Creating a Great Portfolio Site
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Transcript of Creating a Great Portfolio Site
Creating a Great Portfolio Website
I am Mel Choyce• Design Engineer at Automattic
• WordPress core contributor
• Live in Boston
• Connecticut native
• @melchoyce | choycedesign.com | melchoyce.com
What kind of work do you do?
Let’s start with some fun.
(and by that I mean embarrassing screenshots)
General principles
Keep it simple.
Let your personality shine through. :)
Clever microcopy or intro statements
Type and iconography
Illustration and animation
Self portraits
Tailor your portfolio to a specific audience.
http://www.shoeboxblog.com/?p=16820
Don't showcase work you wouldn't want to do again.
Don't do something cool just because you can.
Less is more, as long as it's high quality.
Explain your process. Your work doesn't speak for itself.
Focus on the problem you solved, not the tools you used
I used to just have thumbnails that opened into light boxed static mockups.
Not that hot.
Write a case study.
Haraldur Thorleifsson
http://haraldurthorleifsson.com/morethanamap/
Haraldur Thorleifsson
http://haraldurthorleifsson.com/morethanamap/
Writing a longer case study
• What was the overall goal of the project?
• What problem was the project trying to solve?
• What role did you play in the project?
• What was the process you used to solve the problem?
• What were the results?
• Link to the final product.
Sometimes shorter is okay.
Sebastien Gabriel
http://kounterb.dunked.com/chromeos-filesapp
Writing a shorter case study
• What was the project?
• What was your role?
• Relevant screenshots, mockups, code snippets
• Link to the final product
GitHub and Dribbble do not a portfolio make
Make it easy for the right audience to get in
touch with you
What do employers look for in a portfolio?
– Steve Hickey, Fresh Tilled Soil
“Potential. It doesn't need to be perfect, but I need to be able to sense underlying logic and order behind the decision making. …You can't
teach people how to think.”
– Andrew Norcross, @norcross
“attention to detail”
– Roger Huang, @rogerh1991
“Drive. I want to see that somebody cares about their projects, and takes the time for a few
related passion projects.”
– Andrea Lee Bishop, @andrealee_b
“attention to detail & versatility. Be wary of oversights that would indicate they'd forget it
on projects for you too.”
– Rachel Baker, @rachelbaker
“It isn't what is in the portfolio but instead a potential hires responses to questions about
"why?" a certain approach was taken.”
Building a Portfolio
• Open source project
• Need to pay for hosting
• Completely customizable
• Total control
• Great if you know some code or feel comfortable experimenting
• Hosted WordPress service
• Free hosting
• Partially customizable
• Paid upgrades
• Great if you’re new to site building/blogging or want to make something fast
To add your content, you can...
• Use or make a portfolio CPT
• Use category pages
• Make each piece a page
Finding (or making) a good theme
What makes a good theme?
• Keep it simple so you can customize
• Aim for the general layout you want
• Avoid themes with too many options
• Avoid baked-in functionality
WidelyWordPress.com: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/widely/WordPress.org: http://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/themes/download/widely.zip
SemPressWordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/themes/sempressWordPress.org: http://wordpress.org/themes/sempress
MixfolioWordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/themes/mixfolioWordPress.org: http://wordpress.org/themes/mixfolio
HatchWordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/themes/hatchWordPress.org: http://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/themes/download/hatch.zip
Portfolio Press
WordPress.org: http://wordpress.org/themes/portfolio-press
MotifWordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/themes/motifWordPress.org: http://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/themes/download/motif.zip
Illustratr
WordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/themes/illustratr
Espied
WordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/themes/illustratr
CapsuleInformation: http://crowdfavorite.com/capsule/Download for WordPress.org: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wp-capsule/files/1.1.1/capsule-server-1.1.1.zip/download
Roll your own with _s
_s (Underscores)
Download at http://underscores.me/
Enhance with plugins
What to use in Jetpack
• Photon (load your images from WordPress.com’s CDN)
• Widget Visibility (chose what widgets appear on each page)
• Publicize (easily share your work with your social media accounts)
• Carousel (shows your images with a nice lightbox effect)
• Tiled Galleries (adds a bunch of different gallery layouts to chose from. I love the tiled mosaic one)
• Contact Form (easily add a contact form to your site)
• Custom CSS (lets you customize your css without overwriting your theme)
• Portfolio custom post type (coming soon?)
NextGen Gallery
Download at http://wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
Contact Form 7
Download at http://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/
Portfolio Post Type
Download at http://wordpress.org/plugins/portfolio-post-type/
In general, worth looking at...
• Security plugin (BruteProtect, iThemes Security)
• Backup plugin (BackupToDropbox, BackUpWordPress)
Demo?