Warning: This is an archived course website that is part of my teaching portfolio, so some links may no longer work. Please contact me with any questions about this site.

Resources

I use Pinboard to bookmark interesting websites related to ENGL 5644, but I will try to add the most important resources to this page. If you’d like me to add a link to this page, just let me know.

Virginia Tech Resources

Social Media Analysis

Models for Various “Digital Self” Genres

Domain Registration and Web Hosting

To register a domain name, I recommend using one of these four companies:

All three of those companies also offer web hosting, but I recommend separating your domain registrar from your hosting company, just in case you need to change hosting companies at some point in the future.

There are hundreds of web hosting companies out there, and each one has a slightly different plan and slightly different fees. Before you settle on a hosting company, carefully investigate the company’s reputation (i.e., Google them, search for them on Twitter) and make sure that the plan you are signing up for offers the resources you’ll need for your site (e.g., MySQL databases, WordPress support, unlimited subdomains).

For hosting, I have been very happy with MediaTemple for several years, and I recommend the company to most of my clients. However, MediaTemple’s plans start at $20/month, which is more than some students (or their clients) want to pay. I hesitate to endorse other hosting companies without having used them myself, but I have students and trusted friends who have used all of the following companies with success:

FTP Clients

HTML/CSS Editors

Static HTML/CSS Templates

WordPress Resources

Quinn’s Favorite WordPress Tools

Easy-to-Customize Themes

Helpful Plugins for Portfolio Sites

  • Jetpack (a collection of plugins that enables many of the features available on WordPress.com)
  • Akismet (greatly reduces “comment spam”)
  • Contact Form 7 (creates custom forms that let visitors send you email through your site)
  • Google Analytics (adds tracking code to each page to monitor visits to your site)
  • Google Doc Embedder (allows you to display MS Word, PDF, and lots of other file types inside your site)
  • NextGEN Gallery (simplifies the creation, management, and display of images, especially groups of images)
  • PHPEnkoder (protects your email address from being harvested by spambots)
  • Twitter Widget Pro (displays your tweets on your site)
  • My Custom CSS (allows you to create custom CSS rules that override your theme’s CSS without modifying the theme’s files)
  • Widget Context (lets you specify which pages display particular sidebar widgets)
  • SimplePie (allows you to import, adjust, and display almost any RSS feed)