Research Guides: Understanding & Establishing Digital Scholarly Identity Workshop Series: Step 3. Creating Your Personal Scholarly Website with WordPress

Your Instructors

Headshot of Kate Thornhill

Kate Thornhill

Digital Scholarship Librarian

kmthorn@uoregon.edu

541-346-3714

Headshot of Genifer Snipes

Genifer Snipes

Interim Director, Research & Instructional Services and Business & Entrepreneurship Librarian

gsnipes@uoregon.edu

541-346-4139

Headshot of Franny Gaede

Franny Gaede

Director, Digital Scholarship Services

mfgaede@uoregon.edu

541-346-1854

Authoring and Publishing with WordPress

What will we be learning how to do?

For this workshop we're going to work through a click along together. Our goal will be to make a very simple website for you to learn foundational and fundamental ways to create layouts and add content to a WordPress website using the WordPress block editor. The goal of this workshop is to get you started and comfortable with using WordPress hosted on Reclaim Hosting.

Together we will create the following:

Install the WordPress theme called "Twenty Twenty-One"
Pages for an about page, research page, and teaching page
Create a main navigation menu using pages you've created and then link external websites
Add columns that support different types of content layouts
Add headers and paragraph text
Add images with alternative text and ones that are decorative
Upload and link pdf documents to specific web pages
Create links to PDFs that are stored in your WordPress media library
Add social media icons to a home page
Write a short "about me"
Publish and edit your WordPress website

Download this folder to a place on your computer that you can find. We will be using these materials in the workshop if you have not brought your own.

Reference What We Learned in the Workshop using LinkedIn Learning & WordPress documentation

According to the Center for Disease Control & Prevention, 26% of American adults have a disability. Without taking these people into account they cannot access websites, devices, or web applications. Web accessibility focuses on the process of making sure websites are easily understandable by as many people as possible. These people can include those with impairments such as:

auditory
cognitive
neurological
physical
speech
visual

When web designing we need to ensure content like images, sounds, videos, and text are usable for all humans. More specifically content is perceivable, understandable, navigable, and interactive. Watch this video and review the tutorials to get a better understanding about the experiences and perspectives people with disabilities have when the web has not been constructed with them in mind.

How-to Tutorials

Foundational Web Accessibility How-tos

Accessibility for Web Design through LinkedIn Learning. Note About Signing into LinkedIn Learning: You have access to LinkedIn Learning through the UO. Log into it using your UO email address and password.
Write Good Alt Text to Describe Images
Making Structured Headers for Written Content
Dos and Don'ts on Designing for Accessibility - Infographics

What is Writing for the Web?

Writing for the web is just what it means --- writing content for website. Whenever we write for the web, we are actually writing for a public audience and should aim for an 8th grade reading level along with other helpful tactics and qualities that will make your writing more accessible to all readers.

Remember the key attributes for writing for the web are...

Be concise
Write simply
Avoid jargon
Put the most interesting content at the beginning of a paragraph
Use headings
Break up ideas into different paragraphs
Make links easy to identify
Write for an 8th grade reading level

Resources

Best Practices for Writing for the Web by the University of Maryland Baltimore
Writing for the Web by Seattle University
Grammarly - A writing app that can help you write clearly and for a specific audience
LinkedIn Learning Course: Learning to Write for the Web

The University of Oregon has a subscription to LinkedIn Learning. This is the place where you can beef up your technology skills for free while at the UO. This is a great resource for getting started with how to use WordPress, learning the foundations of web accessibility, and other web development best practices and technical specifications.

For getting started with WordPress and web accessibility then this is where you will want to start. LinkedIn Learning will get you started with coming more proficient and fluent with web development skills. Be sure to login with your UO e-mail address so you can access content for free.