best way to make a website for ur portfolio?

[mr_ace]

hi, i'm trying to put together a website for my portfolio, but i have no website making experience. what's the best way to make a website? are any of the website making sites any good, or do i need to learn some new skills? how did u guys get ur first website started? thanks!

[Mike_K]

most people go with blogs I think, like www.blogspot.com

[butt_sahib]

I would definately set up a blog

Tons better what u can do with them. The userability is dandy and so is the outlook -simple and clean. The customizability is very nice too (you can choose from a plethora of desgins from the site itself or make your own if you knowo CSS).

Heres a link to show you some awesome artists here on GA and others which have a blog/blogfolio.

-Veteehrri:
http://veteehrri.blogspot.com/

-East (David o.)
http://www.davidostman.se/blog/

-Jason Lin:
http://swore-imagination.blogspot.com/

-Danny (Point pusher)
http://pointpusher.blogspot.com/

-Jason L.
http://jasonlavoie.wordpress.com/

-Thatdon
http://artbydon.wordpress.com/

-Tryforce:
http://tryforce.wordpress.com/

The list is endless ;)

Sites where you can make your own blogfolios:
- Wordpress
http://wordpress.com

-Blogspot
www.blogspot.com

-http://wordpress.org/

Or you could try makign a CGSociety portfolio. Pretty much EVERYONE has a cgs portfolio.

Ive never had the time to put mine up but i know that its a gazillion times better than what Deviantart offers tbh.

OR
You could make your own.
Its a pretty simple task. Heres what i'd do if i have to make a personal website. Get Photoshop, and get Microsoft Ascess. Use simple HTML for code and for images, use the slice functionality in photoshop
You can google it and youll find tons of websites telling you how to make your site and how to publish/

The main emphasis on your design and layout in both the cases would be simplicity and excessive accessibility :)

Good luck

[Mogster]

personaly i dont think a blog makes for a good portfolio page, for news updating folks to your daily doings and going's on maby, but id say sooner take some time and produce a nice gallery, imagine you'r an employer, some thing nice clean and simple, easy to navigate.

[Dario]

well, whats easier to navigate than a blog?

i was thinking about an decent online portfolio too recently, and i really like the wordpress functions, but i wonder how the copyright works there? do they host all my content for me? and for which price? price - meaning, theres something i have to give back. copyrights or "not for commecial use", but i would use it as portfolio. very commercial in my eyes.

[frigi]

Wordpress indeed is really nice but I'd advise you to host it by yourself anyways. If you let them do it you are going to deal with quite a few restrictions and they will get in the way sooner or later (sooner being way more likely).

But I'd say just a blog alone won't work perfectly well as a portfolio in the long run. The thing is: Pretty much every portfolio you see out there is basically consisting of some thumbnails one next to the other and everything on one or just a few page(s). (Or at least something that works in a compareable way.) With a blog on the other hand you have a different sort of navigation especially once it gets a bit crowdy. It's not really a bad thing but definately uncommon and it might distract some folks that better don't be distracted from viewing your work by letting them klick around instead of having everything there at first glance.

That being said I think a good way to do it is just setting up a blog as usual but also make a seperate folio page -> that way you easily get the benefits of both.

[YdoUwant2know]

My two cents would be to make what ever you are comfortable with.

For my site, I used Flash. The reason, more than anything, is that I understand, and know how to use Flash.

Personally, I'm not much of an html guy. I know enough to get me by, but I'm not web programmer. I can crank out a website in photoshop and dreamweaver, but ask me to hard code an html site or set up a php data base and it is not going to happen.

I'm not a fan of the blog style layout. It's nice and all, but I just feel creating your own site shows one more level of professionalism. It lets you add your own creativity.

I have many friends however, that completely disagree with me. They made there sites by hard coding html or using Blogs because that is what works for them. They used what they were comfortable with.

As for creating a simple gallery of your work. Don't forget you can set up a gallery right here on GameArtisans for free.

[mr_ace]

thanks guys for all your suggestions. i had a look at the blog sites, and some of those ones that were linked too seem pretty good, so i may try and create one in a month or so. i currently have a free website but i find it quite restrictive at times. please go to it and tell me what you think, its www.peteradamson.webeden.co.uk. It has a lot of limitations, and i appreciate that having your own website shows professionalism an what not, but at the ensd of the day, i'm an artist, not a programmer so i really shouldn't have to know how to code html. i know absoloutely no html lol. but yea, please let me know what you think of my site, and suggest some improvements. thanks!

[GOGO]

I use fireworks and cyberduck for ftp uploading. Fireworks simply lets you create page's like an image (keeping in mind fireworks is a vector graphic design suite), then you use a slicing tool to create buttons and links. Ive made sites with flash and html and this method is by far the easiest, blog sites are recommended for the completely novice I would say.

Your site works really nicely, everything is on show straight away and the navigation is simple, the typography is clear. My only gripe would be to change your "about me" section to "CV or Resume" and invest in loosing those adds (I guess you know that already :P)

[LowRez]

theres only one rule in my opinion....

make sure your best artwork is clearly visible as soon as the webpage loads...

First impressions of your ARTISIC ABILITY are what will get an art lead to look through your gallary closely, I'd want to see your best piece of work on the front page so I can see what you can do, YOU HAVE ABOUT 30 seconds max to impress people these days so don't waste time, show your best!!!

then with a single click "gallary" button linking me to your gallary page which will be thumbnailed so I can see what i'm opening. which will have renders, and in max/maya screenshots of wireframes and also some texture flats if you want to be a modeller.

On top of that get an art friend to look through your portfolio and cut the crap and average out, Alot of people seem to think more is better, but in reality if you show me lots of work and half is good and half is bad, i'd think you were possibly inconsitant... your better off just having 5-10 great pieces of work than 20 -50 average to bad works clouding the good stuff out. only a few really talented artists have pages and pages rammed with quality, like bi11 and poopinmymouth for example, the rest of us have pages with only our top quality pieces on, 1. it saves time for the art lead looking at the portfolio and 2. it shows you can critique yourself and have an eye for quality just putting your best up...

Also I dont want to open a page and read about how you and your mates played basketball and partied all weekend, so keep crap like that on your myspace page. You can mention your hobbies on your cv.