Getting Started on Creating an ePortfolio – MyUVic Life

1. Explore

Go out and stalk explore other students’ websites for inspiration. You can either Google keywords or use GitHub to find other students’ websites.

There are also some sample ePortfolios made by UVic students that you can check out.

2. Website Builder/WordPress vs. HTML/CSS/JavaScript

My site with HTML

My site with HTML and CSS

Need something quick? Use a website builder.

Have the time and want to learn a new skill? Try HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

If you’re reading this and understood any of the acronyms for the second choice, you should probably be using them to create your website.

But in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript are the main three languages used to create websites. I mentioned them in order of importance. Essentially, HTML describes the structure of a site, CSS gives it style (so it doesn’t look like it’s from the 90s), and JavaScript provides the site with some interactivity.

3. Hosting the Site

There are many different tools to do this, but these are the ones that I have used in the past and would recommend. The first is a website builder, and the last two are for those of you who want to create the front-end of the website from scratch.

a. Online Academic Community (OAC)

Or just WordPress. It’s used to host many great UVic blogs just like this one and requires absolutely no coding-esque skills!

b. UVic’s Web Hosting

Did you know that UVic offers a web hosting service for students? UVic students can sign up for one online, and it has up to 1GB of storage.

The URL for your website would be https://studentweb.uvic.ca/~YourNetLinkIDHere.

And University Systems even has a how-to for accessing your web space.

c. GitHub Pages

This would require a GitHub account to upload HTML. It has the advantage of not needing to install a Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client (e.g. Cyberduck) like UVic’s Web Hosting requires.

An honourable mention – Wix, another website builder. Personally, I’ve never used Wix but Annika, a fellow blogger, used it to create her personal site around a month ago for a final assignment.