Setting Up Your Online Writing Portfolio

A Quick & Dirty Guide

ONLINEWRITING

PORTFOLIO For more information about this presentation, please visit www.jasontham.com.

SETTING UP YOUR

© Jason Tham. 2014.

RATIONALE

An online writing portfolio is essential to presenting yourself professionally in the highly competitive writing industry.

A portfolio makes it easy for your potential employers or clients to see your talent and evaluate your writing proficiency.

Putting your work online makes them searchable and transferrable.

Sites like WordPress and Blogger are commonly used by writers as a platform to collect and showcase their work.

Though, there are other ready-to-use portfolio sites that allow you to plug in your writing samples on a more beautifully designed webpage. Those may come with a fee or for free.

PLATFORMS

Once you have decided on a platform to house your writing, take some time to select a design/layout option that best fits the objective of your portfolio and the tone of your writing samples.

For instance, you don’t want your portfolio to look too childish or playful if you would like to show it to your employer at a job interview.

DESIGN MATTERS

However, if your portfolio is a home to personal narratives or creative collections of yours, you may want to choose a less serious or “business-ese” appearance for your portfolio design.

Use your best discretion when deciding on the theme of your website. Keep in mind that you can always change it later.

DESIGN MATTERS

(WordPress themes)

Twenty Eleven, Twenty Twelve, Twenty Thirteen, Expound, Writr, Sorbet, Syntax, Wu Wei, Manifest, Widely.

Please don’t spend money buying themes for this class.

My Suggestions:

Help your readers see what you are trying to say or present. Use attractive visuals or graphics to illustrate your ideas. Your portfolio should be a combination of verbal (written) and visual work.

Keep this in mind:

Once you have some writing samples to put on your portfolio, you should think about how you want to arrange your work:

Thematic: Follows certain genres, styles, or purposes.

Chronological: Posts writing in ascending/descending order.

ARRANGEMENT

Your portfolio can be a one-stop site for your clients or employers to find links to your other social networks, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, or other professional about-me sites.

Again, use your best discretion when deciding which social network(s) to include and which not to. Including such links in your portfolio is a rhetorical move.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

WEB ELEMENTS

Main menu bar

Parent and subpages

Side widgets

Title of entry

Body/content of entry

Meta/tool bar (this is how you login)

http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress Getting Started:

A Quick & Dirty Guide

ONLINEWRITING

PORTFOLIO For more information about this presentation, please visit www.jasontham.com.

SETTING UP YOUR

© Jason Tham. 2014.