under it should say Themes, Widgets and Editor. (If it doesn’t, just click “Appearance” and those options will slide down.)

So, click “Themes.” That will bring up a window that should show you a preview of every theme you have installed, which will most likely be 3 for you (classic, default and your new one.)

Click on the new one, let the popup window open and then click in the upper right hand corner where it says “Activate ThemeX.”

If you go to www.YourDomainName.com now, you should see your new theme in action.

You can install as many themes as you want, provided that you don’t exceed your hosting space limit, but you shouldn’t need to worry about that for a while. (I have probably a dozen themes installed for my site. I tried out quite a few before I settled on the one I have now. I’d recommend you try out a few, too.)

Customize your settings

Right now, the subtitle of your blog probably says, “Just another WordPress blog.” Not very original, huh? To change that, you need to go into your Settings menu.

In your WordPress Admin, look on the left hand side. You should see a blue bar that says “Settings,” and under it should be a list of sub-categories. (If these don’t show up, just click “Settings” and those options will slide down.)

You can change the “Just another WordPress blog” chatter under “General.” You can also change various settings including what page will appear as your homepage at www.YourDomainName.com.

The best thing you can do at this point is to click through those settings pages and just get a feel for what you can change.

Play around with things. I promise you won’t break anything so badly that it can’t be fixed with just a few clicks.

So, are you finding these tips useful? I’m curious to see who is following along with the series. If you would, post the URL to your site in the comments. I’d love to see what everyone has so far.

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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.)

You’ll also want to check the button that says “Economy Hosting.” (It’s in that first yellow column. One year of hosting will run you about $55.)

Now scroll to the bottom of the screen and you’ll see two lines of text. One of them will say something about customizing your order. The other says “No, proceed to checkout.” (Or something to that effect.) Click that one and go to the next screen.

This, I think, will get you to your actually checkout. (GoDaddy may give you more options to buy stuff. Like I said, you probably don’t need it.)

Your domain plus one year of hosting will run a hair less than $60.

Because I’m a big fan of coupon codes when shopping online, here’s a way to save about $11: Enter “BTPS7″ (without the quote marks) to save 20% on any order of $50 or more.

(I don’t know when that one expires, so as a backup you can try “Rev6″ (again, no quote marks), which should get you 20% off your hosting plan. That’s basically the same deal, and that code will likely not expire for a while.)

You’ll have to select how you want to pay. (Again, because I already have an account, you may need to enter extra information that I already have stored in their system.)

Agree to their terms of service by checking the two checkboxes.

Click “Checkout Now” and you should be all done.

Do a little happy dance.

Step 3: Install WordPress

On the green navigation bar, scroll over Hosting and select the last option on the list, “GoDaddy Hosting Connection.”

Because GoDaddy’s site design is a little screwy sometimes, it may treat you like you’re not logged in even if you are. Just click the “Log in to your account to get started” line, and you’ll be good to go.

This screen should show your newly purchased domain. Click “Manage Account” next to it.

This will bring up a new screen. You want to click on the gray horizontal bar that says “Content.” Now you want to click on the last button that says “GoDaddy Hosting Connection.”

(Yes, GoDaddy makes it difficult to get to this page. I know. I wish they didn’t.)

On this screen, you’ll see along the left hand side a bunch of options. Click “Blogs.” That will present you with a bunch of other options. Click “WordPress.”

A new screen will open and you should see a gold “Install Now” button. Click it.

You might need to select which domain you want to install WordPress on. (That’s easy as you only bought one.) And you’ll need to choose a username and password.

That should be all you need to do. (I’m not 100% sure as I don’t want to click the button now and risk overwriting any of my installs already on my domains.)

The installation process takes a little while. (Something like up to 24 hours, if I remember right. You can see the status of the installation in the upper right hand part of that page. It’ll say WordPress and then undernearth it something like “Installation Pending.”)

When it is done, you should be able to go to www.YourDomain.com/wp-admin/ and see a login screen like this:

Enter your username and password that you chose earlier, and you should be golden. That means WordPress is installed and you’ll be ready for next week’s task.

Did you run into a problem? Did I leave out something by accident? Leave a comment and I’ll look into it.

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As I’ve risen through the ranks at the Daily Nebraskan, I’ve come to realize one major problem that is inherent in any college news organization: You will have a complete staff turnover roughly every four years. And, in most cases, turnover in top positions occurs at the end of each semester or academic year.

What that means is by the time you’ve settled into your new job and identified problems, you have only a short time to come up with a solution and get it implemented. That is if you can even figure out what that solution should be.

So how do we stop this frustrating cycle?

We share out knowledge and resources. And we do that through groups like CoPress.

What is CoPress?

If you’ve never heard of CoPress, stop right now and go poke around their site.

The guys behind CoPress are some of the most forward-thinking young journalists I’ve come across. Like most journalists today, they want to find a way to make news organizations sustainable online.

The difference is they are specifically focused on college news outlets and they’re working hard to provide resources to those who need them.

And believe me, we need all the help we can get.

A need for collaboration

The group’s recently redesigned site includes a message board that I hope will grow into a one-stop shop for tips from fellow student editors.

Last week’s discussion on the forum centered on how student news outlets need to collaborate. I could rework my original post, but I like how I said it the first time. In short, we need:

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I’ve been working to keep my site’s content fresh and to make the design more reader-friendly. So in case you wondered what’s changed in the past week, here’s a rundown:

• Updated my portfolio page to include some audio and mapping projects I’ve worked on this past month
• Changed theme to Typebased by Woo Themes
• Fixed the error in the PHP code for the new theme.
  • I’m about 60 pages into a PHP how-to book, and I’m glad I’ve already got some use out of it. If you have no programming background but have looked at your WordPress source code some, I’d be willing to be you could understand this book. I’d recommend it for those looking to learn.
• Upgraded back-end system to WordPress 2.7 without any problems

That’s it. As far as work goes, we’re still pushing our Web-first mindset, and I’ll keep blogging about the obstacles and successes along the way.

If your student news organization is in the same boat, stay tuned for more tips on what has – and hasn’t – worked for us.

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