New Portfolio Launched
posted on May 15th, 2010Today marks the completion of the redesign of my Portfolio Site. It’s taken me quite some time to get it to this stage, though I imagine that I’ll have the odd bug crop up the second I make the site live. Things look a little bit sparse at the moment, but that’ll be changing over the next few weeks. I’ve a load of portfolio pieces to get ready for addition to my Portfolio, and several blog entries that I plan to take from my old Portfolio and update.
So What’s Changed?
In the past I’ve spent a great deal of time working on my own Content Management System. I’ll admit that it was a fun project while I had the time to contribute to it but, due to a combination of Client Work and University Studies time is something I find myself with less and less. I needed something that would make matters easier for me. I took quite a lot of time, and put a lot of thought, into the search for the Content Management System that works for me. There are quite a few out there, and some of them are very nice, but typically lacked in one or two key areas that I relied upon. Which brings me to the System I ended up using… WordPress.
WordPress
WordPress is currently the most widely used Content Management System in use today. It has countless users and is updated regularly. This in itself is a fantastic time saver as it removes the need for me to maintain my own code, outside of any themes I create, which brings me onto my next point regarding WordPress.
Themes & Plugins
WordPress allows for a great amount of control over the presentation of content stored in their system, allowing a designer to present the site using a design that they have created, but also allowing for less code-savvy people to use one of many pre-built templates for their site. Add to this plugins, which allow users to extend the functionality of WordPress, letting it do more without needing to produce the functionality yourself and it results in a world of possibilities for WordPress users.
How does all of this come together? I make rather extensive use of WordPress plugins to add functionality to my site, be it to make it easier for search engines to find my site or to get emails whenever there’s something needing updated on my site, WordPress has something that will help.
Other Changes
I’ve also decided that I’d like my Portfolio to be different from what I’ve used and seen in the past. I don’t want people coming to my site to be stuck with looking at images, seeing how things looked in one browser when a screenshot was taken. I provide live examples of my work, hosted on my site. I could provide a simple post about what I did, and why I did it but I would rather let visitors see how things work and how well they work. It also provides an archive of my work, in the event that the client’s server goes offline for one of many possible reasons, or they change the design.
More To Come
I know that, currently, the site it looking somewhat bare. Rest assured that this is something I intend to fix over the next week or two. I have several portfolio pieces that I need to sort out for addition to my portfolio, as well as posts saved from the previous incarnations of my site. In addition to these pieces I have several little bits and pieces that I have produced over on my 365 Days of Design Blog that I intend to neaten up and publish here, in a more complete fashion. So make sure to check back over the coming weeks as more and more will be showing up over here.