WordPress Portfolio theme idea

Yogensya

I've been thinking for a while if there would be people interested in a portfolio theme for WordPress that made things easy for people to create and customize their portfolio.

The theme would be based on my current portfolio which is already using WordPress, but it would include more options.

Suggestions from other members:

- Reordering portfolio items (suggested by m4dcow)

Things i was considering to include:

- Resum

Elynole

I like the theme, especially the details and small blog posts section for each individual image. Looking at other people's portfolios over the last few weeks on here, it was a question that came up regularly in my mind as to why more didn't put more details about the applications they used/polycounts/etc of their work.

m4dcow

Good stuff, one thing I would add, probably as some sort of recommended plugin, would be the ability to order your posts. Right now on your site, the first item you see is a WIP, which was the most recently created asset, but you probably want to show your best pieces first, regardless of when they were created.

ExcessiveZero

m4dcow wrote: »

Good stuff, one thing I would add, probably as some sort of recommended plugin, would be the ability to order your posts. Right now on your site, the first item you see is a WIP, which was the most recently created asset, but you probably want to show your best pieces first, regardless of when they were created.

Yeah theres that you should at the very least have the WIP section divided with the Completed assets, underneath it is the best bet.

Though I do wonder if WIP does more harm than good on ports, especially if they are left unfinished or you have an excessive amount of wips in your port though thats a hard thing to endure as we all love to show off our latest and greatest work even while it remains in a crude state.

My best friend and girlfriend are the two people that most have to endure my Work in progress pride/ego, fortunately my best friend is a musician and my girlfriend does other creative things so it works both ways.

NegevPro

ExcessiveZero wrote: »

Yeah theres that you should at the very least have the WIP section divided with the Completed assets, underneath it is the best bet.

Though I do wonder if WIP does more harm than good on ports, especially if they are left unfinished or you have an excessive amount of wips in your port though thats a hard thing to endure as we all love to show off our latest and greatest work even while it remains in a crude state.

My best friend and girlfriend are the two people that most have to endure my Work in progress pride/ego, fortunately my best friend is a musician and my girlfriend does other creative things so it works both ways.

I have no professional experience, but from what I've read it seems like you'd only want to post a WIP if you either have little to nothing to show off, or if you are currently working on a large project (in which you should show off WIPs of that).

It seems like the most important things to keep in mind for a portfolio would be to show off breakdowns of your work to tell employers that you know what you are talking about, and to keep things clean so they don't just exit out of your page immediately. It seems like a lot of WIPs would just tell employers "I can't finish projects."

Yogensya

I agree with what you guys are saying about WiPs, they should be added carefully, but if you only add one i think it should be OK. In my case I've taken a longer break than expected from that WiP project, so that should be carefully considered too before adding to a portfolio. :P

m4dcow wrote: »

Good stuff, one thing I would add, probably as some sort of recommended plugin, would be the ability to order your posts. Right now on your site, the first item you see is a WIP, which was the most recently created asset, but you probably want to show your best pieces first, regardless of when they were created.

As for the ability to reorder the portfolio items, that's a good idea. It's one of those things a bit more complicated to do, but i can take a look into it. I0d like to offer my own solution for that, extending the capabilities of WordPress like i usually do, but if it proves to be too much work there's always the option of using a plugin as you suggested, in this case, this one looks good, but i would have to test it before.

m4dcow

Yogensya wrote: »

I agree with what you guys are saying about WiPs, they should be added carefully, but if you only add one i think it should be OK. In my case I've taken a longer break than expected from that WiP project, so that should be carefully considered too before adding to a portfolio. :P



As for the ability to reorder the portfolio items, that's a good idea. It's one of those things a bit more complicated to do, but i can take a look into it. I0d like to offer my own solution for that, extending the capabilities of WordPress like i usually do, but if it proves to be too much work there's always the option of using a plugin as you suggested, in this case, this one looks good, but i would have to test it before.

I use that plugin on my portfolio, and it does the trick pretty well.

Actually the structure of your portfolio site and the backend is quite similar to mine (mine is without responsive design and a lot of the link options).

As for a dedicated WIP section, I don't really think it's needed. If you wanted something like that just call a portfolio item "WIP", and upload all of your WIP images there, and with some sort of post re-order functionality make sure it's the last thing that shows up.

Another feature to consider is having some sort of personal/professional sections or designations in the portfolio. Whether that is split up into another section, or it is left similar to how it is now but maybe having the option adding some sort of box graphic to a professional page.

Also consider having an option that doesn't break the art into sections, just shows everything on one page (I don't really like that way, but some prefer it). I have a section on my portfolio labeled "All Art" which does this, gut you can still click on the title of a portfolio entry to see the descriptions etc... (FYI my host is having server problems so my site may or may not work).