Most recently I've been spending my free time on recreating my portfolio website. It recently became a goal of mine to organize my work, files and portfolio to have everything in one place. Over the course of several years, I find that I have work on several different laptops and workspaces scattered within many different folders. I officially have an external hard drive that is organized with work from the past ten years or so, and better yet - a brand new portfolio website!
I started by sifting through the endless templates available for purchase on Theme Forest. This is a great place to find really creative templates to customize. I found one I liked and, well, could not for the life of me figure out where to start. It's been several years since I worked with code and this particular site was way more complicated than I could handle. Therefore, I went back to find a more simpler site that'd be based in HTML. I was relieved when I opened these files and they made a LOT more sense.
I ended up working in Dreamweaver with the code/design split view. I found this really helpful as I was essentially relearning how to edit code. Through lots of trial and error, I got the site to a point that I was extremely happy with. I created a few templates in Photoshop to have a consistent look to my images. I also wrote content for each project to provide additional insights into my thoughts and processes behind each design.
I stripped the website template down to the bare minimum, having only my portfolio be the landing page and a simple about me page. I can always build upon this in the future, but for now I am really pleased with the simplicity. I tested the desktop and mobile versions relentlessly as the site is built to be responsive. I plan to continue to add a few more pieces of work to it, while keeping everything up to date. It feels great to have a working website again!
I also learned about meta tags throughout this process. I don't recall twitter cards and og meta tags back when I had been designing in HTML before. This again took plenty of trial and error, but anything can be found in a good ol' Google search.
Check it out for yourself! TriciaBaugher.com
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