How to Create a Portfolio Website
The purpose of a portfolio is to present yourself and show that you have the skills and professionalism needed for a job or assignments.
Building an online portfolio is not as difficult as one might think but it is important to understand how to structure the presentation and what to include on the page.
Before you learn how to create your online portfolio, and look into guides for portfolio websites, you need to consider just what you should show on it. If you are going to present your texts or projects that you have managed you need a layout different from the one used for artwork. Keep in mind the materials that you want to show on the site when you look at possible graphic templates for it.
Easy to Navigate
A portfolio is in essence material that shows off your skills and professionalism. While your work might be of the highest standard, it will not be apparent if your online presentation falls short. One of the most important things to consider when building an online portfolio is that it must be easy to navigate. If people want to see samples of your writing, painting, photography or menus, they want to do so fast. Therefore your page or site must be structured in a way that it is easy to see just what you have done and what you can offer.
Build the Site Yourself
Today it is fairly easy to build a portfolio website online using ready templates and tools that are meant for people who don’t understand programming. You can get your site for free if you build it yourself and also agree to a subdomain name. This might work just fine if you are not yet working on branding yourself but simply need a place online where possible employers can see your work. If you run a business it is better to invest a little bit more in a unique domain name and perhaps also in help with the actual design.
A good piece of advice is to use a service for portfolio websites that lets you upgrade your membership when and if you need more services like web design and online marketing. This way you can start out for free and then consider paying for some help when this becomes relevant.
What to Include?
A good portfolio shows you at your best, and it should also be updated with news from time to time. For this purpose it will be wise to choose an online service or a CMS that is easy to handle and make updates and corrections with. You can find tips for a good art portfolio here but just what you should publish on the site is really up to you. A great advantage of a portfolio website is that it is simple to change things that aren’t working. But remember that the points for what should be included in a portfolio, online or offline, are the same regardless of the materials being presented, so keep these in mind as you start uploading your materials to your new portfolio site.
Thanks for this, guys. Perhaps the next most important thing for artists after the artwork itself is making sure that other people get to benefit from seeing it. A good looking, responsive website is vital in making sure this happens.
Thanks for sharing the information. Its very helpful for the people who want to create their own website and dont understand programming.
Just a tip for the author, if you title your article How to Create a Portfolio Website, you may actually want to include the steps and information necessary to create a portfolio website. I have no idea what to do after reading this article.
A good piece of advice for you as a writer… if you want to make a portfolio website showcasing your writing and you read this article, would you know what to do to create a website to showcase your writing? Reread your work and make sure you have others read it before posting it. Then reread it again and make sure that you are reading it from an objective point of view.
Alternatively, you could title the article something different and all would be fine.
Good article. It really works, I mean making a portfolio website. I’ve been working as a wedding photographer for three years and I’ve been posting my works in social networks. But this summer i decided to make my own portfolio website using a free website builder. So it appeared to be really easy to do this, I used webstarts.com. And the result was just great, for the first month I had nearly thee times more orders than usually. The personal website with my works made me some kind of a higher level professional.
I’ve written some steps on building a responsive portfolio website with Weebly that could be of use, its here on my blog: itpages.com/weebly-review/
I hope this helps, Tom