As mentioned in the previous section, it's critical that you consider privacy and safety when developing your e-portfolio. The trick is to make your e-portfolio conveniently accessible to the right people (e.g. employers) and inaccessible to those that would use the information to harm or defraud you.
The following steps will help secure your e-portfolio site.
a) Turn off the public listings
From the Settings | Basic tab, change the "Add your Blog to our listings?" setting to "No".
b) Limit comment posting to blog members (people you have invited to your blog)
From the Settings | Comments tab, change the "Who Can Comment?" setting to "Only Members of this Blog".
c) Turn profile sharing off
The last setting to change for improved privacy is the profile sharing. Go to the Dashboard and select Edit Profile. Uncheck the "Share my profile" section.
d) Set Blog Permissions
Now the most important privacy setting... Go to Settings | Permissions and under Blog Readers "Who can view this blog?" select "Only People I Choose". To invite potential employers to view your e-portfolio, you type their email address(es) into the "Invite some people to read your blog".
If you send a cover letter out to an employer prospect, you could mention your e-portfolio and that it is available upon request (they would just need to send you an email and then you would paste their email into the "Invite some people to read your blog" section).
The problem with this approach is that you don't always know the email addresses of the employers you want to invite. Also, employers often don't want to go through the registration confirmation process in order to view your blog.
Employers would prefer if you can just send them a username and password so they can access your e-portfolio directly.
Although Blogger doesn't offer password protection functionality the following is a workaround so you can still have a "generic" username and password so that those that you want to be able to access can conveniently do so.
By creating a generic password and username, you can also register your e-portfolio with this username and password with an e-portfolio directory service (see Step 8) to automate the process of employers requesting to view your e-portfolio. This service is set up so that only those employers that you grant permission will be able to view your e-portfolio. At that point, the employer is automatically provided with the necessary log in information to view your e-portfolio. More later on this in Step 8.
These next steps will focus on creating a generic username and password that you can give potential employers. The first step is to create a new Google Gmail account.
e) Set up a generic username and password for your e-portfolio that you can give potential employers
i) Create a Generic Google Gmail Account
Click here to create a new Gmail account.
You first part of this form looks like this:
For the First name and Last name fields, just type in n/a.
For desired login name, enter a word that is not identified to you (e.g. canucks555)... remember we aren't going to be using this as an email account but as a workaround password solution for your blog
Click on the check availability to see if your selected name has been taken.
Choose a password (again that is not identified to you... just use a random word/number combination... e.g. 4car847)
The second part of the form looks like this:
For security question and answer, pick something that does not identify yourself (e.g. Question: What is the meaning of life. Answer: 42)
Important: Don't list a secondary email address
Select a location (it can be anything)
Type in the Word Verification (sometimes this takes a few tries to get it right!) then click on the "I accept. Create my account button"
Once you have filled in this form and clicked on "I accept. Create my account" you should see the following screen.
Click on "I am ready - show me my account" link in the top right hand corner.
You should now see a screen like this.
You can just click on the "Sign out" link in the top right corner. Now it's time to add this new generic gmail account to your e-portfolio blog permissions list.
ii) Add your "generic" gmail account to your e-portfolio blog permissions list
Now go back to Blogger (log in if necessary) and click on the Settings tab and then the Permissions link (the last one on the right hand side). In the Blog Readers area, click on the "Only these readers" radio button, then in the form, type in the gmail address you just created in step 1 (e.g. canucks555@gmail.com). The screen will look like this:
Click on the orange Invite button (just below the form where you entered the email address).
iii) Confirm this new email permission by logging back into gmail
You will first need to login to the gmail account you created in step 1.
You should see an email waiting in your in-box from Blogger.
Open up this email and click on the invitation link inside the email.
Once you have done this, you can now log out of gmail.
iv) Confirm in Blogger that this new generic account is now listed on your permissions list
When you go back to your Settings | Permissions in Blogger, you should now see that this new generic gmail account you created now has permission to view your e-portfolio.
iv) Give out this generic username and password to potential employers
Now you can give out a generic username and password to potential employers
They will be able to view your e-portfolio right away using the username and password you provide them rather than having to go through the custom invitation and accepting process that you would otherwise need to do.
This is what the potential employer would see when they enter the URL of your e-portfolio in their browser and fill in the generic username and password you gave them:
Now it's time to collect and host the files that you want to be part of your e-portfolio...
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