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Do's and Don'ts of Creating Your Portfolio Website

Ioana Tiplea on August 21, 2022

A portfolio website is something most developers will attempt to build at some point in their careers. It can be a great tool for finding customers...
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Dan Walsh

Really great article and solid advice. πŸ‘Œ

From my own experience a DON’T that I always recommend is β€œdon’t use progress bars nor percentages against your list of skills.” For example:

  • JavaScript - 95%
  • HTML - 99%
  • CSS - 99%
  • TypeScript - 90%
  • Figma - 80%

This is problematic because the values are too subjective. Does the above mean you know 99% of the CSS spec (even the draft spec) by rote? How do you measure that 5% difference between JS and TS? And how do you compare 80% β€œskill” in a design tool (Figma) against β€œskill” in a scripting language (JS)?

In my experience, it’s better to just list the skills and then show (rather than tell) your skill through your well developed and designed portfolio site and accompanying body of work.

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Joe Attardi

Came to say this!

Also please no more typewriter animation

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JoelBonetR πŸ₯‡

Hey!

It was trendy a couple of years ago, I know I need to redo my portfolio but this isn't gonna happen anytime soon, stop reminding me about it πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

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Mohd Mushtaq

I was trying to make portfolio(retro-style) website for the first time, and I did typing animation because that seemed good for me and also I added the progress bars for the skills section. So yeah I did almost everything you said not to do

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Karol Horosin

Yes. And why would you downplay yourself?

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Ioana Tiplea

Well said, I totally agree!

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Ryan Medina

What about rating skills out of 5?
For example Javascript 3/5

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Dan Walsh • Edited

A fraction is just another way of writing a percentage (or a progress bar):

3/5 = 60% = β–“β–“β–“β–“β–“β–“β–‘β–‘β–‘β–‘

In my experience, you are better off listing JavaScript skills you are proficient in, and then providing examples of work that reflect those skills.

For example, you might highlight your skills with async/await and interacting with REST APIs. You could show this by including a project that demonstrates your understanding, such as a static blog that generates its pages from the dev.to API.

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shammisharma • Edited

Neat Article Ioana. I created my portfolio site 3-4 months back. I think it follows most of the "Do's" that you have mentioned. Can I have some feedback on it please !
shammisharma.netlify.app

Thanks.

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Ioana Tiplea

Looks nice and clean! I wouldn't change anything, I think it does the job really well. I like the scrolling preview in your websites section. 😊

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shammisharma

Thank you for your feedback Ioana. I'm glad you liked it.

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Francisco Zapata

It looks great.
Congratulations!

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dastasoft

Good advice, totally agree!

I will add that redoing from scratch your portfolio is an option and in my case most of the time it's an "easy" project that shows me how I've improved since the last time I tried.

So if someone detects some red flags in their portfolio after reading this article, they can adjust it but if they did it a long time ago, it's totally fine to think about a new version.

One small nuance, don't use this as an excuse to build an unmaintainable portfolio :D

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Darlio88

Great content

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Pauline Al

Thank you! I love reading various Do's and Don'ts, they're usually very informative :)

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Rizal Iswandy

Witch one do you prefer to use for blog. Dark or light mode?

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Ioana Tiplea

I personally prefer using dark mode anywhere I can. πŸ‘

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ruthmoog

Best usability is giving the reader a choice! I am going to rework my (light mode) site so that users can choose dark/light/low-contrast modes, and, automatically read what the user's preference is via the browser so the site defaults to the mode they want without them needing to select it on the screen

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Peter Vivo • Edited

Thanks, for advices. I have 30+ years working experience (tons of different places, designer -> developer). So I simplify to whole portfolio to a single page CV ... really minimalist design. Plus link to one of my npm modules: react-troll with this sentence:

My favourite framework is react, with redux-saga, but without redux.

This will lead the interview to my well known area.

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Calin Baenen

Good advise.

One of the few DEV articles I've seen have actual care and effort put into it.
Nice job authoring this!

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Ioana Tiplea

Thank you, it was lots of fun to write. 😊

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Calin Baenen

Well I look forward to seeing future if you have plans to post more.

(Also I know this isn't the place, but welcome to DEV.)

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Ioana Tiplea

Thank you, I definitely plan on posting more in the future! 😊

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Akin C.

Hello Ioana Tiplea,

thank you for your article.
It was an easy read for me and I like how you show an example of things you recommend.

I also like the link which shows that mobile accounts for almost 60% of web traffic. This makes it not just a simple claim.

I also like that some terms link to websites that explain them (e.g. "call to action").

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Ioana Tiplea

Hey Akin, thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it! 😊

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Innocent Chiemerie Feargod

Wow nice one, I love this

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Harsh Singh

Thanks a lot. Here's my portfolio - harsh-singh.in. please do give your feedback on it. I have gone for an unconventional design, but something that is not very cluttered.

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Ioana Tiplea

Very cool! All the required info to contact you is immediately visible, and your projects are only one click away. It all works really well with the style you've chosen. An example of an unconventional design that works!

Your ASCII art is only half visible on mobile (you have to scroll sideways to see the rest), but I have no idea if it's even possible to change that. πŸ€”

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Harsh Singh

Thank you for the feedback πŸ˜„. I will try to improve the Ascii art so that it is also visible on mobile devices. I can reduce the font size or break the two words and display them on two different lines.

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Calin Baenen • Edited

or that a single green leaf stands for MongoDB.

Aahhh, no Mx employer person, I have ten years of experience in Animal Crossing, not MongoDB.
I see the confusion.
Β Β Β Β /j

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Ioana Tiplea

Lol, final interview round: recruiter visits your town.

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Calin Baenen

This is literally the interview process for being a full-time gamer. :ΓΎ

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JoelBonetR πŸ₯‡

That last one... hurts πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

I did this in may 2020

And didn't edited it again 😳

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Ioana Tiplea

Maybe you should πŸ‘€

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JoelBonetR πŸ₯‡

Nevermind I'll re-do the entire thingy at any point πŸ˜…

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Andrew mandela

Incredible adviceπŸ‘ŠπŸ»

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Ayush Seth

Feedback required on my portfolio website dev nation,
ayushseth.netlify.app/
Appreciated!