Years ago, I found that I loved to mingle in technology, mostly web development. This passion grew until one day a few close friends told me I should do this for a living. Within a year, I was trying to make my mark and join the ranks of developers and designers in the world doing what we love to do best… code! I worked hard with a few clients and quickly realised I was missing an important part of the puzzle to showcase my work and abilities. Thus, my portfolio was born! In the next few posts, I am going to go over the process behind the madness. This post will be updated as well as my social media so be sure to bookmark and follow me!

What is a portfolio

Being a programmer I wanted things to be exact. What goes into a portfolio? What information do I give? How do I present a client? These were all questions I had when starting out. Soon enough I found that unlike a photographer, journalist, or financial expert, there was no set boundaries as to what a web developer and designer could put into a portfolio. It didn’t dawn on me for a while that the portfolio is in itself a work we are using to present to clients. So for an exact person like me, I was at a cross-road… how do I do this?

Looking around at other developers and designers there is a multitude of information that is either omitted or presented by us. Some just show a picture and a brief description while others go and create project pages showcasing every aspect of the project. I asked around and thanks to fellow coder Chris Coyier, I finally found the answer I was looking for. I ran into Chris at Converge FL 2012 while he was speaking and I asked him how to best present my portfolio. His answer was simple:

You put in your portfolio what you want to show to the public. If a client wants more, they can always ask.

From this point forward I revised my portfolio to reflect what I wanted to show. Most of what I wanted to show was photos, but quickly I found that I had few screenshots to give. Early on in my pursuit I was not thinking and never took screenshots or copies of the projects I did. I respected the client and once I was done with a project, I deleted all files on my side (something I no longer do I should note). Thanks to this, many of my early projects would only have text, something I implemented in my designs up to now.

Presentation, presentation, presentation!

A lot of portfolios do what they are supposed to do. They show the skills, abilities, and projects of the developer in an effective manner. I wanted more. I didn’t want to fall into the void and felt that just describing my projects was too little. I wanted to add my personality. I still feel this is a crazy idea so my portfolio is a bit more than just a portfolio, it is me and my thoughts. I expanded back in 2014 to include a blog so I could speak my mind beyond the social media platform. I also wanted a place to share my spoils in the never-ending improvement of my coding skills.

Here I am free to share ideas and help those that might have had the same issues as I when trying to work out some coding issues. I figure we’re all in this together and we might as well share our thoughts and ideas outside the usual publications. Not to mention I will have a cheat sheet of sorts right here for my quick reference. Who knows, If I ever have kids and they share my passion, they can see how twisted I really was.

More to come

I’m going to end this here for now because the next part is a post on its own. Updated links will be below once I post them so be sure to come back to this post for updates. Updates will also be posted on my social media accounts!