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.

1. Intro and Examples
2. Purchasing a domain name and hosting from GoDaddy
3. Installing Wordpress on GoDaddy
4. Using FTP in Dreamweaver to upload WPFolio
5. Configuring Wordpress, WPFolio and required plugins
6. Creating the Navigation Menu by adding Categories
7. Creating Galleries of Images
8. Adding a Bio, Contact & Home Page
9. Customizing the Menu Order
10. Other Online Artist Portfolios

Before we get started with the tutorial I would like to answer a question:

Why Wordpress?

While I have listed other easy and inexpensive ways for artists to create online portfolios, I urge you to consider using Wordpress with a theme. Wordpress uses open-source technologies, is open-source itself, and is backed up by a generous, enthusiastic, and active community of developers, designers and users. Unlike blogs and paid web services you will have total control over the content and design. Websites grow and develop over time. To remain affordable, many of the other alternatives are inevitably standardized and limit what can be done with them. While WPFolio is also limited and standardized, you can alter its template or change themes as your artwork changes and develops. Once you have entered your content (text, images, video, etc.) in a Wordpress site, it is easy to change the layout, design, structure and navigation of the site, without having to enter the content again. Because it is so flexible and extensible, ultimately a Wordpress site could better reflect the creativity and do-it-yourself spirit of your artwork.

Student Examples using WPFolio

Nathanael S. Absher
Amanda Stohl Hendershot
Chrissie Carlson
John Emmerich
Jennifer Cheek

Other Wordpress Templates

With Wordpress it is easy to experiment. Download a theme and activate the new theme by going to Appearance->Themes in the Wordpress Admin. Try out different themes with the same content. See how they look. It is easy to change back to WPFolio if the new one does not work out.

Some of the following themes cost money and they are all created for photography but could easily be tweaked to be used for any form of art.

Viso
Aperture
Photo Blog
Flashlike Photographer
Modularity
FolioBlogger
AutoFocus
Photocrati Themes
PhotoMinimal (using Flickr)

Now, onto the tutorial, in earnest. But remember to come back to this page and try out some other themes.