Social Theory Portfolios Documentation

Creating your Portfolio Site
First thing you need to do is go and create your project site if you haven't already. You can following the directions for creating a new blog is you already have one on UMW Blogs here.

When creating your project blog, you may want to consider putting the name of your topic/theory/theorists etc. as the sub-domain name of your blog. For example, if your research project focuses on Dubois, you may want to make the sub-domain name dubois, which would look like this: http://dubois.umwblogs.org

Keep in mind, however, this is just a guideline, and you can use any domain name you would like.

When you have created your portfolio blog, you should add the site URL to this wiki page here.

Also, for a general overview of UMW Blogs be sure to check out the support material here.

The Project Theme
After you create your portfolio blog, you will want to keep the default theme which is know as Twenty Ten.

Static Homepage
The next thing you'll want to do is create a static homepage for your project site. This is a two-step process. First, create a new page (not a post!) and use the a descriptive word or words (make it short) you will be researching as the page title.

Once you have published this new page, you will go to the Settings --> Reading subtab and select the radio button "Front page displays option: static page" then use the drop down menu to select the title page you just created.

Write Pages, Not Posts
The project site you create for your technology will consist entirely of pages, not posts. Keep this in mind as you begin to build your project site.

The difference between a page and a post is an important terminological/conceptual distinction to grasp, as posts and pages serve radically different functions. A post is an article that shows up within the chronology of your blog, the most recent always at the top---a good example is how professor McClurken is using the frontpage of his course History 325 course blog.

A page is a static space that is not part of the chronological logic of the blog. A page sits outside of this inverted time line, and often features more static content like the various parts of your research project. These will not be updated regularly after you publish them, and given a blog depends on frequency and time relevance---the entire site is far better suited for pages, not posts.

Creating Custom Menus
You can control the order that both pages and subpages show up in menu of your header by using the custom menus in WordPress.

The custom menus can be activated by going into the backend of your blog. Are example blog for the tutorial is http://fail.umwblogs.org. In your main menu, you will see an option for custom menus, go ahead and click that which will take you to another page:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4094/4927430080_04a1c221ce.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4101/4927430110_a19951cdb8.jpg

At this point we can create a custom menu which will make use of any user-crated categories. Another excellent addition is the use of other websites URLs as a menu option. After we click save on the main screen, we can then select our newly created menu.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4117/4926834765_8409a4d3f8.jpg

Refresh your page and you now have slick tabs along your header.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4073/4927430458_9bfe9421a3.jpg

If you are not interested in having tabs in your header, you can turn off your custom menu and move towards the widgets (under appearance) option. From there, simply activate the custom menus option and drag it to where you want it on your page. You can now see that the menus are no longer in the header, but in our sidebar.

1: Moving to the widgets option

2: Selecting the custom menu widget

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4142/4926834601_b51888f677.jpg

3: Revisit your page to see your new sidebar menu

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4926835127_e84f1c70df.jpg

Custom Header Image
Finally, you can have a customized header for your own project blog, but you need to makes sure it is no wider than 940px, and no greater in height than 205px. A couple of free and simple tools for re-sizing and cropping images online are Picnik and Photoshop Express.

To upload an image, just go to the Assignment --> Header Image subtab and use the Browse tab to find the image for your header.

Also, you can change the background color as well under Assignment --> Background.

Contact
If you have problems with setting up your site; arranging and styling your pages; or any of these directions---please feel free to contact us for some help.