This week: Portfolio Space Edited by: Jeff More Newsletters By This Editor
1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions
"You never know what you can do until you try,
and very few try unless they have to."
-- C.S. Lewis
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of your regular editors for the Noticing Newbies Official Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 350 newsletters across the site during that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or the handy feedback field at the bottom of this newsletter!
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Portfolio Space
In my last newsletter, I went over some of the lesser-known features that can be found in our portfolios, such as stats & info, transferring items, edit logs, exporting your portfolio, and others. That newsletter can be found here: "Noticing Newbies Newsletter (November 16, 2022)" . This week, I want to continue to focus on our Writing.com portfolios and explore some of the options related to managing our portfolio space. If you're not familiar with how much space you have to work with in your portfolio, here's a handy guide:
Free Account - 10 items
Basic Membership - 50 items
Upgraded Membership - 250 items
Premium Membership - 1,000 items
Premium Plus Membership - 2,000 items
If you have a Free Account or Basic Membership, that space can get filled up quickly. Especially if you write a lot of material. Even with an Upgraded Membership, those 250 items can go quickly. Particularly if you write a lot of different types of material and organize your portfolio with folders, because each folder in your portfolio also counts toward your item total.
So what do you do when you're running out of space in your portfolio? Well, the good news is that there are a handful of options available to you. The easiest and most obvious two are:
Upgrade Your Membership. You always have the option of moving up to the next membership level to create additional space in your port. A Premium Membership is the level the site recommends to "get the most" out of your membership here and, as someone who has maintained a Premium or higher membership for over a decade, I can tell you that it took years of regular activity before I even came close to hitting the 1,000 item limit, and that includes leaving all of my old activities and writing in my port. Many members also choose to run fundraisers to help pay for their memberships every year.
Delete Items. If upgrading your membership to the next level isn't an option (and in fairness, jumping from a $50/year Upgraded Membership to a $140/year Premium Membership is a big leap), you can always delete items from your port that you no longer need. I'd start by focusing on old items that you're no longer working on, whether that be stories and poems you feel have run their course, or defunct activities that you no longer operate. Over the years, you'll be surprised at how many old contest entries, fundraisers, etc. can build up! CAVEAT: Keep in mind that if you delete an item, it will also delete all of the related materials: any reviews, ratings, awardicons, etc. So be sure you really want to delete it! Also, don't forget that in my last newsletter I went over how to export items from your portfolio so you can save them offsite if necessary!
But what if you can't afford a membership upgrade and don't want to delete anything? Well, there's still a few options available to you if space in your portfolio is at a premium:
Delete Folders. As mentioned above, folder items count toward your portfolio item total. Are there any portfolio folders you can consolidate and delete? If you have separate folders for each genre you write, can you combine or eliminate them? Maybe those "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy" folders can become "Sci-Fi & Fantasy" and save you a folder. Or better yet, maybe you can consolidate all your genre folders into a general "Short Stories" or "Poetry" folder!
Consolidate Static Items Into A Book. If you have an Upgraded Membership or higher, you have the ability to create Book items, which can store a number of entries. Many people use a book item as their blog, and some multi-entry contests even require all entries to be stored in a book item rather than as separate static items. You can use that same strategy to save portfolio space by copying and pasting individual static items into entries in a book item. For example, if you routinely enter daily flash fiction or poetry contests, you could create an "archive" of your old items as entries in a book, allowing you to delete the original static items and free up all that space for newly-written static items.
Consolidate Static Items Into A Static Item. Even if you don't have an Upgraded membership or higher, the same concept of consolidating static items can be applied to static items themselves. Instead of a different static item for each poem you write, why not have a single static item with multiple old poems that you want to showcase? Each membership level provides for a different maximum static size limit. They are:
Free Account - 50 KB per item
Basic Membership - 100 KB per item
Upgraded Membership - 250 KB per item
Premium Membership - 500 KB per item
Premium Plus Membership - 750 KB per item
A 2,000-word short story is approximately 10-12 KB give or take. A 20-ish line poem is somewhere in the vicinity of 1-2 KB. That means even Free Accounts could store around five short stories or as many as 25-50 poems per static item. A Basic Membership would double the number of items you could store in each static item. Just like with a book item, you could create an "archive" static item that contains old contest entries, or works that you're not looking for feedback on anymore, which will help you conserve space and dedicate standalone static items to new content.
Over the years, I've heard a lot of members complaining about the limitations on the size of their ports. And I get it; ten items isn't a lot for Free Accounts to work with. Heck, the fifty items that come with a Basic Membership isn't a lot if you're particularly active on the site. But the site's business model is based on paid memberships, so it makes sense that you're encouraged to upgrade to a more expensive membership in order to get additional benefits (including portfolio space). But hopefully this editorial has shown that, even in cases where you can't afford to upgrade, there are still plenty of options to help maintain your work here in the community, even when you are limited on the amount of space in your port. With a little creative organizing, you can store a surprising amount of content in your portfolio, even one that's connected to a no-cost Free Account or low-cost Basic Membership.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"New & Noteworthy Things" | "Blogocentric Formulations" |
This month's official Writing.com writing contest is:
I also encourage you to check out the following items:
EXCERPT: Linus’s head hit the back of his chair and he jolted upright, abruptly waking from his slumber. His teacher stared at him with a cross expression.
“Linus, can you answer the question on the board?”
Linus stared at the blackboard for a minute. Calculus. Not his strong suit. “Dunno,” he stated flatly, shrugging his shoulders and subtly shaking his head.
“See me after class.” The teacher continued with her lecture.
EXCERPT: The warmth of my empty apartment accentuated the loneliness and loss. My frozen insides balked at the heat rising from the vents.
Puff balls of snow fell from the sky. Through the window-glass they looked so pretty and light. Like a haze of dandelion fluff. It would be pleasant to be outside. Especially compared to the razorblades of warmth burrowing into my skin.
EXCERPT: I had just buckled up as the woman and I were getting ready to go on a trip. As I sat there I was wondering when do kids stop being treated like infants? The woman who sat next to me now handed me a book bag she had bought for me especially for this trip. Don’t get me wrong, telutubbies and rainbows on pink background are cute and okay for some. But for me, I liked flowers and butterflies on a blue background. These must be the standard colors for girls. So I assume the blue was for boys. Lucky buggers.
| | Aflame [13+] #2286425 A figure cowers in the dark of night, while another cozys by the fire, what will happen? by Bottle O’ Nyquil |
EXCERPT: A little more than 10 feet away, lies a fire, large and cozy. Near cozy's a small shadow, hidden by the casting shadows of the warm fire, a blanket of snow lays across the seen land, all white with freckles of glowing embers. They grumble at the raging war between the cold and heat, battling it out, to see which succeeds and overtakes.
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