OK, I am new to this website building thing. I have some experience with wordpress, so I will build my site around that. My question is in regards to adding portfolios. Obviously, I do not want my portfolio to be indexed. Wouldnt this cause my client's content to be considered "not unique." Can I build my site to be indexed by google without having my portfolio indexed? The reason I ask here is because you guys have portfolios on your sites. Do you like my domain name www//writtenstyle//com Thanks
My portfolio in most cases just links to the work on the clients' sites and such. If you've ghostwritten the material, you may not even be allowed to use it in a portfolio, so be sure to check in on the rights you still have (if any) before doing anything. You can use the Robots.txt file to tell Google what to index and what not to index, but I'm not sure how you would do that for a certain area in WP and not the rest of the site. You may want to ask in the robots.txt area of this forum for help. Another option is to take screenshots of the work, and post those instead of the actual text, so the text won't be indexed on your site (again, it depends on your rights though - some clients force you to sign confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements that don't allow you to claim authorship).
If you don't know how to get your way around WP and all the technicalities of backend web development, better post new contents to your site to serve as your samples or part of your portfolio. As jhmattern said, if you have ghostwritten those articles, you're not allowed to post them anywhere, even to your own site. Sometimes, posting them as images in PDF is still prohibited. It only means that if you've agreed to be a ghostwriter, act like a ghost you should
Just for reference, you just disallow your file. Code below for robots.txt file in your root. Notice how php has no trailing slash. WP runs on php. I can't say this is always followed by all the bots but it keeps out most. # Robots.txt file # For domain: http://yourdomain.com/ # All robots will spider the domain User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /db/ Disallow: /config.php Code (markup): Funny, but there are a couple of my portfolio samples that index extremely high. It's actually an odd page title but I have learned a lot about keywords by recognizing how this page catapulted to the top.
Can you add that to single pages of Wordpress though, or would it have to go in the header (meaning you'd need a separate header file created with that in it, on separate page templates for those pages that you don't want indexed)? I assumed the header was where it had to go, but please correct me if I'm wrong. It would be good to know.
I created my site without wordpress, but gave it the look of a blog. I will only use wordpress to post articles. What if I created a members only area where the user had to enter an email address and password to access the portfolio? Then I would build a mailing list as well.
Yes you'd build a mailing list. However, some programs store those in a MYSQL database which you'd have to do something with--like download to a newsletter program. Not being inclined to go to PHP myadmin often, I hate programs that do this as I'm not a MYSQL pro and don't write queries although I can do some very basic things when forced at knife point. Some programs, the ones I like, load it in something that allows you to capture then send newsletters. Actually you save it as robots.txt. So you copy that code, paste it into Notepad and save as robots.txt. Then you upload it. So if you are http://yourdomain.com, the file should be at http://yourdomain.com/robots.txt/ Same with the urllist.txt which is just a list of all your urls in a text file and uploaded. That one is for yahoo. These txt files need no header or body code whatsoever. None. The robots file only has the code you see above unless you add something to disallow which will show up as inaccessible in google sitemaps. But that's fine because that's what you want. JH, I can send you an example if you want. Just shoot me a PM.
You can always sign up for the subdomain wordpress account (yourname.wordpress.com). They give you the option to exclude your blog from search engines. Might be nice to have it solely for a portfolio- and keeping your main website still intact somewhere else.
I just had a total duh moment... of course a .txt file isn't in the header code. *sigh* Thanks for the patience. lol So you can add specific URLs to the robots.txt file to not index, while having the others indexed? shkad14 - I think that would actually be a bad idea. Making people essentially sign up for your mailing list in order to even see your portfolio to consider hiring you just doesn't sound like a good thing... it sounds conniving actually. I know I definitely wouldn't hire someone doing that. Even if you did a member's area without collecting their info for a list, you'd still be subject to the same copyright rules. Even if it's password-protected or not indexed, it doesn't mean you'd automatically be allowed to publish a client piece in your portfolio. That's the real key here... a lot of writers on DP give up all of their rights (including the right to claim authorship and use an article or something in a portfolio), without even realizing it.
That's okay. I've had several duh moments lately. The brain synapses are tired after the holidays. All you did is make me feel better about mine. Yes, you can add sites you DO NOT want indexed. Google usually follows it. Most of the others do, too. When I've looked in google sitemaps, they've excluded these pages. So, for the most part, it works. And jhmattern probably knows more about this specific area. There are some things in which you've sold your rights (unlimited buy out so to speak) to and cannot publish. So I'm reading and learning since I can usually publish mine. Most of the time, 99.9% in my case, I can publish it as a sample. If it's a print ad or a brochure, they'll send me a copy to show to other clients. If it's a website, I can also. But I do have one set of campaigns that I cannot publish or even send by e-mail. It's a shame I can't show this one because this one illustrates a multi media campaign utilizing both print and online capability. But I'm not going to complain.