Developing my own Personal Portfolio Website
What’s the goal here?
Making my own personal portfolio website can showcase my projects and contact info in one simple, consolidated place for recruiters. This website’s primary audience would be recruiters in the tech industry. The secondary audience would be other web developers or software engineers.
LinkedIn works fine for recruiters. I just want more control when presenting my skills and projects. LinkedIn is used by other occupations as well, not just developers.
GitHub works if the audience knows code. It’s not friendly for someone who wants the non-technical details.
It will be simpler to have a static website present my skill set. Plus, I can optimize it how ever I want.
How to go about it?
1. Choose from a template or get your design-inspiration going.
I personally have a difficult time making design choices. (It’s the paradox of choice.) Fortunately, there are plenty of templates available for free.
HTML5 UP has a decent selection of templates. I have seen a developer site used a template from 3rd Wave Media.
I found a template that spoke to me and went with it.
2. Edit with your details.
I find it best to have four main sections: About, Work, Portfolio, and Connect.
The About section introduces me and hopefully hooks people in.
The Work section has my resume and gives a sense of how I approach work. Basically, I want people know how I can fit into their business.
The Portfolio section shows off my technical skills with my projects. I have video demos for my projects. I am planning to add in what I used to build these apps, too. My primary audience are recruiters and the second version will include both.
The Connect section is a call to action to get in touch with me via email, GitHub, LinkedIn, or Medium.
3. Host your static site.
I end up choosing Netlify.
This part is tricky. I was deciding among Netlify, Firebase (friend’s recommendation), and GitHub Pages
Basically, I was considering a few different factors: (1) cost-effective/free, (2) custom domain name support, (3) HTTPS support, and (4) fast response times.
Ultimately, I just focused on the first two and let the rest take care of itself. I researched it a bit more, and I am sticking with my choice. I’ll share some reference links below.
4. Domain registrar and buy a domain!
I went with Namecheap to buy my domain name.
Feel free to check prices elsewhere.
Once that is done, I had fun setting up the domain name to route to Netlify. Find the documentation and follow it. I had to set it up on both Namecheap and Netlify.
