Pressfolios Blog

New to Pressfolios? Here’s a full rundown of our guides and walkthroughs (with screenshots). As always, if you ever need a hand, we’re here to help at [email protected]

Getting Started Guides:

Pressfolios Story Archiving Tips

Pressfolios Chrome Extension - Add Stories to Your Pressfolio On The Fly

Setting up a custom domain name with Pressfolios

Uploading PDFs: A Step by Step Guide

Editing Images in Pressfolios

Story Backup with Pressfolios

RSS Integrations: Bulk Story Upload and Automatic Importing

How your account dashboard works [video]

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:

FAQ: How can I improve my Pressfolio’s SEO?

FAQ: How do I add a story to my Pressfolio?

FAQ: I’ve tried to add a story but the URL doesn’t seem to be working - what should I do?

FAQ: Can I upload PDFs to my Pressfolio?

FAQ: How can I use Pressfolios if my stories are behind a paywall?

FAQ: What are Sections and how do they work?

FAQ: Can I host my Pressfolio on a custom domain?

FAQ: I already have portfolios on other sites (and they’re free). Why should I use Pressfolios?

FAQ: Why use Pressfolios over WordPress and other website builders?

FAQ: Does Pressfolios work for multimedia journalists?

FAQ: I’ve reached my story limit - now what?

We received word yesterday afternoon that a round of layoffs has taken place at Time Inc. In light of this unfortunate news, we have decided to make Pressfolios Pro subscriptions available to all those affected for free.

Pressfolios helps journalists backup their articles and build a better online portfolio - http://pressfolios.com.

With emails coming in daily from new Pressfolios users looking for design inspiration, we've decided to compile a collection of our favorites. Enjoy!

Lawrence Lanahan:

http://lawrencelanahan.pressfolios.com

Katarina Kovacevic:

http://katarinakovacevic.pressfolios.com

Marga Gual Soler:

http://margagual.pressfolios.com

Pressfolios Getting Started Guide: A quick overview of your account dashboard and settings. (Additional video walkthroughs to follow.)

This morning we received word that a round of layoffs will be taking place today at SpinMedia. In light of this unfortunate news, we have decided to make Pressfolios available to all those affected for free.

Pressfolios helps journalists backup their articles and build a better online portfolio - http://pressfolios.com.

If you are a SpinMedia staffer headed onto the open market, you can send us an email at [email protected] and we will get you set up with access to a full-featured Pressfolios Pro account with unlimited storage at no cost for three months.

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Need more storage space for your Pressfolio? You’re in luck. We’ve just released a simple new feature that earns you extra space just for helping people discover Pressfolios.

Here’s how it works:

Right this very moment, sitting atop your account dashboard is a brand new custom invite link.

Copy your invite link and share it with friends, colleagues and acquaintances via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn - you name it.

Every time someone clicks your invite link and signs up for a free Pressfolio, you both get +5 stories worth of extra space added to your Pressfolios.

The best part: There’s no limit to the number of stories you can earn. If 100 people discover Pressfolios thanks to your special invite link, that’s +500 stories added to your account in no time flat.

"But I thought you already did that.. right?"

Well.. Yes, and no. It's true we've always had a referral system to help you to earn bonus space by inviting friends. In the old system, however, you could only send invites by email. 

Since the debut of Pressfolios Pro, many of you have emailed asking for more pricing options - specifically, a plan without all the bells and whistles, just a bit more storage space.

When the crowd speaks, it’s a good idea to listen. So, without further ado: Meet Pressfolios Lite - our new lightweight plan at a lightweight price.

Priced at $7.49/mo, upgrading to the Pressfolios Lite plan unlocks the following features:

Add up to 250 stories

Upload PDFs of offline clips

Full-text backups for every story

Access to the Pressfolios web clipper

Ready for a professional Pressfolio, but don’t need all the premium features? Then Pressfolios Lite is the plan for you >>

With the launch of our newest plan, you now have three options for building your Pressfolio:

Free: $0.00/mo With the Free plan you can try out the Pressfolios platform and build a basic portfolio highlighting your best stories.

Lite: $7.49/mo Our newest plan, Lite gives you enough room to build out a full portfolio and personal repository, highlighting and archiving stories in all of the different areas you've written about.

Pro: $11.99/mo Pressfolios Pro is designed for today’s professional journalist, giving you a full suite of tools for taking control of your published work and professional identity. Pro users have access to unlimited storage space; full-text and full-page backups for every story; RSS automations for uploading past articles in bulk and auto-importing new ones as they publish; the ability to connect your Pressfolio to a custom domain name (www.yourname.com); and additional privacy settings.

For a side-by-side comparison of how Lite stacks up to our Free and Pro plans, click here: View Pressfolios Lite >>

Best,

Today we received word that a round of layoffs have taken place at The Salt Lake Tribune. In light of this unfortunate news, we have decided to make Pressfolios available to all those affected for free.

Pressfolios helps journalists backup their published articles and build a better online portfolio - http://pressfolios.com.

Pressfolios is the easiest way for journalists and writers to backup their published stories and build a better online portfolio. Designed for today’s digital journalist, Pressfolios functions as a personal repository, a cloud backup service and a website builder all wrapped into one.

While there are many tools out there for building websites and online portfolios, Pressfolios is winning over the journalism community because our platform is designed to meet the specific needs of those plying the journalistic trade.

Story Backup

Every time you add a story to Pressfolios, we automatically create a full backup for you and keep it safely stored on our servers in case any of your links ever expire.

Do any other website builders like WordPress or Wix, provide backups for every story? Nope. How about other journalism-specific services like MuckRack or Contently? Negative.

Intelligent Archive

Pressfolios doesn’t just help you build a nice website to showcase your professional identity and published work, it gives you an intelligent personal repository for collecting all of your articles into one central location so you can keep track of those stories over time.

Need to find the name of a source from a story you wrote two years ago? If it's in your Pressfolio, no problem: Just login and search any terms you can remember from the story and we'll pull it up for you in no time flat.

We have received word that AOL will soon close up to 300 Patch sites, with upwards of 500 layoffs expected Friday. In light of this unfortunate news, we have decided to make Pressfolios Pro available to all those affected for free.

Pressfolios helps journalists backup their published articles and build a better online portfolio - http://pressfolios.com. For Patch editors and staffers, this means you can save a complete archive of your work before it is taken offline.

If you are a Patch.com editor or staffer headed onto the open market, send us an email at [email protected] and we will get you set up with access to a full-featured Pressfolios Pro account with unlimited storage at no cost for three months.

Here to help,

So you’ve created a Pressfolio to take control of your published work and professional identity, and now you want to make sure everything is optimized to keep your best foot forward when Googled. Great! Let’s talk about best practices.

First off, let’s clear something up: Despite what some may say, there is no deep dark secret to SEO - at least not anymore. The search algorithms employed by Google, Bing and Yahoo! are so sophisticated that trying to game them with cheap tricks simply doesn’t work - not even a little. 

That’s not to say you can’t help search engines do their job (indexing your Pressfolio amongst the internet of things) it’s just that you can’t cheat your way to the top of search results. 

With that said, here’s what you can do to optimize your Pressfolio for search engines:

1. Use your full name for the URL

Sounds simple, but it’s often overlooked. Assuming you want people searching your name to find your Pressfolio, setting your Pressfolios URL to those same keywords - ie. http://johndoe.pressfolios.com - is the most basic action you can take to ensure search engines index your site properly. 

2. Fill out your entire profile

It goes without saying that search engines are intelligent nowadays. Part of what makes them so effective at delivering relevant results to search queries is their ability to understand context.

Four months ago, we relaunched a completely reimagined Pressfolios into private beta. Today, we’re thrilled to pull back the curtain on an expanded and even more powerful version of our application: Pressfolios Pro.

Here’s a look inside Pressfolios at its finest: 

Unlimited Stories:

Pressfolios Pro gives you free reign to add as many stories to your Pressfolio as humanly possible. To help you keep track of your stories without breaking a sweat, we’ve invested considerable thought and energy into building an intelligent and intuitive content management system designed specifically for journalists. 

Here are some tips for keeping everything organized >>

RSS Integration For Bulk Story Uploading & Auto-Importing:

With today’s release of Pressfolios Pro, we’re ratcheting up automation with a new RSS integration for bulk story uploading and auto-importing. This means you can easily capture past stories you’ve written in just a few clicks and then import new stories as they publish without so much as lifting a finger. 

Setting up your RSS integrations >>

Chrome Extension:

Available to all Pressfolios users, our new Chrome Extension allows you to add add stories directly to your Pressfolio right from inside the browser. Simply view an article on the web using Google Chrome, click the P+ button and voila! 

Guide to installing the Pressfolios Chrome Extension  >>

Private Pressfolio:

Ask and you shall receive: By popular demand, you now have the option to password protect your Pressfolio. 

Custom Domains:

Have your own plot of real estate on the web? As a Pro user, you can set your Pressfolio to appear at your very own custom domain (www.yourname.com) or subdomain (www.articles.yourname.com). 

Here’s a detailed walkthrough of mapping a custom domain to Pressfolios >>

  Expanded Story Backup:

As a Pressfolios Pro user, every time a story is added to your Pressfolio, we automatically backup two full-text versions of the article for you. One is a screenshot-style PDF of the complete webpage/s; the other is a text-based, Instapaper/Pocket-style backup (also in PDF format). 

More on Pressfolios' story backup can be found here >>

    Ready to Go Pro? Here’s how: http://pressfolios.com/pro

  As always, if you ever have any questions, or even just want to say hello, you can reach us at [email protected] anytime. For guides and FAQs designed to flatten any learning curves you may encounter, take a look through our posts tagged under #HowPressfoliosWorks. 

Best, 

Pressfolios provides an easy way to keep track of your published stories and backup your work, all from one central location that you have full control over. With today’s release of Pressfolios Pro, we’re ratcheting up automation with new RSS integrations for bulk story uploading and auto-importing.

Here’s how the new features work:

RSS Feed Follower

Set Pressfolios to follow your RSS feed/s and automatically import stories right as they publish:

Step 1: Log into your account dashboard and click the “Follow RSS Feeds” button

Step 2: Enter your RSS feed link/s and click “Add Feed”

Volia! From here on out, every time an article is published to one of your RSS feeds, we’ll immediately add it to your Pressfolio for you. If you write for more than one publication and have multiple RSS feeds, no problem - you’re a Pro user - add as many RSS feeds as you like!

In older versions of Pressfolios, adding stories to your site meant navigating to http://pressfolios.com, logging into your account, then copying and pasting links individually. 

With our new Chrome Extension, you can now add stories directly to your Pressfolio right from inside your browser. 

Here’s how the newly released Pressfolios Chrome Extension works and how to set it up:

  Step 1: Browsing in Google Chrome, log into your Pressfolios account, click the “Account” tab on your dashboard and scroll down. 

If you don’t already have Google Chrome installed, here’s a link: http://google.com/chrome. We highly recommend it for browsing the web.

  Step 2: Install the Pressfolios Chrome Extension

Click here for the Pressfolios in the Chrome Web Store 

Now that you’ve upgraded to Pressfolios Pro, you have free reign to add as many stories to your Pressfolio as humanly possible. Here are some tips for keeping track of your work as your personal repository expands: 

Use the RSS Bulk Uploader and Auto-Importing features As a Pressfolios Pro user, you have unlimited storage space. Why not set your account to automatically import your stories right as they publish? Here’s how >> 

Make use of Section labels Adding Section labels to stories makes them easier to manage. This becomes increasingly useful as you accumulate more and more stories in your Pressfolio. Here’s our guide to using Section Labels >>

Add story-published dates if none are provided When you add a story to your Pressfolio, we automatically grab as much information about the link provided as your publisher allows. Publish dates can be difficult to capture at times, as many publishers format this metadata in different ways. That said, as stories are added to your Pressfolio, add the date if it hasn’t already been generated.

Sort your Stories Table by clicking the column headers Here’s a quick trick: On your Stories Dashboard, you can click the table headers to rearrange the order in which your articles are displayed. While not a permanent rearrangement of the stories table, it can help with locating articles on the fly. 

Use the search bar The search bar located on your Stories Dashboard allows you to query all of your stories and all of the content within them. Need to find the name of source from story you wrote two years ago? No problem. We’ve built the Pressfolios so that you can filter, sort and search through your entire body of work without breaking a sweat. 

For stories that are no longer online, we make it easy to upload PDF clippings to display on your Pressfolio. Here’s how: 

Step 1: Log into your Pressfolios Stories Dashboard and click “Upload Manually”

  Step 2: Click the “Choose a file” button and select the PDF clipping from your computer.

As a Pressfolios Pro user, every time a story is added to your Pressfolio, we automatically backup two full-text versions of the article for you. One is a screenshot-style PDF of the complete webpage/s; the other is a text-based, Instapaper/Pocket-style backup (also in PDF format).

Here’s how they both appear:

Screenshot-style Backup (Pro Feature)

From your account dashboard:

Once downloaded:

*Image cropped to fit within this post

For this version of your story backup, we clip a full screenshot-styled PDF of the article with all page elements included. If your article runs across multiple pages, fear not: We’ve designed our system to capture the additional pages as well and compile the entire story into a clean PDF for you, as shown above.