Create your Personal Portfolio Website that stands out.

Photo by Pexels @ Kampus Production

A personal portfolio website resembles your online curriculum vitae. It does make a significant effect on your professional career. You can showcase your work samples, in the form of downloadable files, images, and videos. It can give a positive and more credible impression on people interested in you. A personal portfolio can open doors to many opportunities in your professional career.

Domain for your website.

The very first thing for your personal portfolio website or any other website is to have a name, Domain Name. Typically companies have domain names ending with a “.com”, “.co” or the country from where they operate like “.in” for India. These are Top Level Domains (TLD). You can choose a domain name and TLD as per your choice, only if it is available and not registered by anyone else on our planet.

For a personal portfolio website, it is suggested to have your domain name as your own full name, with a TLD of your nationality. For example, if Mr. John Smith is from the USA, the best possible domain name for his personal portfolio website would be “johnsmith.us”. If that domain is unavailable, he can go for some other combinations like, “smithjohn.us”, “mrjohnsmith.us”, or something alike which is available.

Some people also consider registering a domain name on their family names like “smith.us” or “thesmiths.us”, so that they have a more attractive email address like “john@smith.us” or “john@thesmiths.us”.

Shared Hosting for your website.

Just like any other website, you need to upload website template files, or you may wish to install WordPress so that you can manage your website easily. Whatever it may be, you would need an online space where these files can be stored. This space is Shared Hosting. Your domain needs to be connected to this Shared Hosting server. If you have registered your domain and hosting from the same provider, chances are it is already connected, or else you may have to do it manually making some simple changes in the DNS configuration. The service provider will help you with that.

But before you decide on which hosting package you would go for, consider the following points:

1. A personal portfolio website is going to be a considerably small size website. Three or four static pages, which may not need to be updated frequently, some images, or maybe some videos too. Although videos may take up a good amount of space but remember we can always upload videos to YouTube and embed the video on our webpage without storing the video on our hosting space. So, don’t go for 30 GB, 50 GB, or Unlimited space packages. You don’t need that much. Go for the least cost or smallest available package.
2. If you are thinking of installing WordPress, which is a great CMS tool to manage your website easily, you just need 40 MB of space. So even if you go for a 1 GB shared hosting, you will have 960 MB of space available to you.

Design for your website.

If you are going to use WordPress, even then you have plenty of options. There are hundreds of free & paid themes available in WordPress also. Check out WordPress Themes.

It is up to you which design you choose. I would recommend choosing the simplest ones, which would be easy for you to manage.

Content for your personal portfolio website.

To make your website outstanding, you must think from the viewer’s point of view. Who are the targetted viewers for your website?

Put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself “Why the viewer has visited your website?”

Now I assume the most potential viewer for your personal viewer would be a recruiter or a client. So, if that person is viewing your website, what is the first thing they should see? Some introductory statement, right? Who are you? What is your name? How to get in touch with you? Right?

So obviously the Home Page of your personal portfolio website must have a name, email, a picture of yourself, and a brief introduction followed by a link to read more about you, which will link to the “About” page, which will have your entire professional resume with your past work experience, academic experience, certifications, and others.

Below the brief about you on your Home Page, you may want to showcase some of your achievements or testimonials.

So primarily your portfolio will have these sections:

1. Home Page
2. About Page
3. Leave a Message Page
4. Expertise Showcase, or Album Page
5. Link to Download Resume

While showcasing your work don’t overload it. Restrict yourself to put the best ones or the most relevant ones only. Try to keep it clean and to the point.

Promote your website.

Share your portfolio with the world! Some basic promotions you must do, are as follows:

1. Update your social networking profiles with your domain name.
2. Use our domain name in your personal email signatures.
3. Mention your domain name in your resume.
4. Write blogs on topics related to your profession, and share those on social networking websites.

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