September 2014
ZotPress
Co-written by Amanda Licastro & Margaret Galvan

The texts for our course have been imported into a Zotero group bibliography and uploaded onto our course website.

Whenever you write new content for the course website, you will need to cite your sources from this bibliography. This handout will walk you through the process of how to use ZotPress, a WordPress plugin that integrates a Zotero bibliography into our course website. If you are adding new references that don’t already exist in our class bibliography, you will need to add your reference—with complete information (i.e. author’s or authors’ first and last names, publisher, publishing location, year, etc.)—to our Zotero Group library.

When you are composing in a new post, you will notice a “ZotPress” box on the right hand side next to the post. This box contains two tabs “Bibliography” and “In-Text.” It may be the case that these options show up in a list rather than tabs – if that is true, please save the post as a draft and then check again. This function will only work when the options show up as tabs.

Once you see the ZotPress box in its correct form follow these steps:

• Put your quotes and references to the text, in proper MLA format, in the post. (Please refer to this guide from OWL Purdue, “MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics,” https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/)
• Select the “In-Text” option from the ZotPress box. Start typing the name of the text you are referencing into the search box and wait for it to autocomplete (you should notice a spinny wheel on the right of the search box when this is happening). Click the appropriate reference from the drop-down list that generates.
• A blue reference with author last name and year will appear below. Click the arrow to the right of the name and year in order to add a page number (or other locational reference). 
• Click “Generate Shortcode.” ZotPress will generate a code for both the in-text citation and for your full bibliography.
• Copy the generated code from the “Shortcode” box. Example: [zotpress items=”49HRNE6C” style=”modern-language-
  association” sort=”DESC”]
• Paste this shortcode after the end of your quote or reference to the text in the post. (This shortcode will render your parenthetical citation for you.)
• Now, make sure to go back to the ZotPress box and copy the “Bibliography” code that ZotPress automatically generated and included below the in-text code. It should look similar to this: [zotpressInTextBib style=”modern-language-
  association” sort=”ASC”]
• Paste the bibliography code at the bottom of your post, which will create your list of references. REMEMBER: ZotPress automatically alphabetizes these references, but you must check this to ensure they are correct once you are finished composing.
• When adding multiple references, you will note all previous references show up when you create a new in-text code in ZotPress. Please make sure to X-out any unwanted previous references before generating a new shortcode, or else both authors’ names will appear in your citation.
• When you finish and publish your post, please read through your published post to doublecheck that all of your references to the text(s) are accompanied by accurate parenthetical citations (generated by the ZotPress shortcode) and that your bibliography contains complete citational information.