Most developers I know, myself included, built a portfolio once and then let it quietly rot. Six months pass, you've shipped a bunch of stuff, learned a new framework, contributed to three open source projects. Your portfolio still says you're "currently exploring TypeScript."
The problem isn't laziness. It's that keeping a portfolio updated is a chore that never feels urgent until you actually need it.
So what are the realistic options? I wanted to lay out four approaches I've either tried or watched other devs try, with honest trade-offs for each.
1. Manual Updates (The Classic)
You build a portfolio site with Gatsby, Hugo, plain HTML, whatever. You deploy it. You tell yourself you'll update it every month.
Pros: Total control over every pixel. No vendor lock-in. You can show off your design taste.
Cons: Nobody actually updates monthly. The friction is just high enough that it never happens. After a year, your "recent projects" section is older than some of your npm packages.
Best for: Designers who treat the portfolio itself as a showcase piece and enjoy tweaking it regularly.
2. GitHub Profile README as Portfolio
GitHub profile READMEs got popular fast. You can embed stats, pin repos, add badges. Some people have turned theirs into genuinely impressive pages.
Pros: Lives where your code already lives. Free. Some dynamic elements with GitHub Actions.
Cons: Still needs manual editing when you want to change the narrative. Limited layout options. Recruiters who aren't technical may not find it or know how to read it. No custom domain, no analytics, no way to know if anyone actually looked at it.
Best for: Developers whose audience is primarily other developers who are already on GitHub.
3. Builder Platforms (Notion, Polywork, Read.cv, etc.)
These give you a nice-looking page fast. Some have integrations. Most are drag-and-drop or form-based.
Pros: Quick to set up. Look polished without writing CSS. Social features on some platforms.
Cons: Your portfolio doesn't reflect your actual coding activity. You still have to log in and manually add projects, update skills, change descriptions. Many are generic and not really built for developers specifically. Some lock features behind paywalls that feel steep for what you get.
Best for: People who want something live today and don't mind periodic manual maintenance.
4. Auto-Synced Portfolio (GitHub as Source of Truth)
This is the approach I ended up building getfolio.dev around, so I'll be transparent about my bias. The idea: your portfolio pulls live data from your GitHub profile. Contribution graphs, repo stats, language breakdowns, stars. When you push code, your portfolio reflects it without you doing anything.
Pros: Zero maintenance once set up. Your portfolio is always accurate because it mirrors real activity. Themes designed specifically for developer work. Custom domains, privacy-first analytics, blog sync from DEV.to or Hashnode. Setup takes about 60 seconds.
Cons: You're trusting a third party with your portfolio's uptime. If your GitHub activity has gaps (contract work in private repos, for instance), your portfolio might look sparse in ways that don't represent you fairly. Less visual customization than building from scratch. You're trading control for convenience.
Best for: Developers who want an accurate, maintained portfolio without adding "update portfolio" to their task list ever again.
What I Actually Recommend
There's no single right answer. I've seen devs do well with a beautiful hand-built site they actually keep fresh. A GitHub README can be surprisingly effective if your audience knows where to look.
But for most working developers, the honest reality is that manual updates just don't happen. If your portfolio has been stale for 6+ months, the best approach is whichever one removes the friction that caused it to go stale in the first place.
That's why I built getfolio around GitHub sync. Not because the other approaches are bad, but because I kept watching the same pattern repeat across dev communities. Great portfolio goes live, gets attention for a week, then slowly becomes a fossil.
Pick the approach that matches your actual behavior, not your aspirational behavior.
Originally published on getfolio.dev.
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