When you begin developing applications on your own for the first time, I would argue one of the first things that you do is build a portfolio website. Maybe you’re entering the job market for the first time and need to show off your skills. Or, perhaps you want to practice using a new tool, framework, or service.
While developing your portfolio is a great way to build up your development chops, in this post I’m going to outline some thoughts on why you might NOT want to build your portfolio and opt for using a site-building service instead.
Time & Effort
Developing any application on your own takes a lot of time and effort. One advantage over using an existing service (you’ve heard of them: Squarespace, Wix, Carrd, etc.) is that you’ll save a great deal of time when creating your portfolio. You might be thinking, “Exactly what I want! More practice!” While this is true, you could ask yourself, is that what you want to be practicing?
I would argue that at a point in your web development journey, you’re going to be practicing lower-level skills when making a portfolio. Of course, when you are brand new to web development, you need to practice layouts, styles, flexbox, grid, and all the things. Once you get these concepts down, however, I would argue there is no need to continually “practice” these skills. The world of web development is constantly evolving, and you’ll always have opportunities to practice the basics as you build…well, anything. Why spend time on a simple portfolio when you could spend time on something more complex?
Professional Design
Are you a professional designer? Maybe! But what if you are not? I for one am not a professional designer. Sure, I can make some cool layouts, but it only takes a quick Google Image search of unique or inspiring designs to remind myself that there are individuals out there in the world who are way more adept at creating compelling visual layouts or thinking of new ways to make information stand out in a sea of similar design.
So, could you design your own site? Sure! But chances are for most of us, that’s not our forte. There is a reason companies have UI, UX, and graphic designers working for them. Using a service allows you to avoid competing (visually) with what some of the best out there can do, and allows you more time to focus on developing your skills elsewhere.
Accessibility and User-Friendliness
One huge advantage to using a website building service for your site is that it’s almost guaranteed to be more accessible and user-friendly. Any good developer should have the capacity to create accessible websites and create a user-friendly UI, but that takes time. All that time you spend trying to make your site fit an endless amount of screen sizes could be a good practice at some point, but is it always the best way to spend your time? Maybe you have a side project that needs the same attention, and simply offloading that work for your site can allow you to use the same skills elsewhere, where you get more bang for your buck (time-wise).
Cost-Effectiveness
You might assume that using a service is going to cost more money than just making a simple. Honestly, that’s probably true if you generate a static site. However, quite often there is a lot of overhead with ensuring your static site is hosted somewhere that allows you to use a custom domain, or involves a lot of time taken when you need to rebuild your website or make a change.
This essentially brings us back to my first point, again, time and effort. While it’s possible to make a site for free, it’s almost always going to take you much more time to manage it yourself than to pay a couple of bucks a month for a service that is going to guarantee that x, y, and z are always up and running.
Consider a simple contact form. You’re going to need a whole email API or rely on some funky form feature (like Netlify forms) that lets you roundabout receive information from a submitted form. Not super elegant. Free? Yes. Easy? Debatable.
TLDR; Focus on higher-level projects
At the end of the day, my argument is this:
The purpose of a portfolio is for someone to be able to see your work, get some basic info about you, and perhaps contact you. While all of these features are essential to learn and be comfortable with developing yourself, it’s not very “high-leverage,” meaning…it’s pretty simple at the end of the day. Creating these features from scratch can take a good deal of time and oversight, so once you CAN do this on your own, it’s time to work on more complex projects that will stretch and grow you as a developer. Chances are, you’re still going to be continually creating everything you’d include on a portfolio site anyway.
So should you make your own portfolio? Maybe? But it might be time to question whether or not you waste time reworking portfolios constantly instead of spending your time challenging yourself in other ways.
Bonus: What I’m Using
So, what do I use, and why?
Currently, my portfolio site is built on carrd.co. I first discovered this site when looking for a simple landing page for my wife. Turns out, it was a great platform for a simple portfolio. I didn’t want my projects on my site, so much as a landing page for contact, resume, and forwarding anyone who finds it to where I have my actual projects (like Github).
If I wanted to have some example projects, I could easily add a few.
If I wanted a blog, videos, or something else, I’d probably go with something else like SquareSpace, although it’s more expensive and I don’t need/care for those features.
At the end of the day, it’s simple, but it took me about 20 minutes to get set up and now I have all the time in the day to work on other side projects, Leetcode challenges, or go outside.
Top comments (15)
I'll keep my opinion simple. If a person isn't willing to invest themselves, how can they expect an employer to invest their money into them either?
In today's world you have to stand out. There's a 17 year old kid that got hired by a YouTuber I watch. Why did he hire the kid? Because he had a decent set of projects well-documented on github, and he had a website where everything could be presented to the employer easily in a way that makes sense to them (UX Design).
My point is I get tons of spam messages and emails, "hey will you please hire me?", and me asking for the link to their website. Oh, don't have one.
So a person who wants top create a website for me, doesn't have one for themselves..? Ya, no. Just doesn't make sense to me.
I would definitely agree if the type of work you're trying to get is creating portfolios for others, yes, you need something to show off yourself. I might argue that 17 year old kid's Github was more influential on getting the actual job. (Of course, I have no idea about the YouTube/kid I'm jut speculating.). But imagine a great portfolio...then his Github is a hot mess. Ehh, not so impressive.
I think my main argument is that portfolios don't typically even require many skills that a dev would need to make a larger application. API's, auth, things like that. For many years I maintained my own site but ultimately I have limited time and want to spend it on projects that are higher leverage for me. Maybe it's the same for others.
I think it's perspective as well. Since Im coming out of a digital marketing background I learned a few things most people don't. Even today, I made sure before my site was launched that I had a branding kit completed. As developers we live to code, I'd rather not be around people, it's not that I don't like them, I just prefer the company of my lappy or my PC (yes, they both have names) to people who, well let's be honest, are just interested in everything I'm not😂
My point tho, I've seen amazing developers create insanely amazing projects, and they all died, and the reason for every single one, "they just couldn't get it to take off". But the facts were, it was either a poor marketing strategy or a no marketing strategy that killed them.
Your portfolio is your elevator pitch, you bedazzle them, for UX you need to show you understand everything from ten beginning (market research) to the end (product launch and user testing), and how you adapted and controversial ideas or information were found in the middle.
A portfolio takes time, but you know who has a portfolio? So far from what I've seen, every person at Google😎🚀😉
Most of us invest 3 or 4 years already on getting a computer science degree. Even more for people with a master degree.
We are also investing a lot of time to get certifications. Fullstack developers get certifications in technical analysis, Agile, DevOps, security in software, testing, UI/UX (yes, even for fullstack developers!), etc... It's the same for ui/ux and frontend developers, even if for them it's usually less.
On top of that, we have to be up to date, read books, articles about IT... all in our free time.
So i think that there are other priorities compared to portfolios
I don't have a degree, but a lot of practice as a web developer, and I invested a lot of time in learning and research - and in building my portfolio website as well.
Hey, if you ever need any help, reach out. I just got my small site up, starting on my projects next, I have a few free ones I'm going to be working on. Anyways, the more the merrier. Cheers mate.
Here's the start (still under construction so he gentle) of my portfolio/CV site. 😊 baysia.dev
I fail to see where you have no time to build a portfolio🤷🏻♀️ I mean the whole reason I came back to development after teaching and running a digital marketing agency, is so I could do all of those things. And on top of all of thoae, I'm slowly creating a YouTube Channel, running my social media on 4 platforms, I do all of my own graphic design work right now, and I have a wife and a 4 year old I love dearly.
My apologies, but if you find reading about tech, sharing what you've learned with others, and spending every moment you can i your own personal playground. Mmmmm, perhaps this just wasn't the life for you. But me, Thats the reason I do it🥰😂
My thoughts on it are that building a portfolio website from scratch on your own by coding it not only helps you learn new things but also, it serves as a plus point to tell someone that "you" built that website completely on your own. Updating it regularly will surely keep you in toucb with latest trends.
Totally true. I maintained my own site for years. One built on Next.js, then one on Gatsby. Finally one with Redwood.js. At the same time, I've got way more complex things goin on in personal projects using the same frameworks, and other personal projects that I like to use to dabble in new tech/frameworks. For myself, I have limited time so I choose to maintain and update those projects instead of spending time on the 4th iteration of a personal site. I think coding in general helps you learn new things, so why prioritize portfolios?
I should just write another post on why it's not a waste of time! ha
Glad you took the comment positively and understood opinion 😀
It's never a waste of time, it can be a really great to showcase you skills and easy to share info about you instead of handing over pdfs and all.
I think if you're handing out PDF's...spending time to make your own site is very worth it. Of course you can always make it NOT a waste of time by dedicating yourself to incorporating challenging new features/frameswork/whatever. At the same time, I know many people with no personal sites. Some personal sites are just landing pages. I think with sites like that, it is probably more beneficial to spent time on other side projects, assuming you could actually show those off as well. If you can't show anything you've worked on....yeah you need a portfolio.
Ask all of a owners of portfolio websites out here siteinspire.com/websites?categorie.... I personally built my web-dev portfolio on Astro, you don’t even need to use any of frameworks, because it’s based on Markdown, lots of boilerplates to start your portfolio landing page as fast as possible
Astro.new has a pretty good selection of templates. Great for static sites. Just FYI if you still wanted to flex some react muscles or write some code.
Great post gives me a lot to think about.