If you recall the minimalist fundamentals of eportfolios the ePortfolio can and should be simple to understand and, more importantly, simple to create and maintain. There are really only 3 steps to creating and maintaining an eportfolio/blog:
It has never been easier to create an ePortfolio/blog and there have never been so many choices in ePortfolio/blogging tools or platforms. You don’t need to take a course or workshop to get your ePortfolio started. If you have a Google account you have access to Google Sites which is the simplest way to create an ePortfolio and if you are interested in only putting in a minimal amount of effort to share your work and ideas a Google Sites ePortfolio will do. By selecting the Portfolio template in Google Sites you can have a rudimentary ePortfolio up and running in a few clicks. Figuring out how to change your Google Sites template or how to move beyond the basic functions is just a YouTube search away. While doing the minimum to get by is an adequate starting point we encourage you to go beyond the minimum and explore more flexible and adaptable options.
Ironically these are the two factors when combined improperly can limit the persistence of ePortfolio use beyond a student’s course of studies. Let me save you the hassle of making the wrong choice.
If I were to start my ePortfolio/blog from scratch today I would use self-hosted WordPress on a hosting service like Bluehost. This is exactly what I have been using since 2006. The only regret I have was that from 2006-2009 I posted on a WordPress site for a college I worked at rather than my own domain and when I left that college I left three years of posts behind. Don’t make this same mistake–post your work on a site your own. You can always cross-post to another site.
WordPress is easy enough to use that you don’t need to know a line of HTML or other code but also powerful enough to run some of the largest sites on the Internet. According to W3Techs Web Technology Surveys & Build with CMS Trends
WordPress is used by 28% of all the websites, that is a content management system market share of 63%.
The cost for a self-hosted WordPress site on Bluehost is as low as $4 per month and there are special deals for college/university students and faculty.
WordPress is the platform used in the University of Mary Washington’s Domain of One’s Own. The Domain of One’s Own has spread to over twenty additional universities. WordPress has also been used at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Eportfolio program since 2006. Many institutions have copied and implemented UBC’s ePortfolio model.
If your school or organization offers an internal solution this may be a good place to start but unless they have a very specific path for moving your ePortfolio to your own self-hosted site I would encourage you to create your own site and forgo the hassle of having to move your ePortfolio at a later date. I am a sophisticated technology user and lost over three years of weekly posts by not using my own site.
You may be tempted to ask:
But isn’t WordPress.com free and since it is WordPress isn’t this a good way to get started on my ePortfolio/blog? Yes, WordPress.com is free but you will be very limited in the themes you can use, the plugins, and many other functions. More importantly, it isn’t your domain – you don’t own it… You are only renting. My colleagues and I at Lamar University are currently conducting an extended research project to see what factors contribute to the continued use or the lack of use of an ePortfolio beyond a program of study. One of our hypotheses is that people who don’t own their own domain/ePortfolio do not persist in maintaining the ePortfolio. You can view the peer-reviewed published results which confirm that ownership of the ePortfolio is one of the primary factors that contribute to persistence in ePortfolio use in the article Factors that contribute to ePortfolio persistence. We are currently replicating the study in several other institutions and have follow-up research that you can view on my Research page.
Since you want to continue using your ePortfolio/blog it is best to start it on a platform that is powerful enough and gives you enough control to grow your ePortfolio/blog the way you wish to grow it.
But can’t I move my WordPress.com ePortfolio/blog over to a self-hosted WordPress in the future? Yes, you can but it is never as easy moving a site as you hope it will be. I have moved many WordPress sites over the years and I still dread having to do so. Most hosting companies like Bluehost will help you move your WordPress.com site but it will cost. So the money you save on WordPress.com will be spent on moving it to your self-hosted WordPress site. Start with the self-hosted site at the beginning, limit your problems, and plan for the future.
But aren’t sites like Blogger, Square, Weebly or Wix much easier to use? Most of these sites do suggest that they are simpler to use than a self-hosted WordPress site but when you use a hosting company like Bluehost you get 24 by 7 phone and chat support, great video tutorials, and a system that is very reliable and just works. You do have many more options with a self-hosted Bluehost domain but you will want to use those options as your needs expand. For example, I have many different sites/domains that reside within my main Bluehost account. Furthermore, I have experimented with most other sites and keep on coming back to WordPress.
There are many other reasons why it is best to start with the self-hosted WordPress site so rather than just take my word for it have a look at:
What to include in my ePortfolio/blog:
Since it will be your ePortfolio/blog you can include anything you want. I have had a website or ePortfolio or blog up since the mid ’90s and I suggest you consider the following sections to your site:
- About/Bio
- Main Interest (on my blog you will see Learning, Courses, CSLE, Eportfolio, Booklist etc.)
- Projects
- Categories
- Archives
- Links
- Social Media connections
- Contact
If you recall my minimalist definition of an ePortfolio being a learner’s digital evidence of meaningful connections then you need to include what is meaningful to you. As your ePortfolio/blog grows you will have to expand and reorganize your site as necessary.
For example, I have been using my current ePortfolio/website since 2010 and have thousands of posts and hundreds of pages, and the bigger my site gets the more effort I have to put into keeping everything organized. Fortunately, my self-hosted WordPress site has enabled me to continually expand, reorganize, and improve my site over the past 10 years and I have plans to keep on developing and expanding my ePortfolio/website for many years to come.
Contribute to your ePortfolio/blog regularly
If you want to contribute to your ePortfolio/blog on a regular basis you need to accept the fact that it will never be finished! The reason I can say this is that I believe that I will never stop learning so I will always have something new to include in my ePortfolio. This idea is also important because once you accept the fact that your posts will never be perfect you can publish your work more quickly and over the years see how much you have grown.
While there are some people who are able to commit to a grandiose plan of posting 500 or 1000 words daily I have learned that I am not able to do this. I just don’t have the time or willpower to maintain this. Furthermore, the research into willpower, habits, and goal setting has revealed that we have limited willpower and if you rely on this willpower to meet huge goals you will more than likely fail (watch for more details on this in future posts).
It may be better to set a very small goal or mini-habit of writing 50-100 words a day on your ePortfolio/blog. You don’t have to publish 50-100 words a day, just commit to the simple task of writing 50-199 words on your blog. You can save your posts in draft mode until you have enough to make a full post. You will find that you will often write much more than 50-100 words and will be able to post more often. Just commit to 50-100 words to build the habit of writing on your ePortfolio/blog daily and within 18-66 days (the average range of time it takes to establish a habit) you will establish this habit.
Or, commit to posting once a week and slowly build up your ideas in draft mode, and then when you have accumulated enough make the post. I also like to post links to videos, articles, and other resources that are important to me and my audience.
When you combine this mini-habit with the fact that you will never be finished with your ePortfolio/blog and it will never be perfect, you will find that you will be posting quite regularly.
Remember – since you own your eportfolio/blog and it is your digital evidence of meaningful connections you are simply sharing what you are learning and this is an ongoing process.
ePortfolio
Why: Learning to learn
What: Doing the learning
How: Showing the learning
Who: Owning the learning
ePortfolio Examples
Revised Sept 2023
