If you are a freelancer you need a good online portfolio to differentiate yourself from others. Without a portfolio that showcases the best of your work, it will be difficult to find clients. The solution, of course, is to learn how to make a portfolio that allows you to stand out.
In this article we will teach you how to make a portfolio in six simple steps.
When we are done, you will have a professional online portfolio and you will be ready to attract new clients. So let’s talk about how to make a digital portfolio!
Step 1: Register a domain for your portfolio
Choosing a name is often one of the most difficult aspects of . You have to generate unique names, check their availability, consider multiple options, and more. However, when it comes to creating a portfolio site, the process is much easier. This is what we recommend doing:
- Come up with some variations of your own name.
- Use a search engine to check their availability.
- Give priority to the combinations that are available with the top level domains (TLDs).com.
Using your own name for your domain is a smart move, as the whole point of a portfolio is to market yourself as a good hire. In short, by using your name, you are putting your brand out there. Naturally, depending on how common your name is, the availability of suitable domains will vary, so the best thing to do is to get creative.
Note that this approach only works if you are a solo freelancer. If you work in an agency, for example, it would be best to use the name of this in the domain.
Finally, it can also be a great idea to include your specialty in the domain itself. For example, if you are a photographer named Alejandro, you can choose alejandrofotografia.com. Keep in mind that the domain must be clear, easy to read and easy to remember. Once you find one that meets those requirements, you can .
Step 2: Find a reliable hosting provider
Since they are related, you will need both for your portfolio to work. There are several types of web hosting that you can use as the basis of your portfolio. However, in our experience, most professional portfolios do well on shared hosting.
This refers to hosting where your website shares a server with several other sites. This approach allows the web host to keep costs down, which translates into lower prices for you. To give you an idea, these days it’s pretty easy to find great shares for less than €4 a month:
Plan Features
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It is important to note that since you share server space with other users, shared hosting has some performance limitations. For most portfolio sites, this shouldn’t affect them, but if you get a significant number of visitors per day, you may want to look for something more robust. One of the options is to use a .
The option you choose depends largely on the level of expected traffic. If your site takes off, you’ll likely get a steady stream of visitors, but it’s generally a good idea to start small and then expand as your audience grows. That said, while the hosting plan is important, it’s also good to make sure you choose a provider that has an excellent proposition in terms of performance and features.
Step 3: Choose a platform to build your portfolio
The best thing about creating an online portfolio is that you generally don’t need as much functionality. In our experience, the best portfolios focus on showcasing your work, so there’s no need to use a complex platform in that case.
In most situations, we recommend using . This particular CMS is unique because it is highly customizable and easy to use, even if you have never created a website before.
For you, that means you won’t have to spend weeks building a portfolio or website from scratch. It’s also worth noting that due to the popularity of WordPress, many hosting providers offer quick install options. Even if yours doesn’t offer it, on your server it’s supremely easy even for beginners. In fact, it is commonly known as “”.
While WordPress is the most popular option, it’s far from the only one. There are actually many other user friendly options that you can use, and one of them is :
This CMS can be a bit more complicated to understand, but this is mainly because it contains more settings out of the box. Still, there is to help you get started. This CMS can be a fantastic option to learn how to create a portfolio and many other projects.
Step 4: Set up the necessary tools to customize your portfolio
While we mentioned some options before, for the rest of this guide on how to make a portfolio, we will focus on WordPress. This is simply because it is the most user-friendly option that also offers many specific solutions for portfolio sites.
After installing WordPress, there are three things you will need to make your portfolio shine:
- A portfolio WordPress theme.
- A gallery plugin that allows you to showcase your best work.
- A contact form, which can also be implemented with plugins.
Of course, there are many more features that you can add to an online portfolio. However, your main goal should always be to showcase your work and allow potential clients to hire you. So we will focus on these aspects throughout this article.
Let’s start by choosing a topic. There are thousands of options to choose from, both free and premium. For a simple portfolio, it’s often best to stick with a free theme, as there are so many great options out there. To find the perfect theme, we recommend you start looking at . There you can use the search function to find topics related to portfolios:
When you find a theme you like, you can simply . You can then continue to search for a gallery plugin, which you will use to showcase your work. We recently wrote a detailed guide on how to get awesome, so follow the steps there to set up your own gallery.
In that article, we introduced you to seven remarkable gallery plugins that you can use to showcase your work. One of our favorites is called:
This is a great option because it gives you a variety of options when it comes to how your gallery looks. It also offers a number of lightbox options, and even lets you use images and videos in the same galleries. It’s also free, so you can try the plugin right away risk-free.
When you have the galleries ready, it’s time to give your potential clients a way to communicate with you. Next, we will add a contact form.
You will need to set up a contact form plugin so that your visitors can contact you in the easiest way possible. After all, the whole point of learning how to make a portfolio is to grow your business!
There are dozens of WordPress plugins that you can use to create a contact form for your digital portfolio. We’re fans of , though, as it integrates with a lot of third-party services and gives you a lot of control over how your forms look:
Now install the plugin and then a new tab will appear Contact in your WordPress dashboard. By clicking on it, you will see a list of all existing forms. At this point, just after you have installed the plugin, you will see an automatically generated contact form:
If you click the button Edit below that form, you will be able to customize it. Let’s do that so you don’t have to set up a new form from scratch. This is what the default contact form looks like, seen on the back-end:
Contact Form 7 allows you to create complex forms using shortcodes, which you can add using the buttons you see above. The example form contains fields to enter a name, an email, a subject and a message. This is a pretty good standard form and contains everything you need for most cases. You can add and remove fields according to your needs.
You can also customize the default text of the form. For example, you can change the label of Your message for something like “Tell us how we can help you!”, or something else that sounds more personal.
In many cases, it can also be a great idea, which helps prevent spam. For now, make the changes you want to the contact form and then open the tab Email. Here you can specify which email address messages from the contact form will be sent to:
There are also options to set the name and title that will be displayed when you receive new emails from your website. After all, remember that users will send messages from your site and not from their own emails.
When you finish configuring the contact form you must save it. Now you can open the tab Contact from the main panel to see it in your list of existing forms. You should look for the value that appears in the column Shortcode (short code):
Copy that line of code and open the editor on the page where you want to place the form. Paste the code into that page where you want it to appear, like so:
Save the changes to your page now and see what the contact form looks like on your site:
For a portfolio, you may want to place the form at the bottom of the home page. It can also be a great idea to create a page of Contact meincluding the form, links to social networks and any other communication method you want.
Step 6: Add a Short Bio Section
At this stage, you should already have a gallery and a contact form, which are key to learning how to make a portfolio. However, if you want to convince people to hire you, it’s also good to tell them something about yourself.
For example, take a look at , which greets you from the start with information about the owner of the site:
One of the key drivers of online conversions is trust. For someone to hire you, that person needs to have an idea of who they’re dealing with, beyond the jobs you’ve successfully done.
This doesn’t mean you have to include your full bio, including the name of your first dog. In fact, a key consideration is to stick to the most important information a customer is likely to want to know. Here is a short list of information we recommend adding to your portfolio:
- A very brief explanation of who you are and what kind of work you do.
- A bulleted list detailing the services you offer.
- A profile picture for everyone to see how you are.
- Some information on notable past projects and background…
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