Building a Kickass Portfolio • Hacker News Board

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#191

Post by philipmjohnson » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:28 AM UTC

I teach software engineering to about 120 undergraduates a year, and require them to build a professional portfolio during the first week of class. I used to have them use WordPress, but the results were very uneven. To enable them to focus on content until their skills were sufficient to create a non-embarrassing custom design, I created the open source project TechFolios:

http://techfolios.github.io/

I've just finished a MVP of a desktop app in Electron for creating TechFolios called TechFolio Designer:

http://techfolios.github.io/designer.html

I would be interested to know of similar sites/approaches.

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#192

Post by aspit » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

pknerd wrote: post #84

Being a backend developer I am not quite good at making a good looking portfolio. My current site( http://adnansiddiqi.me ) home page is the inspiration I took from some other site. All links are clicked by visitors but the blog one. Although my blog gives me more traffic(and work) than the actual home site. Will seek her advice for sure. PS: In case if one wonders what I mean, check this Googe Analytics heatmap for…

It's the ordering! I would put Blog first, and change this to a two-row layout. The first row with internal links, the second row with icons of your social sites.

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#193

Post by streety » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

kickscondor wrote: post #8

I'm always looking for personal sites that are still out there. I love some of the ones she listed. Here are some random ones I found yesterday. http://merkoba.com/ http://angusnicneven.com/ http://danieltemkin.com/ http://joelcalifa.com/ https://jacky.wtf/ https://www.jacobyyoung.com/about http://nik.works/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180501202224/https://shiba.comp... Here are two I found several days ago, but tha…

My personal site is https://jonathanstreet.com/

It's in need of some help so I've been looking around for inspiration. I'll be taking a look at everything posted. Some I've found previously I like:

http://blog.echen.me/ https://www.liyaoxiang.com/ http://www.randalolson.com/ https://jvns.ca/ http://www.nowozin.net/sebastian/ http://www.emilio.ferrara.name/ http://danielnee.com/ http://daynebatten.com/ https://thomaslarock.com/ http://treycausey.com/ http://mvjantzen.com/

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#194

Post by aspit » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:33 AM UTC

KennyCason wrote: post #134

This makes me wish I took more screenshots of my old websites. My personal sites have had some very fun evolutions, including some outrageous styles/themes. May have to checkout the Wayback Machine. I’ve migrated from Wordpress, to rails, to Hakyll, and finally to my own static site generator in Kotlin, Kakyll. :) My most recent change which significantly improved traffic was making it mobile friendly. Im also no in…

I like it -- I would make the font a little bit bigger so it's easier to read. I just did a few tweaks on it https://imgur.com/a/OfFruwF and I think its a little easier to read -- just changed font to "sans-serif" increased line height and font size to 1.25rem.

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#195

Post by aspit » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

kelvin0 wrote: post #78

I'm an (veteran?) Software Dev with close to 20 years experience. I've never had a portfolio, I always thought a resumé and a list of successfully completed projects was enough. HR usually only looks at resumé, freelance customers usually couldn't care less of it seems. Only devs would care about another devs portfolio (in my opinion). Any other opinions?

I have it mostly for speaking and blogging purposes; however, I get a pretty decent stream of people reaching out to me over it which would be really cool if I were looking for a job! I think it also really helps candidates stand out.

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#196

Post by aspit » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:36 AM UTC

sxp62000 wrote: post #120

I'm a designer 70% of the time, but I also do a lot of front-end, and iOS development work. Don't know how to show a combination of design and dev-only projects without confusing clients. Anybody have links to example portfolios that solve this problem well?

You could do two tabs, I have the tab for speaking and the tab for projects -- you could do a design tab and a code tab!

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#197

Post by aspit » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

joshgachnang wrote: post #7

That's a nice looking site! Minor bug: When viewing from the home page to About on Safari at 1080p, your profile picture is squished horizontally. Refreshing fixes it.

Thanks! I (at the time I wrote it) didn't focus on making it Safari compatible, but I really should go back to that!

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#198

Post by spyhi » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

philipmjohnson wrote: post #191

I teach software engineering to about 120 undergraduates a year, and require them to build a professional portfolio during the first week of class. I used to have them use WordPress, but the results were very uneven. To enable them to focus on content until their skills were sufficient to create a non-embarrassing custom design, I created the open source project TechFolios: http://techfolios.github.io/ I've just fini…

Oh hey Dr. Johnson, fancy seeing you here!

Here is an example of TechFolios in the wild [1] which I built while I was in his class. https://spyhi.github.io/

(I’ve let it fall a bit out of date since the class, but this thread is good inspiration!)

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#199

Post by aspit » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

throwawayaway12 wrote: post #65

I am curious if anyone has advice/tips for getting a simple portfolio up and running. I am a physics phd student who has worked on a few side projects that I would like to showcase. I am looking into Jekyll and hosting it on github, but I am not sure if this is ideal for a simple static site.

Github pages is awesome, I would only do Jekyll if you want to host a blog though, otherwise its overkill.

Re: Building a Kickass Portfolio

#200

Post by rainonmoon » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 1:46 AM UTC

spyhi wrote: post #198

philipmjohnson wrote: post #191

I teach software engineering to about 120 undergraduates a year, and require them to build a professional portfolio during the first week of class. I used to have them use WordPress, but the results were very uneven. To enable them to focus on content until their skills were sufficient to create a non-embarrassing custom design, I created the open source project TechFolios: http://techfolios.github.io/ I've just fini…

Oh hey Dr. Johnson, fancy seeing you here! Here is an example of TechFolios in the wild [1] which I built while I was in his class. https://spyhi.github.io/ (I’ve let it fall a bit out of date since the class, but this thread is good inspiration!)

Hey, this is pretty nice! The grey in the nav bar is a little severe for my taste but I really appreciate that it loads fast even on my mediocre connection. Seems like a neat tool.