A portfolio is important to have as a software developer, often times job applications will allow (sometimes require) you to enter a URL for your personal website. This is the perfect place to enter your software developer portfolio url.
It will allow you to showcase your skills, attract employers, and stand out in a competitive job market.
Continue reading to learn how to build a software developer portfolio from planning to deployment.
Define Your Goal
Your portfolio will be structured differently and have different emphasis on different content depending on the goal you have for your developer portfolio.
For example, if you want to create a personal brand on X and want a place for your followers to subscribe to your newsletter, you likely won't be including your technical skills.
Here are some questions you can answer to help define your goals:
- Is this portfolio for job applications, freelancing, or personal branding?
- Who is my target audience?
From the answers to the questions, choose the right tone, style and content based on your goals.
Decide What to Include
Depending on the goal of your portfolio, you can then decide what sections to include. To see examples of these sections, read How to Structure an Effective Developer Portfolio
Here are some key sections you can include:
- About me: Brief bio, your skills, and what you're passionate about.
- Projects: Showcase 3-5 of your best projects with descriptions, technologies used, and live/demo links. The order of your projects matter, include the most recent ones first or the one that highlights your skills most effectively.
- Skills: Keep your skills clear and concise by grouping technical skills by: programming languages, frameworks, tools. Avoid only using icons for your skills, make sure to always include the name.
- Blog (Optional): Having a blog is good for sharing your insights, or tutorials to demonstrate your thought leadership. Your blog can be a good source of organic growth if optimized for SEO.
- Contact: Visitors of your software developer portfolio should find it easy to contact/connect with you. Make sure to link your LinkedIn, GitHub and any other socials. Take it a step further by creating a contact form in your website Create a Contact Form for Your Website Using HTML.
Choose Your Tech Stack
This part is where most users might turn away from creating a software developer portfolio and depending if you have built a website before or used any of these technologies will determine which you choose.
- Front End Frameworks: React.js, Next.js, or Svelte for modern and fast loading sites.
- Back End (Optional): Include a back end if you want to showcase full stack skills (Node.js, Django). Add a guest book to your website to let users sign, or for your bog add likes/comments.
- Deployment: Vercel, Netlify, Heroku, GitHub Pages, or AWS Amplify.
Design for Impact
Not everyone may have an eye for design, follow these to design your portfolio with ease:
- Keep It Clean and Professional:
- Use simple layouts that are easy to navigate.
- Minimalism works best-let your projects speak for themselves.
- Design tips
- Choose a color scheme and typography that reflects your personal or brand.
- Responsive design is not negotiable-test it on mobile and desktop.
- Ensure you use high quality images that are optimized for the web.
- Tools
- Figma for wireframing.
- Tailwind CSS, or CSS-in-JS for styling.
Highlight Your Best Work
Listing your all of your projects is ideal and recommended, however highlighting the most notable skills is effective for visitors to gauge your experience.
What projects to showcase:
- Real-world applications or contributions to open-source projects.
- Apps or tools that solve a problem or demonstrate creative thinking.
- Projects that highlight your expertise using a specific technology stack.
How to present your projects:
- For each of your projects, you should ideally have a separate page for that project to go more in depth.
- Use a case study format: problem, solutions, results.
- Include testimonials if you worked on this project with others, add social proof.
Optimize for SEO
You ideally do not want to have to actively promote your portfolio, you want to have your portfolio set up where users can organically find it by ranking higher on google search results.
Basics:
- Add meta tags, alt tags for images, and proper
<h1>headings. - Use a custom domain name like
yourname.dev, avoid keeping assigned domain name from hosting platforms.
Advanced
- Make sure your portfolio is structured for rich snippets (e.g., project ratings or reviews).
- Create a XML sitemap and submit it to search engines.
Deploy and Maintain
Once you have finished building your software developer portfolio, you now get to deploy it to have it publicly available on the internet.
Deploying:
Deploy to hosting services like Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages, or AWS Amplify. Which service you are able to choose depends on whether your site is static or dynamic:
- Static Sites are simple, consist of only HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. These files don't change unless you manually update them, you'll then want to chose a static hosting provider like Netlify, Vercel, or GitHub Pages.
- Dynamic Sites, on the other hand, involve server-side processing, databases, or API calls that generate content on the fly. If you have user authentication, a blog, or dynamic content you will need to choose a dynamic hosting provider that can handle this. Some popular choices include Heroku, DigitalOcean, or AWS.
Maintanance:
Luckily, the hard part is over, your site is finished and publicly available! Now the only thing left to do is:
- Regularly update projects and skills
- Monitor for broken links or outdated content
Extras: Stand Out Even More
- Add video demos by recording a short project walkthrough for each project.
- Testimonials/Recommendations from clients colleagues, or mentors.
- Gauge how your site is performing by using analylics tools like Google Analytics.
Conclusion
Your portfolio as a software developer is an important part of your online presence, make sure you make the most of it! Building a developer portfolio might seem like a daunting task at first but by tackling the process step-by-step, you'll have a professional showcase of your skills and projects that stands out to visitors.
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