I’ve been using a website called Scribophile for about ten months. The site allows one to post one’s writing to a shared web space where many other writers will, in return for critiques of their work, give their impressions of your work. It’s a wonderful website. Recently I upgraded to their premium membership which is well worth it.
This week they released a sister-site called Scribblefolio which allows authors (or potential authors) to post a professional looking web based writer’s portfolio. It’s a very nice site. The new site offers free and premium accounts both of which are very easy to understand and manage. My new portfolio site is here.
The setup process could not be more simple. Enter your email address and your password and you’re nearly complete. When you first access the site it will ask you four or five questions about your expertise, your area of interest, etc. You may also upload an image of yourself (a couple of months ago I dug through a lot of old pictures in a vain attempt to find one that didn’t have me looking like a dork – tough task – found the best one I could find – don’t judge.)
After uploading your image and entering these few preliminaries you may upload up to two pieces of sample writing (for the free account – an unlimited number of samples for the premium account). This is a very simple process of cut and paste from your Word documents. In the premium version you may upload files directly and all the formatting is preserved. The distinction between the free and premium versions of the site are made very obvious. All the premium features are disabled but still present in the free version making it very easy to see what you would get if you upgraded your account.
To complete your portfolio one chooses a theme and selects a title and copyright notice and you’re done. The entire process literally took me five minutes. This is one of the easiest to use and clearest websites I’ve seen. It’s very well done.
Of course, with the ease of use comes some limitations. For example I’m not sure why they think it appropriate to ask for an area of expertise. I am a general creative writer. My area of expertise is being alive and noticing things around me so I can write about them. Some people might call me a generalist, others – like my wife – a dilettante. Additionally, they do not handle poetry very well. In particular it is impossible to specify a stanza break which makes posting poetry to the site difficult. Besides these shortcomings, the site in whole is very well done.
As I’ve said – I’ve been using Scribophile (the sister site) for a long time. I find that site to be extremely well done. There are some bugs there but they seem to be taken care of as quickly as possible. I have every expectation that this new site (scribblefolio) will be just as good.