How hard is it to create your own portfolio site?...

LANKUS MAXIMUS

I know there are lots of sites that allow you to create your own website. I am currently using carbonmade (Like many others). I've seen a few people using dedicated blogging sites. A few people using Wix and other things like that...

But to me, the portfolio sites that stand out the most, are the ones that have been created by the artist's themselves.

The general style seems to be graphic and simplified. A name and banner at the top, perhaps a logo. A gallery section and an about section with the work displayed in horizontal banners running down the page.


My question is, how hard is it to make one of these sites?


I have basic knowledge in packages like flash and illustrator, but I'm assuming that you need to pickup something like dreamweaver? I'm a bit sick of my carbonmade site. Even on a paid subscription, the limitations in terms of video embedding and image resolution are pretty bad.

Any pointers on what I should be doing in order to make sites like the ones I have linked below?


scotthomer.co.uk

http://bryn-brandon.co.uk/

Thanks.

ZacD

It's not hard at all. Webdesign like this is more like scripting that programing, you can always right click a website and view source to see how its made. You can get a simple site working within an hour even if it's your first time trying it out. A one page site can be done in a day.


If you have chrome copy and paste the quoted text to view the source code for the site.

http://bryn-brandon.co.uk/ "view-source:http://silenth.net/bryn/"

http://peperaart.com/ "view-source:http://peperaart.com/"

Autocon

I made my site in Dreamweave, was a piece of cake. I have no knowledge of web stuffs or scripting at all.

Keep it simple, the more clicks and the flashy your website the worse its going to be as a portfolio site.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Awesome.

All sounds a lot less daunting than I originally thought it would be

I really like the design that you both have on your site's.

I'll get to work then. Thanks for the quick response guys!

Shadownami92

There is also Adobe Muse if you don't want to get into html or css much if at all. Though html and css follow pretty easy to manage syntax. You can pretty much use <div> tags and css for almost everything needed for a basic site.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Good to know.

I've used html a fair bit in the past. I'll give Muse a look though, thanks

MeshModeler

super easy.

I used photoshop for the basic layout and images, dreamweaver for clickable areas and links

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Sweet, So you just made the site itself within photoshop. Fonts,layout and stuff in layers.

Then sorted all the navigation and technical stuff with Dreamweaver? That sounds like the kind of method I'm after...

I like the way you've got your portfolio set out. Simple, easy to navigate. Contact icons to the side...

Mark Dygert

Carbommade is crazy simple and their free version works pretty well. A lot of people use it for their portfolio. You don't have a lot of control over how it is displayed but it works and doesn't force you to monkey with any kind of code or hosting. It's like youtube for portfolios.

https://carbonmade.com/
Example: http://mark3d.carbonmade.com/

Del

I recommend Muse. I made my site layout in about a pair of hours. It's an uber simple site but gets the point across.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Mark - Yeah, that's what I'm using atm. I agree, really user friendly and so quick. But my problem is with the limitations in customisation... Thanks for the shout.

Del - Good to hear. I'm definitely gonna look into it. So did you use the same approach as Mesh Modeler? Create all you content in PS and then sort it all out within Muse?


...And just to add to the noobness

Once you have created your site. How do you go about hosting it? Do I literally just pay for my domain name and then pay monthly for it? I know there's a few different domain sites but is that the only way you go about it?

How did you do it Del if you dont mind me asking?

MeshModeler

my domainw and my hosting is thru blixhost. had both the domain and hosting through fatcow at one point then hosting got expensive so i switched to a different host site.

ZacD

Hosting should be $10 for a domain and can be anywhere from $20 a year to $20 a month for a basic hosting service. Check out this thread and my post for sites polycounter's use http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1919745&postcount=2

I have a referral link for $10 a year for hosting.

Target_Renegade

Squarespace is good also apparently.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Awesome. Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll check it out Zac. Sounds pretty damn good...

Del

LANKUS MAXIMUS wrote: »

How did you do it Del if you dont mind me asking?

I suspect I did it the same as the others; just made it all in Photoshop then brought it over to Muse.

I bought my domain name and hosting a long time ago, but I pay annually.

Mark Dygert

I agree carbonmade is good for a pinch but when you want to carve out your own space and a unique look it starts to fall apart.

I agree with Del, Muse is great, very user friendly and pretty flexible as far as portfolios are concerned. It also has some nice features so you can see what it will look like on different devices, smartphones, tablets and different resolutions, pretty handy if you ever plan to bring your site up on your phone.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

That sounds perfect. Cheers for the reply Del.

Yeah i agree, carbonmade has served me well for a couple years now but I wanna start putting a bit more into my portfolio.

I'm gonna go check out Muse and start working on my content.

Thanks for all your input people. Gotta love the Polycount community

Clark Coots

+1 for Dreamweaver, I really like it

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Thanks coots. Just working on my content atm but I think I'll check out Muse and Dreamweaver once I'm ready to start building the site

Another noob question...

When it comes to the sexy fonts people seem to be using. All pretty solid graphic fonts, quite Swiss in design.

How do you go about referencing them?

Do you include referencing within the sites code or elsewhere? Or are there any places where you can download good quality fonts for free?

I used dafont.com a fair bit in college but surely it's fairly old now...

ExcessiveZero

Squarespace is easy as fuck to use and can create stylish portfolios easy and the hosting and cost is more than reasonable

http://www.squarespace.com/

wouldn't quite say this is a dreamweaver killer but its damn damn close.

give the free trial a go you will see what I mean its legit

Lazerus Reborn

Sent you a PM

.Wiki

LANKUS MAXIMUS wrote: »

Do you include referencing within the sites code or elsewhere? Or are there any places where you can download good quality fonts for free?

I´m using google webfonts for my site. So they are loaded on the first visit. I implemented them in the selfmade template for the CMS i´m using.

Clark Coots

LANKUS MAXIMUS wrote: »

When it comes to the sexy fonts people seem to be using. All pretty solid graphic fonts, quite Swiss in design.

How do you go about referencing them?

in my case I wanted all text for my website so that you can copy/paste my email/phone number as well as it'll get more hits in google searches. So I used Google Fonts which is a free database of common web fonts, there is just a line of html code you put on your pages that references the font and it takes a fraction of a second to load them, once it's loaded on someones computer it doesn't re-download them. Chances are very high with a lot of the google fonts someone already has them downloaded from other websites.

if you're going to make images with text dafonts is also great, there are a bunch of free ones, and i think there is a filter in the search options for free to use fonts.

Bruno Afonseca

Google fonts here too. I'm on Cargo collective, just picked my layout and tweaked it around. Some of the coolest ones are paid, but it's fair

passerby

Ya you can reference a web location for fonts in your CSS file, its a feature of css3 and HTML 5 so works with all major browsers.

Kbrom12

Shadownami92 wrote: »

There is also Adobe Muse if you don't want to get into html or css much if at all.

This is what I did, it took longer to generate the content for the site than it was to make it.

EvanL

I've been through a couple of iterations on my portfolio. In the end, I found I really needed nothing more than this.

If that's not fancy enough for you, it wouldn't be that hard to html a bit of magic onto that.

Bek

I did this just recently; it was very simple to make a basic html5 website using notepad++. Most pages are merely 40-60 lines. I found this site to be an excellent resource to check up the syntax of certain things, how to format certain parts etc. I spent more time getting screenshots together and adding name + email, so plan out how you want to add that info to your images before doing so. I found it easiest to work with a fixed resolution (1920x1080) and have a photoshop document with various text layers, which I would then just add my screenshots to (one by one) and export for web. (You can also add meta data to your PS document (such as your email) but I didn't have any luck getting it to show up when you select 'view image info' in browser; despite it being viewable in windows. Something you might want to look into though).

Try to keep naming consistent too, like yourname_gun_1.jpg, so when you add them in html you can just copy paste the line for that and change the number.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Cheers Bek. Really helpful. Especially the text layer idea.

Thanks for all the response guys. I'm sure this thread will help quite a few people out now...

I'm interested in Muse. I checked out the features on the site. Seems really good. But do you seriously have to sign up to a yearly subscription to get it.

Noticed there was a trial, but how far does that go? Surely I cant make site within the trial time and that's it? What about when it come to adding moire content? Add it using code or something?


....Everyone point and laugh at the noob

Toku

If you want full control of the site then you would need your own VPS/Webserver which you could configure with apache/php etc, if you buy hosting this is usually the kind of thing which is provided.

If you take that route I'd recommend a CMS (Content management system) to use on it which allows you to create templates of the pages you have designed and propagates them with the content, this means once it's set up, it's quick and simple to add a new project to your site and it will update the pages accordingly. I have little webdev experience but managed to learn this in a week or two, there are a lot of resources out there for learning CMS/Configuring webservers. Some worth checking out would be Craft, ExpressionEngine, Indexhibit. You can always design your pages and update them without a backend CMS, but it might get tedious after a while. I did this with my old site and it needed an exponential amount of coding to add new projects as each page needed a new link.

passerby

Toku that is overkill cheap hosting with a basic bit of HTML and CSS is enough, portfolios simpler the better.

.Wiki

passerby wrote: »

Toku that is overkill cheap hosting with a basic bit of HTML and CSS is enough, portfolios simpler the better.

Yeah, but one plus point for using a Server with a Database and a CMS is that you dont need to edit the html code to place new images or to change something. And I can adjust my site from every computer without the needs of FTP software or a (good) coding software.

Bek

Basically hosting a VPS is more expensive (~$20/mo vs ~$5/mo), more complex, but you can do a lot more with it. If you think you'd make use of the extras a server allows, it would be worth looking into, but if you just want a simple portfolio I imagine plain web hosting would be the way to go.

Since I'm looking into hosting myself here's one question: How important are the 'extra features' you can optionally select from web hosts? Stuff like Domain security, site backup, domain whois privacy... my initial thoughts are that such stuff is unnecessary.

ZacD

Yeah for a portfolio site, most of those extra features are a waste. You can keep a backup of your website on dropbox and your computer. You can install Google analytics and set up gmail to handle your email, so it doesn't matter how much site tracking and email tools they have.

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Oh definitely. I;m just looking for a simple site with the standard logo banner with a few project pages displaying my shots. Nothing fancy.

So yeah, I'd be wanting to use a gmail address and I'd have all my content on both my PC and External HD.

Sounds like I need a simple setup I guess...

Hayden Zammit

I just use dreamweaver. Took me about a week of googling all the stuff I needed to know to build a basic site.

Toku

@passerby yep it's a bit overkill if you just want to host a portfolio site, although it does give you full creative control. I think premade sites like carbonmade/squarespace do the job well enough

Alphavader

stick with html! - easy - fast and cheap

hadidjah

Hey Lankus - these guys seem to have you covered on the actual website creation, and your references for portfolio websites look great, but if you ever get stuck during the design process hopefully these will help (they say a lot of the same stuff, but that's how I remind myself it's important):

Killer Portfolio or Portfolio Killer: http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc2011/slides/Greg_Foertsch_CareerSeminar_KillerPortfolioOr.pdf
Jon Jone's "Your Portfolio Repels Jobs": http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=587805&postcount=1
Neil Gowland's 10 portfolio tips: http://grimmsorg.com/10TipsToImproveYourPortfolioWebsite.html
"Ten tips for the perfect portfolio" by Peter Leonardhttp://www.develop-online.net/analysis/jobs-in-games-ten-tips-for-the-perfect-portfolio/0117471
Polycount's own fantastic list: http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryPortfolio
http://gameartportfoliowall.com/ (a lot is more pretty than functional, hence why it gets the end of the list.:P)

Best of luck!