201: WordPress Portfolio

Web Portfolios

Overview

This course website for DTC201 uses the WordPress Twenty Ten theme.

Create a visually pleasing, well-organized, and professional-looking web portfolio using your WSU crimsonpages account to showcase the work you have completed in DTC201 this semester. Make sure that the choices you make regarding visual style (color, fonts, images, illustrations) go well with the work you are trying to showcase. Make sure the site is well-organized and easy to navigate. Your initial choice of website template, which you will modify to suit your specific needs, should make sense for the content you want to present.

You should be able to use this portfolio site throughout your WSU Career, either for your ongoing DTC portfolio (other DTC courses also require a crimsonpage website), or for other types of work once you have finished DTC201. If you already have a crimsonpage account and are actively using it for other classes, talk to your instructor.

This is a website designed for WSU English professor DJ Lee. It is based on a free WordPress template but heavily modified to suit the needs of  Lee’s presentation. To go this far with WordPress, you need to know HTML and CSS, as well as use more advanced options in WordPress’s CMS.

Requirements for your Web Portfolio

  1. Choose and Customize Template. WordPress offers templates that provide a backbone and structure for the content of your website. Different templates offer different initial organizational and aesthetic options (where the main navigation menu is located, for example), but you should also further customize your template under the Appearance menu. Make sure to adjust font colors, fonts, header color/image, and background color/image. You have access to these WordPress templates automatically: Twenty Thirteen, Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Fifteen, Twenty Sixteen, and Twenty Seventeen.
  2. Required Pages. You must, at minimum, have these pages on your web portfolio: 1) Home Page or Landing Page (The introduction to your website), 2) About Page (A professional-sounding bio and picture explaining who you are now, what you want to be and do), 3) Portfolio Page (Show and explain, at minimum, the first two projects we made for this class), and 4) Blogroll (Post, at minimum, your first two group critique write-ups and your first two personal critique write-ups as separate posts with logical titles. Include images!)
  3. Site Title and Tagline. Your site title and tagline should be: “Yourfirstname Yourlastname: Digital Technology & Culture Portfolio” or something very similar. Go to Appearance > Customize > Site Identity to change this.
  4. Navigation Menu Design. Customize the content in your menu according to the navigational needs of your website. Go to Appearance > Menus to create custom menus. Here is a WordPress Menu User Guide. You set up menus and give them names under Appearance > Menus. You then assign the menu under Appearance > Customize > Menus.
  5. Widgets. Widgets allow you to add special content or capabilities to your site’s sidebar, header, or footer areas (options change depending on your template choice). Consider what widgets make sense for your website. See Appearance > Widgets and explore your options.
  6. Adding Pages, Posts, and Media. Use the side menu bar in wordpress (the same place you see Appearance) to add pages, posts, and images.
  7. Extra content. You may also include additional content if you wish. You might just want to add some extra images to your portfolio page, or, if you are also using this website for other classes, design a more in-depth navigation menu that separates your content according to class, topic, etc. For example, you might have a DTC201 tab with a dropdown menu with links to your writing and images for just this class, then a separate tab for different DTC classes, or even a Fine Arts class. Or, perhaps your menu is organized by type of work, so there is a tab for photography, a tab for illustration, and a tab for graphic design.

Initial Login and Setup Info 

Login to your Crimson Pages site by navigating to: https://crimsonpages.org/yournetworkID/wp-admin

(if there is period in your network ID, it becomes a dash, so my network ID is kristin.carlson and my crimson page address is https://crimsonpages.org/kristin-carlson/

Your login info is the same Network ID information you use all over campus.

Readings/Tutorials

 

Additional WordPress Resources

 

Web Portfolios Discussed in Class

 

What you will bring to group critique

Your web portfolio is due to hand in AND for group critique at the beginning of class on Thursday, November 16th. We will have group critique as usual and you will bring your printed write-up when we get back from Thanksgiving break. You will have a chance to revise your portfolio based on BOTH the group critique and your instructor’s feedback before finals week is over. Revisions are due NO LATER than your section’s scheduled finals time.

What you will hand in for the final project:

Email to your professor at BEGINNING of class on due date:

  • A link to your crimsonpages web portfolio. Title the email “yourlastname-project3”. Also, include the name of the template design you started with, such as “Twenty Fifteen” or “Twenty Seventeen.”

Print and hand in to your professor at BEGINNING of class on due date:

  • A typed explanation of your work, (1 page, double-spaced, 12 pt. font), addressing:
  1. Why your final web portfolio design is clear, well-organized, easy to navigate and use.
  2. Why the aesthetic design choices of your final web portfolio are well-suited to the content you are presenting.
  3. How previous design readings on Hierarchy (from Project 2) and Design Elements and Principles (from Project 1) relate to questions 1 and 2.
  4. How WordPress’s templates and content management system influenced your creative process and design decisions.