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 will also be presenting website workshops at Rhode Island School of Design Scultpure 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 a simple well-designed website. It will be helpful for all artists creating their own websites.
- Intro and Examples
- Purchasing a domain name and hosting from GoDaddy
- Installing Wordpress on GoDaddy
- Using FTP in Dreamweaver to upload WPFolio
- Configuring Wordpress, WPFolio and required plugins
- Creating the Navigation Menu by adding Categories
- Creating Galleries of Images
- Adding a Bio, Contact & Home Page
- Customizing the Menu Order
- Other Online Artist Portfolios
Categories, Posts and Pages in Wordpress
There are 2 different kinds of entries in Wordpress – Posts and Pages.
Posts are organized in Categories and are meant for multiple entries of a similar kind. All artwork should be entered as Posts and included in a Category. For example a group of paintings completed between 2006 and 2007, would be uploaded to a post named “2006-2007″ and included in the category “Painting”. Later you might add another post, “2008-2009″, of recent paintings to the “Painting” category.
Pages are meant for single entry items, usually complete in themselves. Your bio, artist statement and contact info should probably be entered as Pages.
Creating Categories for the Navigation of your site.
Choosing category names and how they are used in WPFolio.
Categories organize your site and become menu items in the top menu.
Choose short words that are general and inclusive.
Choose categories that will work as your site expands and grows.
Do not create too many catgeories.
WPFolio navigation examples:
Category Suggestions:
Painting
Sculpture
Installations
Editions
Projects
Artwork,
etc.
Unless a series is large and includes many groups of work, don’t create Categories for series. Include them in posts (galleries) within the most appropriate Category.
Special WPFolio Categories that are formatted for text with inlines images, appropriate fore news and blogs:
News
Latest
Updates
Blog
Notable
I recommend creating at lease one category with one of those names as an all-purpose category to notify people about upcoming shows and reviews and the like.
Create Categories
Once you have decided which categories to use.
Click on “Categories” in the “Posts” menu.
On the Categories page enter your category and enter a category slug. The “slug” is what will appear in the url for that category. The slug should be lower case only without spaces. Use a dash “-” or an underscore “_” instead of a space. If you have a category “Recent Work” the slug will be “recent_work”. Add a description. And Click Save at the bottom of the page.
Also you should change “Uncategorized” to one of your navigation categories.
Change Setting for Default Category
One final change in regards to Categories. Return to Settings in the left hand menu and click “Writing”.
Change “Default Post Category” to your most commonly used category.
Click “Save Changes”.
Reminder: Make sure you choose a category when creating a Post.
Julian, A WPFolio User Wrote to Ask About Formatting The Category and Gallery Pages:
Thank you so much for your post. Its much easier to follow than the ‘official’ guide.
I have one question I hope you might know the answer too.
In the text at the bottom of my gallery pages is the permalink. How can I remove this? Or change it to the post title?
I Answered:
I am glad you found my tutorial useful.
In the admin section of Wordpress go to Appearance->Editor.
Click on Main Index Template, index.php in the right hand menu.
Find the section that looks like this:
<div class="posted">
<b><?php the_title(); ?></b> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Permalink"><?php the_time('Y') ?></a> | <?php the_category(', '); ?>
<?php the_tags('| Tags: ',', ',''); ?> <?php comments_popup_link(__('| Comments (0)'), __('| Comments (1)'), __('| Comments (%)'), __(''), __('')); ?>
<?php edit_post_link('edit this entry', '<br /><span class="adminuser">', '</span>'); ?> <!--USER EDIT LINK-->
</div>
To delete it I usually “comment” it out rather than delete, in case you change your mind at a later date. To comment it out add <!– at the beginning and –> at the end. So that it looks like this.
<!-- <div class="posted">
<b><?php the_title(); ?></b> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Permalink"><?php the_time('Y') ?></a> | <?php the_category(', '); ?>
<?php the_tags('| Tags: ',', ',''); ?> <?php comments_popup_link(__('| Comments (0)'), __('| Comments (1)'), __('| Comments (%)'), __(''), __('')); ?>
<?php edit_post_link('edit this entry', '<br /><span class="adminuser">', '</span>'); ?> <!--USER EDIT LINK-->
</div>
<br /><br /> -->
If you want to rearrange it a bit. You could do something like the following. I made the title a link, commented out the archive page (2009) and kept comments the same. I think if you look at the php you will be able to figure out what it refers to e.g. <?php the_title(); ?> is the title, etc. Wordpress has a good list of all the template tags if you want to go deeper.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags
<div class="posted">
<b><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="
<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></b>>
<!-- | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Permalink"><?php the_time('Y') ?></a> | <?php the_category(', '); ?> <?php the_tags('| Tags: ',', ',''); ?> -->
<?php comments_popup_link(__('| Comments (0)'), __('| Comments (1)'), __('| Comments (%)'), __(''), __('')); ?>
<?php edit_post_link('edit this entry', '<br /><span class="adminuser">', '</span>'); ?> <!--USER EDIT LINK-->
</div>
<br /><br />
I hope this helps.
You can view his finished site at http://mariancarow.com/.
How do I reorder the categories and pages in the header? It looks like the categories appear before the pages by default, and I don’t want that. I also have a default category called 2009 that keeps showing up in the header but is NOT in my list of categories. Any idea why?
1) If you are using widgets as shown in the tutorial before this one,
http://www.danielwiener.com/is/artist_website/configuring-wordpress-wpfolio
do this:
To show “pages” before “categories” go to “Widgets” in “Appearance” and reorder them in the navbar – “pages” above “categories”. , to show “pages” before “categories” go to “Widgets” in “Appearance” and reorder them in the navbar – “pages” above “categories”.
2) 2009 is the yearly archive. Using the Widgets for Categories and Pages may get rid of the 2009 in the navbar. But if you are not using Widgets you will need to change a php file. Go to the “Editor” in “Appearance” and click on “header.php”. Find these three lines.
< ?php wp_list_categories('exclude=&title_li=' );?> < ? php wp_get_archives('type=yearly'); ?> < ?php wp_list_pages('exclude=&title_li=' );?>Comment out the line that gets the archive name. The middle line should look like this:
< ? /*php wp_get_archives('type=yearly');*/ ?>Note the slash and star. You could just delete it but I like to keep the default files close to their original state. Frequently I add a comment saying that I have made the change.
And change the order of code for pages and categories, so “pages” is above “categories”, like this:
< ?php wp_list_pages('exclude=&title_li=' );?> < ?php wp_list_categories('exclude=&title_li=' );?>Don’t forget to click “Update File”.
Please note that solution 1 and solution 2 are mutually exclusive.
If you need to order your categories, you might want to look at:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_categories
The default is that they are ordered by their creation date.
I have added some instructions for a Hack for Ordering Categories.
Hey
just a few questions regarding navigation and categories. I have followed the instruction in order to create categories in post.(categorieslike mages, project, blog) Somehow it does not show up when I preview my website. So far only contact is there. Is this normal?
Thanks for making the instructions
Lars,
You have probably figured this out by now but the default for Categories is that they do not appear unless there is a Post in the Category. Frequently while I am developing I created a placeholder Post just to get the Categories working, then add the real Posts later.
Great theme, thank you.
But I have a problem/question and I’ve spent hours reading, searching, trying:
I would like to change the thumbnail images that appear on the category “pages”.
For example, the sculpture-projects category page ( http://richardbecker.com/category/sculpture-projects ) use images that are not the best representation of that post.
Ive tried re-ordering images in the post, changing categories and changing “post thumbnail” with no luck.
Any advice?
Thanks!
You can also try Menu Plus+ for reordering the menu. You will have to change some code in header.php. Follow the instructions provided by the plugin author.