To advertise a developer’s skills and services, a portfolio website is essential.
In this article, we find out how to build a portfolio website that will attract viewers and get us opportunities.
Show Off Our Projects
We should show off our projects on our portfolio website. Link to the projects that are working with a screenshot of it.
This way, viewers will know what we can build. Also, we should link to the repository with our source code.
This means that we should check it into a remote Git repository and make the repository public so that people can see our code.
We just have to make sure that our code is cleaned up and preferably have some tests in them so that we can show off clean code with test coverage.
Express Ourselves
Our portfolio should express ourselves. So we make it look and add our own stylistic flair to it.
There’s no one way to create a portfolio. We just need to add whatever we want to show to the public with our pages.
Make the Site Interactive
We can make our site interactive so that people will remember that our site exists.
Adding some buttons for them to click on and show our work, for example, maybe a good way to make our site more memorable.
Buy a Domain Name
We should host our portfolio site on our own domain name. Therefore, it shouldn’t be on someone else’s subdomain.
The domain name is part of our identity, so it shouldn’t be a subdomain or some web host.
There’re tons of domain names out there. They don’t have to end with .com. We can get many domain names cheaply from NameCheap, which seems to be cheaper than most places and there’re lots to choose from.
No Console errors
Console errors should be fixed so that people won’t find any errors in the console when they look there.
Most of them are easy to fix, so we should eliminate them.
Don’t Use a Technology Just for the Sake of it
We should just use what we need to create a nice, interactive portfolio website.
Our site shouldn’t be that complex, and we shouldn’t add extra things that we don’t need on our site.
Make Our Site Work on Mobile
Many readers will probably look at our site on a mobile device, so we should make sure that it works there.
Therefore, we should test it on the responsive view on Chrome or other browser’s development console to make sure that it’s mobile-friendly.
There definitely shouldn’t be microscopic text or UI elements when we look at them from our phones.
No Premade Templates
Sites made from the same premade templates all look the same, so we should steer clear from them.
Instead, we should build it from scratch with CSS grid, flexbox, etc. to get our site looking the way we want to.
Use it to Market Ourselves
A portfolio is a great marketing tool, so we should use it as such. It’s great for promotion.
Also, we should build a social media presence online so that we can promote it on our social media profile.
Just make sure that our social media profile has followers so that someone will actually see our site’s link.
No Broken Links
We should definitely fix broken links if we find any. If we have lots of links on our site, we may want to write a script to find all the broken links if there’re any.
Keep Our Portfolio Updated
We should update our portfolio is we have anything we want to show.
At least review every few months so that we can add or remove any projects that we want to show.
Think About Page Speed
Thinking about page speed is thinking about the user. Users don’t want to wait for anything to load, including our portfolio website.
Building a static site is probably a good bet for speed. Gatsby, Gridsome, Nuxt, Hugo, etc. are all good static site generators, so just take our pick.
Conclusion
If we can build a portfolio that’s fast and mobile-friendly, then more people are going to look at it. Our site should also be hosted in our own domain.
We should link to projects along with the code that’s in a repository.
Finally, we should promote it on our social media profile so people will see them.
