Living Online: The WordPress Resume

Living Online: The WordPress Resume

Christopher Spencer

Web Communications Specialist

University of Arkansas

Twitter: cspencer75E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

What are our goals?

• Why WordPress Rocks

• What the U of A can do for you?

• Building a Blog/Portfolio/Resume/Repository to get you noticed

Who the $#%$ are you?

Christopher Spencer: Born in El Dorado, lives in Fayetteville

• Web Guy: Hired in October as a web communications specialist at the University of Arkansas.

• Journalist: Worked for the El Dorado News Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas

• Publisher: Publisher of Ozarks Unbound (June 2009), The Food File.com (April 2010) and Ballotbucks.org (April 2010)

• Creative: President of Creative Economy Action Group Inc., a Fayetteville nonprofit dedicated to enhancing the city’s creative economy.

• WordPress Fanboy: Founder of WordCamp Fayetteville now in it’s third year in Fayetteville.

• Former SPJ communications director from 2009 - 2011

What is WordPress?

• WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and pricelessat the same time.

• WordPress is used by over 14% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites.

• Five-minute installation

What are people using?

Year: 2011

Breakdown of websites with a clearly identifiable CMS, according to W3Tech’s survey of the top 1 million domains.

What blogs are used?

Year: 2009

Who is using WordPress?

• WordPress is used nationally by CNN, the U.S. Government, The New York Times, People Magazine,

• Locally: Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, Ozarks Unbound, the Washington County Observer, the Fayetteville Flyer, Single Parent Scholarship Fund and numerous other businesses to manage their websites.

Examples of WordPress

U of A and WP

• Wordpress installation at http://wordpress.uark.edu

• Any student, staff or faculty can

register a site there by signing in with

university credentials.

What you will see?

What you will see?

What you could see?

or …

or even …

How to create an online resume:

• Research existing resumes you like

• Distill the elements you want to provide: Simple, comprehensive, flashy.

• Find plugins and themes that get you there

• Make printables an option, but not the focus

University WordPress Space

• Go to the Tutorials page – Find online resources

• Currently more than 70 themes to choose from – apply to get a new theme applied

• At least 86 plugins to choose from that expand functionality

Groovy Plugin: WP Resume

Some starting plugins

• Jetpack to start – provides Sharing, Spell check, E-mail subscriptions, Stats, Shortlinks, Shortcodes, Sidebars (RSS, Twitter, Blog subscribe)

• Akismet, WP Tables Reloaded, All in One SEO Pack, Contact Form 7, NextGen Gallery, Wp Touch

Some starting plugins

• Jetpack to start – provides Sharing, Spell check, E-mail subscriptions, Stats, Shortlinks, Shortcodes, Sidebars (RSS, Twitter, Blog subscribe)

• Akismet, Wp Tables Reloaded, All in One SEO Pack, Contact Form 7, NextGen Gallery, Wp Touch

After Effects

• Space is always a concern. First bump is free.

• Try Amazon’s S3 – Simple Storage Service (12 cents/gigabyte)

• Portable data that travels with you as your career develops

• Reserve a url now – have your WP site changed to it

Use me

Christopher Spencer in Davis Hall

Phone: 575-4671

email: [email protected]

Twitter: cspencer75

Addendum: WordCamp Fayetteville

July 27 – 29, 2012

WordCamp Fayetteville

• The purpose of WordCamp Fayetteville is to teach people – including small businesses, nonprofits, educators and journalists – about the free open source WordPress software and other Internet-based innovation.

• Year One = 100 people at the Town Center

• Year Two = 200 people at the Reynolds Center

What is WordCamp?

• Friday: WordPress 101 at The Iceberg and a meet/tweet up afterward.

• Saturday: Full conference at the Reynolds Center. Four tracks of speakers. Almost 30 sessions.

• Saturday night: After Party at The Iceberg

• Sunday: WordPress Wizards at Belford Group offices

Why WordCamp?

$30 buys everything

T-shirt, conference access, After Party , WordPress Wizards wp-fu, Saturday snack and lunch, swag

bag

The Deal

• Use “wcfay12-student” when registering at http://wordcampfayetteville.com to get a $10 discount. First 10 folks.

• Tickets go on sale on or around April 15. Tweet me and I’ll notify you.