Writing.Com 101

Biography Tab

The Biography tab in your portfolio is a place where you can tell your visitors a little about yourself. Its three sections are Biography, Recommended Items, and New and Updated Items.

Biography
The Biography section of your portfolio displays at the top of the page and contains biographical and personal information, such as you might display on a social networking site. You can personalize your portfolio by adding a picture and filling out the optional demographic information you would like to share.

To set "Access Restrictions"  and enter biographical information, click the gear icon at the top right hand corner of the tab to open the Manage area.

Add a Cover: The picture should be E-rated (see "Content Rating System (CRS)" ). The image file types you can upload are limited to JPEG, GIF, and PNG. Animated images are not permitted. For additional information and directions on adding a cover to the Biography tab, or changing an existing cover, see "Covers" .

Enter Demographics: Entering demographic information is completely optional and includes the following sections:

  Gender
  Birthday
          If set, on that day a notification about your birthday will be sent to any other members who have Favorited or Fanned you.
  Location
  About Me
  Type of Writer
  Writing Style
  Interests
  Website/Homepage
  My Blog
          This is for an offsite blog. Your Writing.Com blog has its own tab in your portfolio.
  Group Memberships
  Favorite Link
          Enter the full link to make it clickable. For example: https://www.writing.com
  Favorite Genres
  Favorite Books
  Favorite Authors
  Favorite Poets
  Favorite Quote
  Favorite Music
  Favorite Movies
  Favorite Shows

If no text is entered in a text box, the title of that demographic section will not show in your Biography tab. For example, if you choose to leave Location blank, the Location section will not appear in your Biography tab.

When typing into a text box, the character counter at the top right of the text box shows how many characters you have used out of the available character count for that text box. Going over the character allowance for any text box will result in an error when you attempt to save your Biography. If this happens, you must correct the error indicated in the error message and then click on the Submit Biography button again to save the content.

Recommended Items
Recommended Items are items from your portfolio or another member's portfolio that you want to showcase to your portfolio visitors. Up to five of these items are displayed in tile format in the middle area of the page.

These items can be added or changed by clicking on the gear icon at the right end of the section title to open the Manage areas of the tiles. You can enter an item ID, delete an existing item ID, and adjust the placement of the item covers. To change an item ID, first delete the old item ID, and then add the new one. After entering an item ID, click the Enter key on your keyboard to update the tile. A green check mark will appear at the right of the item ID text box to indicate a successful update operation, and the tile will display the item's information. Error messages will appear above the item ID text box. Correct the error and click the Enter key again to save the changes. Click the gear icon again to close the Manage areas of the tiles. Unused tiles are not displayed when the Manage area is closed.

New and Updated Items
Your New and Updated Items section occupies the bottom of the page and displays your five most recently created or modified items which the viewer has normal access to, and which are within the viewer's content rating filter setting. Items set to an NPL content rating (Not Publicly Listed), or set to Group-Only or Passkeyed access are not included. Clicking the Show More button under the New and Updated Items list adds the next five such items to the list. This section is system generated and cannot be edited.1

Recommended Reading

1. Access Restrictions
2. Content Rating System (CRS)
3. Overview of Your Portfolio
4. Covers

Footnotes
1  Updated by northernwrites; written by Diane