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

Jetpack

Download at http://jetpack.me/

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?

Thank you!@melchoyce | choycedesign.com | melchoyce.com