Welcome to the new member instructions. If you have trouble logging in or have any questions, feel free to email shel@sheltoncochran.com

1) Signing In

A) Navigate to http://www.freelanceforum.org/wp-admin

B) Enter your Username and Password as supplied to you and click “Log In”. Note: You may want to click “remember me” as well so you don’t have to log in every time.

2) Navigating to your Member Page.

A) Once you’ve successfully logged in, you should be taken to the main WordPress dashboard screen. From here, navigate to Members>All Members on the left hand menu bar.

B) Find your name or your companies name among the list of members. Hover over your name and click “edit”. Note: If you can’t find your name or company name from among the list of members, there is a search bar in the top right of this page.

3) Beginning to Add Content to your Member Page.

A) Here, in the title bar at the top, you can change how your name/company name displays on the site.

B) Notice the permalink for your member page. This is how you would link someone directly to your member page. You can copy and paste this link to share this link with your friends, family, and potential clients. A lot of times people try and copy and paste the link directly from this page, but that usually doesn’t work because of the elipse (…) put in there to display the beginning and end of the link. Make sure you are copy and pasting the entire URL. To grab the entire URL, you can click “view member” to the right of this permalink. This takes you to your project portfolio page. Copy the URL at the top of this page and share the link with friends, family, clients and emerging celebrities. (This will only work if your member page is published already)

C)  Here on your “Member” page in the content area, you add general text content and maybe a head shot of yourself or your company’s logo. You can use the buttons above the main content area (this block of buttons is called the WISYWIG) to do things like add bold text, links, text alignment etc. Here is a link to a button by button explanation of what the WISYWIG can do.

D) You’ll see in the image above that I’ve uploaded Su’s head shot to the main content area, I do this but clicking the “Add Media” button. Here is a step by step explanation of basic image uploading with WordPress (it also goes over how to embed audio and video to your site).

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NOTE: Because the images section above your bio area does not allow for links to PDFs or videos you may want to include a few in this content area.They can be linked to PDFs that you upload or to specific pages on your professional website. In the case of videos you can create a link to your Vimeo or Youtube that is stored on those sites.

E) Because categories are a site-wide system we have disabled members’ ability to edit the categories. If you would your categories changed from how they are originally set, please contact a site admin.

F) At any time you can click “Preview Changes” in the top right to see what your member page will look like on the live site. If you are happy with your changes, and you haven’t published your page yet you can click the “Publish” button beneath to launch your page. If you have already launched and are just making updates, this button will read “Update” instead. Changes you make to the edit page screen will not take effect on the live site until you publish or update your member page.

Below this content area you will see Halsey Project Options which is where you will upload all your portfolio images. See Section 4:

4) Add Content to your Member Page Continued.

A) Your main member image that will be displayed throughout the site will be the image you feature in the “Featured Image” box here. Click “Set Featured Image” and follow the usual protocol to upload an image. Once you’ve uploaded the image in the media upload window, click “Set Featured Image” in the bottom right of that window. Note: The ideal image size for this logo is 253 pixels wide by 142 tall (253×142).

B) Select which kind of portfolio display you’d like for your website. The best option to display multiple portfolio items in a clean way is to select the “Album” setting for the project format. *DO NOT USE SLIDER for the project format*. Video will display one video of your choice from Vimeo or Youtube. If you want to include multiple large format image or multiple videos, this is possible using the main content area of the website (the area talked about in step 3C).

C) If you’ve selected to have a album portfolio, you can choose the number of columns your portfolio images will display in (3 or 4 is recommended).

D) Uploading images to your portfolio album is very similar to how you would upload an image anywhere else in WordPress. Click the  “Choose Images” button to the right of “Project Format”. The album will do it’s best to display the images in a grid, but it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to keep the same aspect ratio for all of your portfolio album items. If you use a 1:1 (square) aspect ratio, your images will grid ideally. *You can not add captions to the individual  images in your portfolio!

E) Here in “Project Features” you can easily add your contact and general quick information for yourself or your company. Click the “+” button pointed out by Arrow F to add a new field, title your field (ex. Address, Phone, Facebook etc.) and add a value. For social media links or any other type of link, please add the correct HTML to the value area. To make adding links to this area easier, you may want to add the link in the main content area of your member page using the WISYWIG buttons and then copy and paste the link code from the “text” view of your main content window. You can add as many of these fields as you need.

A few points to keep in mind:

1. Due to storage space each member is limited to 20 images for their Portfolio. The FREELANCE FORUM website is designed to familiarize site visitors with our members’ capabilities and to show a sampling of each members work. You can create links to your professional site and social media pages within your content area.

2. Please add your own logo to replace the placeholder if you have not done so. It will help the look of the site to show individual logo names rather than the same placeholder for all. It will also give your business a more professional look. Consider having a simple text-based logo created. I, or any of the Freelance Forum talented graphic designers can design one for you. If you have a website you can use the logo you are using there. There are several methods to grab and save it right from the website.

3. Add at least one image to your “project” (portfolio) even if you are a copywriter so when a visitor sees your page there is something in the images section in order to avoid the “searching” icon. It can be your logo again or a scan of a printed article.