Your digital portfolio is a reflection of you. It’s what you know, what you’re passionate about, how you interpret content and concepts. This handy checklist will guide the development of your portfolio to help make sure all your interests or skills are presented beautifully.

◻️ Embed a video. If a picture says 1,000 words, imagine how many a video can say. In fact, researchers predict that by 2021, 81 percent of all internet traffic will be video. Soon (if not already) students will be learning from moving pictures more than anything else.

◻️ Insert an audio file. These are especially effective on About Me pages, to give your class a more personable introduction to who you are and what you’re about. They are also great for projects requiring interviews and podcasts.

◻️ Bundle pictures into an image carousel. If you have several pictures from a single project (let’s say different angles of the same art piece or process photos from a group project), think about packaging them all into an image carousel to avoid long, scrolling pages and to create cognitive harmony between similar images.

◻️ Add captions. Give descriptive captions to every video and image (even if part of a carousel) to give more information. This is also helpful if a video or image won’t load on someone’s device — the descriptive text will still give them clues to what the media asset was all about.

◻️ Hyperlink to relevant URLs. Hyperlinking is an organic, non-disruptive way of showing the source of information or giving your teachers/students/readers the option to dig further into a tangential topic they discovered on your bulb page. Did you know you can even hyperlink text in the caption of an image or video?

◻️ Link to other web pages. If you are trying to refer to another page within bulb — whether a profile page, a collection or a bulb page — or out in the world wide web, don’t just hyperlink it, but use the blue URL button to embed it directly onto your own page. This gives links a visual appeal and can help break up large chunks of text.

◻️ Attach documents readers need to download. If you’re publishing an assignment page with a worksheet, or some sort of document you expect your readers to fill out themselves, attach it using the blue FILE attachment button. This allows them to simply click and download.

◻️ Include content created elsewhere directly in your portfolio. Let’s say you created a Google Form for a poll or a Prezi presentation for a class project — rather than hyperlink out from bulb to another website, keep readers right on your bulb page by embedding the content directly. Using the URL button, you can embed an interactive, on-page viewer of whatever content you wish from a variety of outside websites. Did you know you can include content from more than 300 websites directly on your bulb page?  

◻️ Use a great variety of text styling options. Take advantage of the organizational power of headings. Break your text up into digestible chunks, using the default, H2 and H3 headings to give your information hierarchy. This draws the eye down the page in a meaningful way, seeking helpful information and cutting through any noise.

• Use bullet points for any lists.
• Use numbers for lists of chronological information.
• Bold important words and sentences.
• Use different text colors to communicate visually.
• Give your page some personal flair by choosing from a variety of fonts.

◻️ Give your collections and pages descriptive, apt titles. This is the first bundle of information that tells readers what they’re looking for. Be intentional naming and organizing your collections, making sure readers know what they’re looking for with very descriptive bulb page titles.

◻️ Write a summary. In the PUBLISH panel, there is a summary field — fill this out with a sentence or two describing what readers will find on that particular bulb page. The description is another opportunity to express the content of your page to readers, so they know what they’re getting into before even clicking on the page.

◻️ Bundle up your content into digestible “atoms.” Breaking large chunks of text up with media assets allows readers to move down your page naturally, seeking out the information they need and skipping over what they don’t.

◻️ Craft a narrative arc. Your bulb page should tell a story! And just like any good book, there’s a lot of pre-planning and organization that goes into it. Before getting started, brainstorm. Make connections. Map your ideas. Check out bulb’s process page about planning excellent content.

◻️ Refine, refine, refine. Like most great stories, the best bulb pages have gone through many iterations as the author refines, edits and tweaks his or her work. That’s why you can be creating your page in draft mode, going back to edit often and then eventually publishing the polished product when you decide it’s ready.

Do you have something to add to this list or a pro tip you’ve found you want to share? Let us know. Send us an email: info at bulbapp.com.