Your portfolio is the central source of information about you on MLA Commons. You may have set it up when you joined the site. But did you know there are many details that you can add?

On every Commons page, you’ll see a statement in the upper right corner welcoming you. Click on that link to see your portfolio. It will look something like this:

Your name is the least amount of information you could have on your MLA Commons portfolio. Jennifer Lake, for example, still has the image that the Commons automatically assigned her, and she has not filled in additional details about herself. But you can upload a photo and add details to your portfolio.

Let’s start with changing your portfolio picture, called an “avatar.” When you click on the image assigned to your portfolio, you’ll be given the option to upload a picture:

From here, click Choose File, select the picture you want to upload from your computer, and then click Upload Image. If the picture you’ve uploaded isn’t square, you’ll be asked to crop it:

Drag the corners of the square until you see the cropping you want, then click Crop Image. That’s all you need to do—now you have a picture. If you don’t like the picture or don’t like the way it’s cropped, you can repeat this until you’re happy with it.

Next, you can add information by clicking Edit on the right side of the screen. What you’ll see is this:

Above, you see a number of fields that you can fill out. Since your portfolio page introduces you to MLA Commons users, you may want to at least fill out the Title and Institutional or Other Affiliation fields that appear below your image. Click on any + button to add a new section to your portfolio. You can also rearrange the sections by dragging the striped bar on the left side of the field:

When filling out the field Academic Interests, separate your interests with commas or semicolons and use short phrases of no more than six words. Your interests will automatically be transformed into links in order to help you connect with other users who share them. For example, Jennifer Lake’s academic interests, “French literature, Proust, time,” are likely to connect her with users interested in those three topics, but an interest that states “I am interested in the literary exploration of time among French novelists such as Proust” will not, because the syntax is too specific.

If you have a blog (including one on MLA Commons) or a Web site that you’d like to link to your portfolio, click the + Blog button. Then, type in its URL, starting with the protocol http://. (If you don’t, you will not be able to save the added link and you will be asked to enter a valid URL.)

If you have a Twitter account that you’d like to link to MLA Commons, enter it by clicking + Twitter User Name. Type in your Twitter user name without the @ symbol.

One more thing: underneath all the fields, you’ll see text that says “This field can be seen by: Everyone,” with a Change link (on all but your name). If you’d like personal data to be hidden from some members of MLA Commons, click Change. Here are the options you will see:

By default, everyone can see everything. But you can hide information from everyone but yourself, everyone who is not a contact, or everyone who is not a member of MLA Commons. Click Close when you have the settings as you’d like them.

When you’re done, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. Here’s Jennifer Lake now:

That’s all there is to editing your portfolio. Please send us an e-mail if you have any questions.