How do I achieve this?
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This is my third attempt at creating [what I thought was] a simple web site. Each time, I try, I run into so many snags that I give up for a couple of months to get my patience back & then try again. Hoping that third time will be the charm.
I’ve watched a few WP vids, and I think that a Website with a Blog is what is best for me, but please let me know: I want a web site where I can showcase my writing portfolio. I want a homepage that has the following menu:
About Me Resume Writing Services Portfolio Contact MeFor the Portfolio page, I want sub-categories to organize different types of writings. So, for example, visitors would click on Portfolio. Then, if they were looking for, say, Press Releases, they could click on Press Releases to see some PRs that I’ve written. I would have, say, four categories
Is my current theme appropriate to achieve the above? It seems like all the themes I like are ‘single-page’ sites. Does that mean that these are ‘sites’ with just a home page? If so, why would anyone want that?
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: YesThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
You can definitely set this up in WordPress.com :)
This is going to be a bunch of info, but just take it one step at a time, and if you get stuck at any point, let us know and we can guide you through the next steps :)
The instructions that follow apply to your current theme, Geologist, though the process would be the same with any of our Recommended themes in the theme showcase.
Go to Pages ->Add new and create the static pages you want, adding your content to each. Those will be the pages that get added to your menu. You’ll see once you create a new page there are a bunch of layouts you can choose for the page. This populates the page with the blocks needed to create that layout, and then you can just substitute your own content inside those blocks. So for each page, create the layout that matches the type of content you want.
https://wordpress.com/en/support/wordpress-editor/page-layouts/
Also create a page each for your portfolio and your blog feed – for both of these use the Blog layout (there’s a Portfolio layout category as well, but that’s for individual projects, not for the page listing all your projects).
For the Portfolio page specifically, once you’ve created the page, edit the Query Loop block appearing on the page, and set the post type to projects, rather than posts. The Blog page you can publish without making further changes.
https://wordpress.com/support/full-site-editing/theme-blocks/query-loop-block/#settings
(A portfolio page created like this will show all your projects. If you want multiple pages showing only projects from a particular category, there’s an alternative to creating a portfolio page which I’ll explain below.)
Once your pages are created, you can set one as your front page. You can find the steps to do that here:
https://wordpress.com/en/support/pages/front-page/
And you’ll also want to create a site menu linking to your pages. For that, go to Appearance ->Editor in the dashboard, and add/edit the Navigation block in your Header template:
https://wordpress.com/en/support/full-site-editing/theme-blocks/navigation-block/
Then you can just start publishing blog posts and portfolio projects, and they should automatically appear on the pages you created for those.
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If you want your projects to display on different places based on category, rather than having all of them on one page, you have two options:
1) You can create multiple portfolio pages as I’ve explained above. Then on each one you’d set the query loop block’s post type to Projects, and additionally add a filter based on the project type (project types are the portfolio equivalent of categories on blog posts)
2) Just add the portfolio archive pages directly to your menu. In other words, instead of using a portfolio page, you’ll add a Portfolio item directly to the menu that doesn’t link to anything.
Publish your portfolio projects, assigning a project type to each. As soon as you publish a project with a type assigned, that creates an archive page for that type, for example, https://vickiemelograno.wordpress.com/project-type/press-releases/
You can add that archive page directly to the menu as a submenu item under “Portfolio”, allowing visitors to visit that directly.
Once again, if you get stuck at any point, please ask :)
For a start, just get your pages and some portfolio projects published. A common mistake is to try and get the site looking the right way before one adds any content, but once you have some content ready, setting up the site becomes much easier, as then you’ll see where everything goes.
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Thank you so much for your help. I’m just working my way through the instructions in your post. I’ve made some of the changes already. But I’m getting a bit stuck on some of the jargon. For example, you wrote, “1) You can create multiple portfolio pages as I’ve explained above. Then on each one you’d set the query loop block’s post type to Projects, and additionally add a filter based on the project type (project types are the portfolio equivalent of categories on blog posts)”
I don’t know what a “query loop block” is. I’m not sure what a “filter” is in this context.
Is there some sort of dictionary on Word Press that I could use to decipher some of this?
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Hi there,
The Query Loop block allows you to display posts based on parameters you specify, in your case you’re filtering your Projects based on different project types which will allow them to appear in different places based on their category. Here is information from our support page on how the Query Loop works:
https://wordpress.com/support/full-site-editing/theme-blocks/query-loop-block/
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any additional questions.
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Thank you. I read through the information. I’m still lost. I don’t see the options that the information indicates that I will see. I am on my Portfolio page. I’ve added a Query Loop. I see no option to “set the post type to projects, rather than posts.” I have the right-side Settings menu open, and I don’t see that option (I did see it at one point on another page I was working on, but for some reason, I cannot see it now).
I also see no way to add content to my Query loop.
What I want is this:
1) Homepage with approx. 4 menu options:
Portfolio Resume Services About Me
(I don’t even really care if I have a blog page. If I can, fine. If not, that’s fine, too).
2) When people click on the Portfolio menu option on my home page, I want a sub-menu to appear that has categories (Press Releases – Web Writing (SEO) – Social Articles).
3) I want people to be able to choose one of those categories and be led to the accompanying page, where I will have placed PDFs of those types of writing. Ideally, I’d like people to be able to scroll through those pieces of writing, but not download them.
Is the above achievable? It seems fairly straightforward, but whenever I try to follow the instructions on the materials, some of the instructions do not align to what I actually see when I’m trying to edit.
Does this seem like something that I can do? I don’t consider myself a Luddite, but I’ve never had such a problem understanding instructions as I have since I’ve tried to put together what should be a simple website. (You can see from the history of my attempts that I’ve been at this for months).
I’d love to hire someone to do this for me, but $500 is steep for me. Are there ever any specials or are there any options for hands-on teaching Webinars where people follow along to create a site?
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Hi there,
I hope it will help if I break up your reply and respond to your questions one at a time.
1) Homepage with approx. 4 menu options:
Portfolio Resume Services About Me
This is a bit of a chicken vs. egg problem, but one thing to be aware of is that it’s impossible to create a menu with page links until the pages themselves have been created and published.
With this in mind, please create those pages here: https://wordpress.com/pages/
It’s OK if, for the moment, they are bare pages with just a title only. They can be edited after the fact to add content, but it’s impossible to set up a menu until at least the bare pages are published.
Once the pages are created, they can be added to your menu by following the steps here: https://wordpress.com/support/menus/create-a-menu/
2) When people click on the Portfolio menu option on my home page, I want a sub-menu to appear that has categories (Press Releases – Web Writing (SEO) – Social Articles).
Similar to the issue with pages, it’s not possible to set up links to specific portfolio items until they are created. I do see you have a few portfolio items here, but they are “drafts” and can’t be displayed on the site (in a menu or on the main index page) until they have been published.
I suspect the lack of published portfolio projects is also making it difficult to set up your main portfolio page (query loop block), so as a first step, getting these published should make that task more straightforward. Once you have posted a few of those, we’re happy to show you how to set them up further.
3) I want people to be able to choose one of those categories and be led to the accompanying page, where I will have placed PDFs of those types of writing. Ideally, I’d like people to be able to scroll through those pieces of writing but not download them.
As mentioned above, I think it will help if you have set up and published a few more portfolio projects, and then we will have an easier time showing you how to set them up. One thing to be aware of for now is that when you add a PDF to your portfolio entries, it is displayed visually as an embed, so it’s definitely possible to do it that way. See: https://en.support.wordpress.com/embed-a-pdf-file/
Does this seem like something that I can do? I don’t consider myself a Luddite, but I’ve never had such a problem understanding instructions as I have since I’ve tried to put together what should be a simple website
WordPress is a powerful tool for creating and managing websites, but like any new thing, there can be a learning curve before you feel comfortable using it. We’re happy to help you along the way, and plenty of folks set up sites like this on WordPress.com, so it is eminently possible.
Are there ever any specials, or are there any options for hands-on teaching Webinars where people follow along to create a site?
In addition to this forum, we do have a few other resources as well:
https://wordpress.com/support/portfolios/ – this covers the basics of how portfolios work, the terminology used, and how they are set up.
https://wordpress.com/webinars/getting-started-website-building-101/- this is a webinar we offer on how to start setting up a website. As it turns out, this webinar also covers how portfolios work. We have sessions scheduled for tomorrow and Friday if you want to check them out!
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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