Tag Archives: wordpress help

Embed Any Document Plugin Example

I embedded this file using the “Embed Any Document” plugin, which you can access by going to your site dashboard, clicking on “Plugins” on the lefthand side, scrolling down until you reach Embed Any Document (it’s alphabetized) and clicking “activate.”

Once you’ve clicked activate, go to your post or page editor.  If you are in Classic Editor mode, a new button will appear underneath the title of the post/page that says “Add Document.” Once you upload your file, you will see some HTML code appear in your post/page editor. Don’t worry! Click the Preview button (or the Publish button) and see how it looks once it’s on your site– your document should appear, as you see below.

Download

How to Add Pages, Adjust Menu Items, and Edit Portfolio Appearance

Someone requested more step-by-step instructions on how to design/edit the portfolios, so here we go!

Adjusting Portfolio Appearance

On the lefthand side of your Site Dashboard, you will see a tab that says “Appearance.” Under that tab, there is a submenu with many more options to click on.

To change the overall design of your Portfolio, click on “Themes.” There are a variety of free themes that you can choose from. Then, once you choose a theme, you can click on “Customize” to change particular elements of the theme design like the site title, site tagline, menus, etc. The remaining items under “Appearance” are also things you can change under “Customize,” so it just depends on which editor you like better.

“Widgets” are pre-designed items that you can add to the sidebar of your portfolio. Or, you can delete the ones that your theme came with! For example, the widgets on our course site are Recent Posts, Categories, and Tags. You can add whatever you want here.

Under “Menus,” you can change which pages appear in the top menu on your portfolio site, add things, rearrange their order, and create submenus. Just by clicking and dragging! On my Sample Portfolio here (which is very incomplete!!!), you can see that I chose to put the “This I No Longer Believe” paper as its own menu item and then have all of the assignments related to the Final Paper as subitems under the Final Paper tab. However, notice that when you click on those items, I still need to edit the pages they take you to to make them match the menu.

Adding and Editing Pages and Posts

On the Dashboard, you will see a tab on the lefthand side that says “Pages.” This is where you can edit existing pages to make them say what you want, and also add new ones.

“Posts” are a lot like pages, except they will go into the blog/news/posts tab of your site. You may choose to use posts for all of your portfolio materials, but you may also choose not to use posts at all and just do pages for everything. It’s up to you!

Within posts, you can assign both tags and categories. This helps people find related material on your site.

Doing More Complicated Things

Feel free to get adventurous as you want with your web design! When I created our course site, I went to the “Plugins” tab (lefthand sidebar on the Dashboard) and just looked through all of the available plugins. If you see something you want to try, click on “Activate.” Depending on the plugin, you may see a new menu option on the lefthand side, or a new button when you are editing a post or a page. Plugins all come with their own Help pages.

If you do any web design experiments, feel free to write about them in your portfolio reflections.

Need More Help?

The Open Lab at City Tech has some helpful documentation that explains (with screenshots!) how to do different things on your course site. Click here and look through the options under the “Building Your Site” heading. The Open Lab looks different from the Commons on the main page/profiles, but the portfolio/course site/Wordpress aspects are the same.

How to Insert Your Assignments Into Your Portfolios

Somebody requested a post with instructions on how to insert your assignments into your portfolios, so here it is! There are several different ways to do so, and you should choose whichever one you prefer.

Method 1: Paste Directly Into WordPress

You can just paste your paper/other assignment directly into the Post or Page editor in WordPress. Then, use the Preview function to make sure all of your formatting still looks good, and fix anything that doesn’t look right. The advantage of this method is that it is very easy! The disadvantage is that you will necessarily lose some formatting, and formatting a blog post or web page like an academic essay usually looks bad.

Method 2: Include a Link to Your Word Doc or PDF

This is the method I recommend as a balance between ease and looking nice on the web.

If you choose this method, I might write your reflection on a given assignment as a blog post or web page on your portfolio, but include a link in the post/page to the assignment itself.

For example, take a look at most of my Assignment blog posts this semester– I reformatted the rubric and assignment sheet to look nice for WordPress, but most of the posts also have a link where you can download a Word Doc version of the assignment.

For assignments that don’t also require a reflection, just write enough on the page/post so that it doesn’t look weirdly blank.

Instructions

  1. If you are in the Classic Editor, click on “Add Media” (it appears as the first button below the post/page title). If you are in the Block Editor, look for the button in the formatting bar that has a music note and camera– when you mouse over it, that will say Add Media too.
  2. Clicking on Add Media will take you to the Media Library for your portfolio. Click over to the tab that says “Upload Files.”
  3. Upload your file.
  4. Once your file is uploaded, you will be automatically redirected to the Media Library page for that file. On the right hand side of your screen, you will see some spaces to fill in information about your file– change any of these that you wish.
  5. Click the blue “Insert Into Post” button.
  6. Whatever you had as the File Title will automatically appear as the text in your post/page. Once you’ve inserted the link, you can change the text if you want.

Method 3: Use a PDF Embedder Plugin

This method is the most complicated, but also the nicest-looking.

On the Resources Page on our website, I’ve included a link to a site that explains different plugins you could install to your portfolio site (using the Plugin tab in the lefthand sidebar) to embed files directly– that will make them display in a special window while retaining all of your formatting.

 

Portfolio Reminder and Practical Guide

In case you were absent one or both of the days we went to the computer lab to work on our portfolios, I wanted to write a post with instructions and recommendations.

How to Create Your Portfolio

  1. Log in to the CUNY Academic Commons home page. Click on “Sites.”
  2. You should see a button that says “Create a Site.” Click on that.
  3. You will see 3 options: Group, Site, and Group + Site. Choose the one that is just “Site.”
  4. Fill out the info and choose your settings however you like. The “site domain” is the URL you type in to get to your site. Choose “Portfolio” under the “Primary Purpose” option.
  5. For the privacy settings, choose whatever you want, but know you will need to give me access to your portfolio at the end of the semester in order for me to grade it.
  6. For the template, choose either “default” or “academic portfolio.” The portfolio template is designed for professors, not students, so you will still need to make changes.

How to Edit Your Portfolio

Once you create your site, you will see the same black CUNY Commons menu at the top of your screen just like you see when you’re on our course site.

  1. Click on the name of your site in that menu to access your dashboard. Or, click “edit” on any page on your site.
  2. The dashboard will look like the editing dashboard you used to write your “Analysis of an Ad” and “Data Collection” posts for our site, but with a lot more options in the sidebar. That’s because you’re the owner of your site!
  3. In the lefthand sidebar, go to “Appearance” and then “Customize.”
  4. Make whatever changes to your site that you want!
  5. To add pages or posts, use the “pages” and “posts” options in the dashboard lefthand sidebar instead of Appearance.

How Do You Know What To Do?

Instructions and a rubric for what to include in your portfolio are here.

Links to examples of other students’ English 101 portfolios are here. 

You can design and organize your portfolio however you want– your assignments don’t need to be in a specific order. It should be what you think looks good, makes sense, and is easy for a user of your website to understand.

For WordPress Help

Just Googling your questions will likely yield a lot of helpful instructions, since WordPress works the same no matter what website is using the software. However, for WordPress help explicitly geared toward students, the Open Lab at City Tech (similar to CUNY Commons) has a lot of Help documentation specifically geared toward students and faculty. Click here for instructions on how to do many common tasks on your site! 

You will see my face in the sidebar there– working on the Open Lab is my other job! Feel free to also ask me or your classmates if you continue running into trouble.

Instructions for Posting

  1. If you are signed in to your Commons account, you should see a menu at the top of the page that has a button reading “+ New” , Click on this button to write a new post.
  2. Write your post! You can write in either the Block editor or the Classic editor. I like Classic better, but choose whichever one you find easier.
  3. If you’re in Classic editor, find the “Categories” section of the righthand sidebar (not “Category Sticky”) and select the appropriate category or categories for your post. If you’re in Block editor, toggle to the “Document” tab of the sidebar instead of the “Block” tab and do the same thing. You should never select “Instructor Announcement” as your category, because that’s just for me!
  4. Add tags to your post. Tags should include your name (or username, if you don’t want to use your real name), as well as any other tags you want to use (such as topics addressed in your post). Once you decide what name/username tag to use, ALWAYS use that tag for all of your posts! This will make it easier to view everything you’ve written.
  5. Choose privacy settings for your post. Our site is already semi-private. Only members of the Commons can see it. However, if you want to make it MORE private, you can. A “public” post is visible to any Commons user. A “private” post is visible only to members of our class. A “password protected” post is the most private. Only you, me (as an administrator of the site), and people you share the password with can see it. Use this option if you’re posting material you don’t want your classmates to see, such as if you’re writing something personal.
  6.  Check or uncheck the “send to group” option in the “Group Blog” part of the sidebar. If this is checked, everyone in our class will get a notification email about your post.
  7. You can choose to set a “featured image” for a post. That image will appear at the top of the post and be included in the “link preview” that appears when you share the link on social media. Only do this if you want to.