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Payton Pierce
Payton Pierce

Posted on • Edited on

Portfolio Review

After spending a long time looking at inspirations, playing around with ideas, and self-doubting, I think I'm finally happy with my portfolio.

I'm definitely on the newbie side of the developer spectrum, so I know that my projects themselves aren't anything to write home about, but I would be very appreciative of any feedback that I can get! And that includes anything from design to best coding practices to ways to improve the projects I have listed.

Dev.to has been a fantastic resource for me in my learning process and I look forward to any constructive criticism I can get from this awesome community!

Here is the link to the portfolio website!

Oldest comments (43)

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nardove profile image
Ricardo Sanchez

Nice one!

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makampos profile image
Matheus de Campos

This portfolio show me what you are, amazing job!
Keep building with anothers stuff.

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece • Edited

Great job on your website. I like the creative concept with the terminal UI and desktop icon tabs. Taking into consideration that you're a newbie, even though the site is a little bit rough around the edges, but the style and the idea makes up for it, in my opinion. Those rough edges will smooth out as you get more experienced, so keep at it. It takes time to learn how to create truly delightful, performant and smooth UI.

Here is some advice:

  • "About me" in the nav doesn't really need to be a dropdown
  • Nav text contrast on the homepage might be poor (white text on light gradient background). You can use many tools out there to check
  • Avoid hamburger menu on mobile if you can. Save users an extra click (or tap) by having a fixed nav with all links present
  • Your "PJ" logo can also be a link to homepage. I've instinctively kept clicking on the link, but nothing happened.
  • "Hiring" page feels a bit empty when it's opened. Maybe have one of the tabs active by default?

It reminds me a lot how I started out (I've also used Bootstrap when starting out). I've actually wrote a post here about my own personal website and how I've changed it and improved it through the years. Maybe you can get some ideas or see what you can apply to your own.

Great job, keep learning and experimenting and good luck!

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paytoncodes profile image
Payton Pierce

Thank you so much for taking the time to offer so much feedback!
Once I have a handle on React and React Router, I'm hoping to improve the performance and get everything to load nice and easy.

I will definitely change the navigation to remove the dropdown, add a home link to the "PJ" logo and improve contrast, and I'll definitely play around with the mobile menu to see if I can avoid the hamburger menu.

Additionally, I love the suggestion to have one of the tabs open by default, I can definitely implement that.

Thank you for sharing your post about the improvements you've made to your own personal website over time -- I really appreciate that you emphasized the details of the things you were missing, such as lazy loading, code minification, and image optimization. It's nice to see actual examples I can research rather than just "you need to improve your performance" lol, as well as seeing the progression you made in your tech stack over the years.

You mentioned that you used Bootstrap when starting out. Do you recommend getting away from CSS frameworks? Or is there another one that you prefer?

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you, glad you found the article useful and I'm happy to help! I really wanted to put things into perspective and show how you can be a code newbie and still create awesome stuff, but how your projects can progress over time.

I'm using CSS frameworks for fast prototyping on my own projects, when I want to focus more on functionality and have a nice UI out of the box and not to worry about it. For my personal site, I'd like to showcase my skills, so I prefer having a custom-built CSS. Also, custom built CSS might be lower in size because it would (ideally) only contain styles that are used on the site.

I've also heard a lot of good things about Tailwind, so I recommend checking that one out too.

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mzaini30 profile image
Zen • Edited

What if you add a router to your portfolio. So, it does not reload all assets when moving pages. 🙂👍

I use router (Vue Router) for my Jekyll-based blog: mzaini30.js.org.

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paytoncodes profile image
Payton Pierce

Thank you for this great suggestion! I am just starting to move into JS Frameworks and once I get a handle on React and React Router, I will definitely be utilizing it.

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mzaini30 profile image
Zen

What is different Vue + router with React + router?

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paytoncodes profile image
Payton Pierce

I don't think there's a big difference between the router functionalities overall, just that I prefer the React framework rather than the Vue framework :)

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mzaini30 profile image
Zen

Thanks. I'll try React later.

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thetwgeorge profile image
Thomas George | 1st Phorm

I love your portfolio! Especially the dark mode in your projects!

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shravyachepa profile image
Shravya Chepa

This website is amazing 👌🏻 Very creative and beautiful. 🤩
Me too! I'm a newbie in this developer world too! And I got introduced to it by a Udemy course on full stack web development!
You have inspired me to build a portfolio website of my own!

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paytoncodes profile image
Payton Pierce

Thank you! I will definitely reconfigure the navigation to stand out more :) And sorry about that! Is it super loud? I might have to see if I can make the default volume a little lower haha.

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venkateshr407 profile image
Venkatesh.R

Awesome 👌🏻

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hasone profile image
HasOne

I'm impressed by your portfolio website, I appreciate your creativity, your efforts, and your love for it!

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zeecnla profile image
Cesar Melchor

Hey Paton. Initial thoughts it that it looks incredible. I like the gradient and the aligning of everything looks great. Very creative portfolio website. Make me want to redo mine to be more fun XD.