What I Learned While Building My Portfolio – Shaswat Acharya

Lessons, Tips, and Insights from Refining My Personal Portfolio:

Hello! I’m Shaswat Acharya, a frontend developer and CSIT student from Nepal.

Over the past few months, I’ve been refining my personal portfolio website. When I first started, I followed a tutorial on YouTube as a beginner, but gradually I added my own touch, making it more interactive, accessible, and visually engaging.

Here are some key lessons I discovered along the way:

1. Personalization Makes a Difference

Even small design tweaks can make your portfolio stand out. Some of the features I added include:

Custom cursor animation for a modern and interactive feel.
Back-to-top button for smoother navigation.
Light/Dark theme toggle to accommodate user preferences.

2. SEO and Online Discoverability

A portfolio is only effective if people can find it. I implemented:

Meta descriptions, keywords, and Open Graph tags for social sharing.
Structured data (schema.org) for better search engine understanding.
Proper favicon and web manifest for mobile devices.

These steps helped my portfolio appear in search results for my name, alongside my GitHub and Dev.to profiles.

3. Organize Assets and Code Cleanly

Good folder structure and naming conventions matter. I keep images, scripts, and styles neatly organized:

assets/
  images/
  scripts/
  styles/
index.html
site.webmanifest

This makes it easier to maintain and scale your projects.

This structure also makes it easier to add new features as my portfolio grows and evolves.

4. Testing Across Devices

Responsiveness is crucial. I made sure to test my portfolio on:

Desktop and laptop screens
Tablets
Mobile devices

Even small adjustments in CSS media queries dramatically improved the user experience on different screen sizes.

5. Continuous Learning

Every update and tweak taught me more about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Documenting and sharing these experiments not only strengthens my own understanding but can also guide other developers who are building their portfolios.

I hope these insights are useful for anyone creating their first or second portfolio. The main takeaway is simple: start with a clean base, iterate regularly, and personalize it to reflect your style and skills.

Explore the full code and structure of my portfolio on GitHub: Shaswat Acharya Portfolio Code