Welcome to Carleton’s resource for giving you ideas, prompts, and technical instructions on how to build a personal website (ePortfolio) and improve your digital identity and visibility. Your site may be showcasing you and your skills, or it may focus on a cause or project that is important to you. Whatever you decide to do, your site will require careful planning, thinking, feedback, and iterative design to make this the best site possible that you are comfortable sharing with the world. What is the story you want to tell with the site? How do you want to show that your work, your skills, your knowledge and thoughts matter?
Note: Most likely, you want to showcase work you did for an assignment. Please check with your faculty member if it is okay with you to post your work publicly, especially if you want to use the assignment task as context.
Building a website is both a process and a product. Take your time, and plan when you want to write or work on technical skills. Your website should be clear in purpose, engaging for your audience, and combining different elements for a compelling story about you or a topic you are passionate about.
We have designed a 2-part process to create your site.
Part 1
The site you requested is by default public. You want to start by ensuring it is a private site so that only you and a couple of folks who will give you feedback can see what you are working on. In this private space, you can experiment with your web content, practice technical and design skills, and work through specific feedback from, for example, your supervisor.
Your work will be guided by
- Prompts or suggestions to help you shape the content you want to share
- Ideas and instructions to design your site
- Guidance and considerations for using different media
- Social and ethical considerations about accessibility, usability, data responsibility, and author rights and permissions
Part 2
Assemble a version of your experiment to publish for the world to see. Consider before you publish
- Accessibility
- Giving credit where it is due
- Data responsibility: where is your content, like pdf files or images, located?
- Sustainability: schedule time in the next months and years at Carleton to review and revise your site as needed
- Quick feedback from others who have not seen the site before: does their impression of the site match what you want it to accomplish?
- Caution: Is everything you are sharing content you are comfortable to share with the world? Remember, once your content is out there, you cannot take it back.