Introduction

This series of tutorials was prepared for a class at Maryland Institute College of the Arts to create a website for students’ work. I have also presented website workshops at Rhode Island School of Design Sculpture Department and Bard. Wordpress with the WPFolio template, created by Eyebeam, offers an inexpensive, extensible way to make an artist portfolio website with little technical know-how. These tutorials include step by step instructions on setting up WPFolio from buying a domain name to adding “gallery” pages to create a simple well-designed website. While originally written for students, it will be helpful for all artists creating their own websites.

1. Intro and Examples
2. Purchasing a domain name and hosting from BlueHost
3. Installing Wordpress on Bluehost
4. Installing WPFolio
5. Configuring WPFolio
6. Configuring Wordpress
7. Creating the Navigation Menu by adding Categories
8. Installing jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries
9. Creating Galleries of Images
10. Installing Contact Form 7
11. Adding a Bio, Contact & Home Page
12. Customizing the Menu Order
13. Other Online Artist Portfolios
14. Archived Tutorials

Creating a Bio or Resume page.

Click on "Pages" in the left hand menu.

When installing WordPress it creates a page called "About". Let’s change that page into your bio page. Click on "About" in the center of the page. Change the title at the top of the page from "About" to "Bio".

In the text box, start adding your bio. It works like a simple word processor.

NOTE: The "return" key creates a full line space. If you only want a line break use shift-return.

I recommend that because of the vagaries of html you format your bio very simply as a list.

The following is moderately difficult to do in html:

This is easy to do:

2007
Exhibition 1
2008
Exhibition 2
2009
Exhibition 3

When you are finished adding your bio. Click "Update Page" at the right. Don’t forget. Your work could be lost if you don’t.

Create Contact Page

While we are in Pages let’s create a contact page (if you have installed Contact Form 7).

Click "Contact" at the bottom of the left hand menu. Then copy this code including the square brackets:
contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"

Then Click "Pages" in the left hand menu.
Click "Add New".
Enter "Contact" as the title and then paste:
contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"
into the body of page, as shown below. Don’t forget the square brackets.

Click "Publish" on the right side. Click "View Post" to check the page. It should look something like this:

For more complex forms and troubling-shooting view Contact Form 7 Docs

Create Home Page

By default WordPress displays a list of recent posts on the front page of your site. These are instructions for displaying one large image on your front page.

Create another new "Page". Title it "Home". Upload one image and insert it into the page.

A horizontal image 900 x 600 pixels works best. Horizontal images work best since they match the format of computer screens (example).

If you would like to use more than one image I suggest compositing several images together as one image in Photoshop and simply use that.

Click "Publish" or "Update Page" in the right sidebar.

You are not done yet

Go to Settings->Reading

Click "A static page" and choose "Home" from the dropdown list. Click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.

Check the front page on your site to see if it work.

For more information look at the WPFolio instructions or the WordPress instructions for creating a static home page. Voila!

Adding a Header Image

The WPFolio Wiki has good instructions for adding an header image to your site.

Tags: artist bio, artist resume, contact page, Contact7, static home page, wordpress