Audio Recording - WordPress
Why a build a personal website?
- stake out your personal space/name on the web
- a stable location you control to point your social media accounts to
What to use to build a site?
- What is WordPress? How is blogs.evergreen.edu different from wordpress.com different from wordpress.org?
- Alternatives include Squarespace, Tumblr and Wix
Audio portfolio examples:
Create a New WordPress Site at Evergreen
As an Evergreen student, you have access to create a site at blogs.evergreen.edu and get support. This is a great opportunity to explore the waters of creating your own website in preparation for managing your own after graduation. blogs.evergreen.edu is Evergreen's WordPress server. You can create your own site, all you need is an evergreen email address and login.
- Create your first site if you are new to blogs.evergreen.edu.
- Learn how to create additional sites if you already have a site at blogs.evergreen.edu.
Writing and Managing your content
Images and linked files
Designing Your Site
Working with themes
Themes allow you to change the design of your blog at any time. Changing your theme will not affect the primary content of your site.
- Choose a theme
- Customize your header image - some themes allow for you to add your own header image Appearance > Header Image (may only appear if your chosen theme supports custom header images)
- Make additional changes to your theme (advanced)
Suggested themes for portfolio sites:
- Baskerville
- Hatch
- Hemingway
- Twenty Fifteen
- Fullscreen
- Onesie
- Snaps
- Wilson
Sidebars
Many themes support sidebar content. Often times if you don't anything to your side bar a default set of "widgets" will appear. You can change this by adding your own widgets.
- Widgets - add additional features to your sidebar
- Add external links to your sidebar
- Change what your front page displays if you'd prefer a static pages instead of your latest posts (optional).
- Custom Menus - allow you to modify the navigation for your site
- not all themes support custom menus
Adding functionality to your site
- Plugin Overview - use plugins to connect your site with a variety of web content including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. Want to connect to a popular service that you don't see listed in the available plugins? Let Academic Computing know and we can look into adding it.
Embedding media
What about after graduation?
Getting your own website
Securing your own custom domain name
Every website has a unique web address. Best practices for purchasing a domain name:
- short, descriptive, easily communicated, not easily confused with other websites
- first and last name .com
- domain registration happens via a domain registrar. Often times web hosts will also offer domain registration. Coupling domain registration and web hosting is the easiest way to manage as each will have to be renewed annually.
Web Hosting and Editing Platforms
Web hosts are the folks who host your website on their internet connected web servers. They can host simple html files but now, more often they additionally host web editing platforms such as WordPress, Wix or Squarespace. Before you commit to a web host:
- Create a trial account before you commit to a platform. Make sure it feels easy to use and meets all of your site's requirements.
- Add up all of the recurring costs (domain + web hosting)
- some platforms are Open Source such as WordPress which means if you don't like your web host you can always move your code to another server
- some platforms are proprietary such as Squarespace - web sites built here will have limited export functionality
Need More Help?
- WordPress Tutorial - for a step-by-step tutorial to get you started
- FAQs - common questions about using WordPress at Evergreen
- All WordPress articles
Still have questions or problems with WordPress, send Academic Computing a message or call the Computer Center at 360-867-6227.
