PLEM Academy · Miscellaneous Lesson 1
How to Use AI to Build a WordPress Portfolio
Create supporting materials, organize your content, and publish your original work through a consistent professional workflow.
Follow Professor Jonathan D. Tullis behind the scenes as he builds the foundation for PLEM Academy. This lesson demonstrates how branding, recorded videos, transcripts, graphics, and WordPress posts come together as an organized lesson library.
Watch the process unfold—from requesting certificate designs and matching covers to creating a podcast post, organizing categories, and planning separate libraries for writing a textbook and building a website.
The central idea: Your knowledge, explanations, and original projects supply the substance. AI can help prepare the graphics, layouts, and supporting text used to present that work.
Build a Workflow You Can Repeat
A portfolio becomes easier to maintain when every piece of content has a clear place. In this walkthrough, Professor Tullis demonstrates completing the publishing steps around each video rather than allowing unfinished uploads and posts to accumulate.
What This Lesson Demonstrates
- Establishing a visual identity: Specify a color palette and use it consistently across certificate artwork, thumbnails, and library covers.
- Directing AI-generated designs: Provide context, supply reference images, review results, and request adjustments.
- Organizing WordPress content: Use pages, posts, categories, navigation, and linked images to help visitors find the appropriate material.
- Preparing a video for publication: Develop a title and description from a transcript, create a thumbnail, and embed the video in a WordPress post.
- Planning lesson libraries: Separate podcasts and miscellaneous posts from sequential dropdown lessons for textbook writing and website building.
- Introducing search visibility: Observe a demonstration of submitting a URL for an indexing request through Google Search Console.
Use AI Responsibly and Keep Your Work Original
This lesson shows AI assisting with presentation and production tasks while the recorded instruction remains Professor Tullis’s own contribution.
- Give clear instructions about your audience, purpose, wording, and preferred appearance.
- Use your own transcript and project details to guide descriptions and supporting text.
- Review generated wording, graphics, and code before placing them on your website.
- Keep developing the underlying skills so you can explain your work and make informed decisions about the results.
No AI cheating: Build projects you understand and can demonstrate. When working with coursework, follow the instructor’s rules for software, AI assistance, and sharing materials.
Recording your process can help document your methods, decisions, and progress. It provides supporting context for your portfolio rather than an independent guarantee that AI was never used.
Organize Your Website into Clear Libraries
The walkthrough establishes four areas for the program. Each serves a different purpose within the overall resume-building project.
- Writing Your Book: Sequential lessons for planning, formatting, writing, and preparing your career-focused textbook.
- Building Your Website: Sequential lessons for developing the website that presents your resume and project portfolio.
- Podcast: Discussions about the program, its purpose, and the approach behind the work.
- Miscellaneous Lessons: Supporting demonstrations involving tools, organization, production, and related skills.
Matching library images provide visual continuity, while descriptive categories and navigation give each type of content a clear destination.
The Publishing Workflow Shown in the Video
- Record original content. Demonstrate your work and explain what you are doing.
- Upload the video. The walkthrough uses YouTube and Substack as part of the publishing process.
- Prepare supporting materials. Use the transcript to develop a relevant title, description, and summary. Create a matching thumbnail.
- Create the WordPress post. Add the embedded video and supporting HTML, select a category, and set a featured image.
- Connect it to the library. Check that visitors can reach the post through the appropriate category or library page.
- Review the published result. Check the appearance, links, video, and organization before moving on to the next item.
The emphasis is consistency: complete the surrounding publishing tasks while the video and its purpose are still fresh in your mind.
Put the Lesson into Practice
Use this introductory walkthrough to plan a small, manageable publishing process for your own portfolio.
- Identify the types of content your website will contain.
- Choose a consistent visual style and descriptive names for your main sections.
- Record a short original project demonstration with an explanation of your decisions.
- Prepare an accurate title, description, and supporting summary based on that recording.
- Organize the material so a visitor can find the project and understand which skills it demonstrates.
Start with one complete example. Improve the process as you build additional projects, textbook sections, and portfolio entries.
AI Summarization of the Lesson
The following is an AI-generated summary of the supplied transcript, not a verbatim transcript.
Professor Jonathan D. Tullis demonstrates the setup of PLEM Academy’s visual identity and online content structure. He begins by requesting certificate artwork using the program’s logo and a dark green color scheme, then reviews alternative designs.
He creates an introductory podcast thumbnail and coordinated library covers. These materials are organized around four areas: writing a book, building a website, podcasts, and miscellaneous lessons.
The WordPress portion shows changes to navigation, the use of posts and categories, linking library images to category pages, selecting featured images, and adding an embedded video with supporting HTML. Sequential lessons are planned as individual dropdowns.
The publishing demonstration includes using a transcript to prepare titles, descriptions, and summaries. Professor Tullis explains his approach to completing these tasks around each video so unfinished work does not accumulate.
He also introduces a Google Search Console indexing request and discusses the relationship between original recorded instruction and AI-generated presentation materials.
Throughout the lesson, the larger project remains a career-focused textbook supported by a personal website, digital resume, and recorded demonstrations. Students are encouraged to document their progress and develop work they can explain independently.
This summary focuses on the demonstrated workflow. Personal anecdotes, predictions about platforms, and guarantees about employment or search results are not presented here as established facts.