Adding Writing Portfolio Pieces
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I’ve watched a few of the beginner videos, but I can’t figure out how to do some basic tasks. I’ll mainly be using WP to house my portfolio (for now). What I want is this: Basic homepage with links to “About Me” and “My Writing.” I have the “About Me” page (I think). Now I’m trying to create the “My Writing” page.
The first problem I’m encountering is the dearth of templates for writing portfolios (lots for templates for art and graphic design portfolios). I don’t feel comfortable with a blank page right now because I’m so new to creating web content.
Even so, I chose a template that I thought might work. It has buttons with titles that, supposedly, lead to articles . . . but I don’t see how they lead to anything. They seem like dead buttons. On the block editor, I see an option hyperlink the title, but that’s not what I want. My writing pieces are PDFs that I want to upload. I don’t see that option (I could definitely be missing something, though, as again, this is all completely new to me).Second, I want to make some of my titles’ designs more graphically appealing by putting part of the title on another line, but when I press “Enter” it creates a separate block rather than just moving me to a line below the title.
Regarding the writing (my sole purpose for creating the web site), here’s what I ultimately want: A button on my homepage called “My Writing” that visitors can click on and that leads them to a collection of my writing on another page of my website. On the “My Writing” page, I want to list titles of my pieces. I want visitors to be able to click on a title, which would open the PDF of that piece of writing. That seems as if it would be simple to accomplish, but I cannot figure out how. Any help is appreciated.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there!
It can be a bit overwhelming to start a blog like this, let me guide you through some of the things you mentioned.
If I understand correctly what you want to achieve, you don’t really need to create the “My Writing” page. Every theme will display your projects as an archive, all of your projects will automatically appear on the portfolio page of your site in chronological order with the most recent first. You can add this page to your site’s menu for visitors to view your projects, or just share the link on your homepage with the title “My Writing”. That being said, you can also use themes specially design to showcase portfolios, you can follow this link to check them: https://wordpress.com/themes/filter/feature:portfolio
I’m going to explain how to create your own portfolio, but you should read this document that will guide you through this process: https://wordpress.com/support/portfolios/
First, you’ll need to activate the portfolio feature by going to Settings → Writing → Content Types and turning on the Portfolio Projects option.
After you do this, you’ll have a new option on your dashboard, where you can start creating your projects.
Creating a project is very similar to creating a post, but you can add extra information regarding the project. When creating a project, you can use a PDF embed so users can read your piece directly from there without downloading it (and of course, they can download it if they choose to). Here is the guide on how to do that: https://wordpress.com/support/embed-a-pdf-file/After you have created and published at least one project, your portfolio page would have been automatically created, you can use this address to check your project’s archive.
https://yourgroovysite.wordpress.com/portfolio/
(replace yourgroovysite.wordpress.com with your site address.)
There are other ways to view your portfolio, here you can choose between them: https://wordpress.com/support/portfolios/#display-portfolio-nbsp-projects-on-your-site
This should be enough to get you started. For your homepage, you can read this guide: https://wordpress.com/support/pages/front-page/
And you should also check this document with guidelines on how to make a portfolio: https://wordpress.com/support/portfolios/making-the-most-of-your-portfolio/Hope this helped you out, don’t hesitate to write back if you need further assistance.
Good luck! -
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Okay, I think I have some portfolio pieces posted, but now I’m having a problem with the homepage. I read through the link you included in your response. I’m still not finding a solution. I’ve somehow created a homepage with double menu items and my name on it twice. I cannot figure out a way to remove the duplicate menu buttons (nor a button that I no longer intend to use, entitled Instructional Design).
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Sorry to post so many times, but one of the problems I’m finding is that a lot of the “how to” content isn’t up-to-date. For example, one part of the instructions about homepages says I can set my home page by clicking on pages, clicking the three dots beside the page that I want to be my homepage, and choosing “set as homepage” (or something like that). The problem is that there is not “set as homepage” option when I do those steps.
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Hi, no worries, happy to help!
I understand what you mean about the documentation not being up to date, right now with the brand new Full Site Editor they are catching up with some of the documents but because not every theme is enabled to use the Editor, for setting the Homepage there will be different methods depending on the case.
I think the method you described should work, like in this image I just took.
Because your site is not public yet, I cannot know the theme you are using, if you could share that with me I will tell you what should work.
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Thank you. I’m using Kingsley. But I don’t really care too much about the theme, as long as it’s simple.
I feel like something is amiss. What I’m trying to accomplish here is so simple that it seems odd that I’m running into so many problems. Here’s what I want:
1) A home page that has my pic, a brief description of what I do, and 2 menu buttons—About Me and My Writing.
2) When readers click on About Me, I’d like them to be led to the information . . . about me (e.g., a brief description of what I do and my email address). When readers click on My Writing, I want them to be led to my portfolio of writing.
That’s it. It’s not like I’m writing a blog, trying to sell products, etc. I just want to post my portfolio. In fact, I don’t even care if my writing appears on my home page.
This seems like it should be super easy. What am I missing?
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Sure, if I’m understanding you correctly, it sounds like this is what you want: https://wordpress.com/blog/2021/01/25/building-single-page-websites-on-wordpress-com/
Even though that says single-page, you’d follow the same steps, create your 2 extra pages, and include those as links on the main page.
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Thank you for your ongoing help and patience. I’m still having problems, though. This is why about 2 months ago when I attempted to create a WP web site, I gave up. I’m sure someone who knows what they’re doing could get this done in about 10 minutes, but I’m completely lost. I would pay someone to do this for me, but my page is so simple that it’s not worth paying $500, yet I would definitely pay for tech support to help me.
Here’s the problem: I followed the instructions you linked me to & created a single-page site (I think). I chose the Blank Canvas template. My actual home page seems fine (although when I go to my Dashboard, I don’t see any homepage, nor is the three-dot menu giving me the option to set anything as my homepage). I have three menu buttons: Home (although I don’t really want that on the home page as it’s pretty obvious what it is) – My Writing — About Me.
I went to My Dashboard ->Pages -> and created an About Me page. But when I VISIT SITE, the About Me page that appears is not the one I created. Instead, it is an “uncategorized” page that has a navigation menu that is old (one that I created in my aforementioned failed attempt at creating a WP attempt a couple of months ago). I have no idea how to get rid of that “uncategorized” page as it does not appear on my Dashboard pages. I’d love to just trash everything and start from scratch, and I thought that’s what would happen when I chose the Blank Canvas website, but evidently some residual content from my previous attempt is showing up and I don’t know how to get rid of it.
I’d be more than willing to pay for a basic website, but only if I actually end up creating the web site. As is, it’s not looking good. Is there someone I can actually talk to? Is there some version of paid tech support?
Thanks, again, for your help and patience.
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Hi there,
I see what you are referring to. You have a Home, About Me, and Writing Samples page, but you go to your menu (Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Menus) is connected to category pages, and your home page is set as a custom link, not the pages you created. Your About Me is the only page that is currently published but is not was is linked to your menu.
From that menu page, you can click the dropdown button for each of those three menus to delete them:
I also see that you have several of the same pages like the About Me page, one of them being in the trash.
I’d love to just trash everything and start from scratch
If you want to start over from scratch, support page can assist you in this process.
We can do it for you, but you can accomplish clearing your site fairly easily with bulk actions whenever you’re ready.Are you wanting your theme reverted to its original layout as well? If so, I can go ahead and empty the site and reset the theme for you.
Once you have a clean slate, I would recommend you follow these 5 steps in order to set up both your pages and your menu correctly because it looks like where things went awry on your first attempt:
https://wordpress.com/support/five-step-website-setup/
Throughout the process, please let us know if you have any questions – we’d be happy to assist you.
Thanks,
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Yes, I’d like to start completely from scratch. I don’t even care about what my theme was or anything like that. I just want to start over. I viewed the “5 easy steps” video twice, so if I have a clean slate, I can probably get going with this [I hope].
So, just to clarify, are you going to reset everything for me so that I can just start from scratch, or do I need to contact Support?
Thanks, again.
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We are support. :)
I have reset your site as requested.
Please let us know if you need any further assistance!
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Okay—I’m almost there. I have my home page, my about page, and a page where I’m housing my writing (I just chose a blank page and inserted PDF files of the pieces I want to include).
Now, I want to add a menu to my homepage. But the “5 Easy Steps” video says to go to the dashboard, choose APPEARANCES, and then choose menu from there. When I do that, though, I do not see an option for “Menu” under the “Appearance” button. Has the location for that changed?
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You’ll want to click on Appearance and then Customize. There you’ll find Menu settings:
If you were using the new Site Editor (you see that with a Beta sign next to it), you’d follow the steps from here:
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My menus are not showing up.
I went to Appearances > Customize > Menus >
From there, I’m given the option of PRIMARY or SOCIAL LINKS
I chose Primary mainly because in the “5 Easy Steps” video, that’s what is demonstrated (although it’s never stated). From there, I added the only two menu items I want displayed on my Homepage: My Writing and About Me.
For some reason, My Writing is designated as a “posts page.” I have no idea what that is, but I am assuming that it means it’s a page that I will continue to post to?? If so, then that is correct.
I’m supposed to check the box beside either Primary Navigation or Social. I checked Primary. It’s saved.
But when I Visit Site, no menu item is displayed.
Maybe it’s the terminology of web building that is confusing me. I’m assuming by “menu” that you mean the buttons that appear on someone’s homepage that visitors can click on to navigate to other pages on the web site.
If that is the case, why aren’t my menu buttons appearing on my homepage?
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Hi there,
For some reason, My Writing is designated as a “posts page.” I have no idea what that is, but I am assuming that it means it’s a page that I will continue to post to?? If so, then that is correct.
That setting determines which page WordPress will use to show your “blog feed” or the automatic feed of your latest blog posts. When you write a new post, it will appear here as soon as you publish.
But when I Visit Site, no menu item is displayed.
Maybe it’s the terminology of web building that is confusing me. I’m assuming by “menu” that you mean the buttons that appear on someone’s homepage that visitors can click on to navigate to other pages on the web site.
If that is the case, why aren’t my menu buttons appearing on my homepage?
I noticed that your site is using the “Blank Canvas” theme, and I think it will help if I point out that this theme is truly a blank canvas, where nothing is set up for you, including the site menu that you normally see in the header.
With this in mind my recommendation is to pick any of the other themes you see here, which will have an area in the header that displays the menu by default. https://wordpress.com/themes/
The reason it shows correctly in the video you are watching is due to this reason, any theme other than the “blank canvas” theme will display a menu, including the theme used in the video you are referring to.
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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Hi Vickie, I see you are making great progress with your site.
Just to clarify what staff-totoro mentioned above.
That setting determines which page WordPress will use to show your “blog feed” or the automatic feed of your latest blog posts. When you write a new post, it will appear here as soon as you publish.
That is absolutely true, but you don’t want it like that, because you mentioned this about your “My writing” page:
my writing (I just chose a blank page and inserted PDF files of the pieces I want to include)
Right now it is designated as a Post page, and as Jerry mentioned it would show the latest blog posts when you publish them. But your “My writing” page is actually just a regular page where you are showing your PDFs and adding them manually.
What you need to do is go to your Dashboard > Pages
Under your “My writing” page, it should say “Your latest posts” right now. Select the three dots to the right and then choose “Set as Regular Page”. This will make your page static and will only change when you modify it.Lastly, after selecting a theme as recommended, if the menu still isn’t showing, open your homepage from Pages, and check the used Template on the settings menu on the right. For a theme like Kingsley (the one you were using before) the homepage template is set to “Footer only” and the menu is on the Header, so just double-check the template has a header.
That’s all. If you need anything else, don’t forget to share the name of the theme you chose, Staff can actually see everything but we, as volunteers, cannot, so it would be useful to know if you are missing something.
Cheers! -
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