Tag Archives: Tutorials

Creating a Professional Website on Weebly

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One important step to having a good online scholarly presence is to have your own professional website. Weebly is a fairly easy to use and free content management system that you can use to create a customized page for yourself or a team. It is one of the website builders supported by the iSchool, which you can find more information about at this link.

How to Create a Weebly Website

Step 1) Login to Weebly either by creating a new Weebly account or linking to a Facebook or Gmail account. If this is a professional website think very carefully about whether or not you want this in any way connected to your Facebook (after all, future employers don’t care how much fun you had during spring break or want to see those conspiracy theory articles your uncle keeps sharing).

Step 2) Choose a theme! There used to be a lot more themes available on Weebly but those days are over. You have a couple options for very basic themes that with the addition of some images will help you instantly create a classy portfolio page, and any theme is fair game, though the ones under “Portfolio” and “Personal” and “Blog” are more suited for creating a professional website.

Step 3) You will be prompted to choose your web domain. You can have a free dot weebly site. Try to get some variation on your name as your website, you can also use the name of your company or organization.

Image of mothersagainstbearattacks sign up

Note: as of writing (23 Jan. 2017) this Weebly domain name is still available!

However, if this is too much pressure for now you can start creating your site and won’t have to really settle down on a name until you publish the site.

If inspiration strikes before that go to Settings >  Site Address

Step 4) Adding pages. Whichever theme you choose likely comes with Home, Blog, Contact pages that you can click on different elements of to edit. However, to add a new page or a certain type of page:

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Step 5) Customizing Pages. For simple edits, simply click on what you want to replace and add new content. To add new content, there’s a sidebar full of options! Even more if you add apps to your site or pay for Weebly. Simply drag and drop and arrange the content types on your site.

As an example, we’ll create a contact page.

If you want people to reach out to you it’s great to have a page where they can do that. We do not recommend writing your email out on pages because that’s a good way for spambots to find you. However, Weebly makes it easy to add a contact form: simply Click “Build” and drag and drop the contact form.

Editing contact information for Weebly contact form

If you have a physical location where you tend to be such as an office (lucky you!) or a coffee shop that pretty much is your office, then you can add a Google map as well to show people what building it is in. Though if your office is in the Armory (or certain parts of Main Library for that matter) you should probably include more specific instructions so that people don’t spend years trying to find it. You can also link your LinkedIn profile to your site by dragging and dropping that icon as well.

And don’t forget to include your ORCID, (if you haven’t created one yet, we suggest you check out this ORCID information)!

Special note: Adding stock images

Of course, your professional website should include at least one picture of you in a professional setting. Weebly has a number of stock images you can choose from that can look very nice. But what if you want something a bit more customized? For your professional website, make sure that you have proper permissions for any images that you use! Copyright infringement is very unprofessional. To learn more about finding copyright friendly stock images check out the Finding and Using Images LibGuide. And please feel free to take a look at our Scholarly Commons copyright resources. For more specific questions, you can reach out to Assistant Professor & Copyright Librarian Sara Benson.

Further Resources:

Still confused about Online Scholarly Presence? We have not one but TWO LibGuides to help you understand: Online Scholarly Presence Seminar and Create & Manage an Online Scholarly Presence.

Here is a video from a few years ago explaining more in general about creating a professional website, hosted by the University of Illinois.

 

Online Resources for Learning Digital Humanities Skills

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Learning new skills doesn't have to be a headache!

Learning the skills required for the digital humanities may require patience, but the payoff can be huge.

Learning a coding language or technical skill can seem daunting, especially when you’re not someone with a computer science background. All of the jargon, technical terms, and math may be a barrier to entry for people with a more traditional humanities background who may otherwise want to embark on a digital humanities project. Even for those who start, it’s easy to get stuck when you feel like every tutorial you try has you learning tricks for things you know you’ll never use, while you never seem to find any information about what you do want to learn.

While no tutorial is going to be the panacea to all your problems, here are a few places you can start your techy journey, created for people who may want to start slow and learn specific skills.

  • The Programming Historian — Full disclosure: I love the Programming Historian. Their lessons are written for humanities scholars by humanities scholars. No piece of jargon is left undefined, and their lesson format is both helpful for learning basics, but also explains why you will want to know this skill, and how it will be useful and relevant for the future. Lessons are presented textually, with pictures as examples. They also periodically offer practice questions for you to gauge your comprehension throughout many of their lessons.
    • Pros: Written by people who understand the way that you think, and explains the importance of learning these skills as you go along.
    • Cons: Presented as text. You do the work separately, and there’s no way to have your work checked by a program like it would be at Codecademy, or similar sites.
  • Tooling Up for Digital Humanities: Begun at Stanford, Tooling Up for Digital Humanities includes great overviews of text and spatial analysis, databases, pedagogy, and data visualization. If you need a place to serve as a glossary for terms, or just want brief overviews of what exactly the digital humanities are, and what you can do with the digital humanities, this is a great place to start.
    • Pros: Concise information regarding the main flagpoles of the digital humanities, presented in a familiar, unadorned style. Easy to read and digest, and includes introductions to major software and linking to further reading for what you may be interested in.
    • Cons: Started in conjunction with a series of workshops in 2011, the site is no longer maintained, and some information may be out of date.
  • TEI By Example: TEI By Example consists of online tutorials created to help humanists use TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Tutorials are divided by subject, starting with the basics of TEI, then moving on to different humanity subjects, including prose, poetry, drama, primary sources, and critical editing. Each tutorial is split between the tutorial itself, an example, a test, and exercises. The really great thing about TEI By Example is that you can either go through all of the tutorials, or pick and choose what you want to learn based on either your expertise, or your interest.
    • Pros: User-intuitive and specific to the needs of digital historians. Presents information in a digestible but thorough way, and checks your work for you.
    • Cons: Stopped being maintained in 2010, and the user-interface shows its age. Information could also be out of date.

There are so many projects that a digital historian can take on, and nothing should stop you except for your imagination (or maybe your lack of grant money, but that’s a different story). While you need to learn the basics, that’s no reason you can’t tailor your experience to help you focus on what you really need, and keep from frustrating you with things that you don’t.

Remember, if you want to get started with a digital humanities project, or need help with a current one, you can always come to the Scholarly Commons, open 9 AM – 6 PM, Monday-Friday, or email our digital humanities experts, Eleanor Dickson and Harriett Green.