Hi, This is my finished portfolio Any comments/thoughts on this? I decided to “publish” it because I felt proud. but, I really don’t want that feeling to take over and always strive for improvement.
So, Please critically comment on this, because I would like to continuously push what I can do.
You can (if you want) connect your answer to:
Is really finishing the responsive web course impact my chance of landing a job? and based on what I did in the portfolio, will company HR deem me “worthy”? because I feel the need to land a job already because of personal situation, but it might be too early?.
You mention in your portfolio, that you are a web developer and you create professional websites. But all of your projects are the FCC responsive design pages on codepen.
If you are going to mention that you build professional sites, then we should see it on your portfolio. Not class projects.
In the about section you mention that you are interested in software development. That is a little vague to me. It doesn’t really add anything to the page IMO.
You also list off all the languages you have worked with but it would be nice to see some projects where you have used those languages. Right now, all I see is html and css.
You also mention that you are interested in learning some front end frameworks. I think you are going to significantly increase you chances of getting hired if you know a tech stack like the MERN stack.
For your github, it doesn’t show a lot of activity. Since you are self taught without a cs degree showing employers that you are active in other projects (like open source) can work in your favor.
I don’t think you’re quite ready yet but I think you can definitely get there.
Here is what I would do in the mean time to get ready for jobs.
Research like crazy! Comb through the forum and read posts from people who have gotten jobs and what they did. Read through FCC news articles. There is so much information on how to prepare for your first entry level job but you have to seek out that information.
Create a stellar resume. There are a ton of great articles on FCC news on how to write a resume that gets noticed.
Add projects to your resume that are a little more detailed than the FCC responsive projects. Again look at other junior dev portfolios and see what projects they have.
Start preparing for technical interviews. I would suggest getting the cracking the coding interview. It is very detailed.
Hi. Those are some really good eye. It’s really evident I have no idea about the industry yet. But, hey, thank you so much for those. I have kind of noticed the portfolio still lacked substance. It was all effects. And, also, I have seen how misleading the portfolio I have.
Nevertheless, thank you so much for these. I’ve thought a lot about my portfolio and what else to include. I even considered it “current best” but you gave a WHOLE AREA that I could focus on that I was so blind of.
I’d like to be able to get constructive criticism always, and It’s just too rare for me to encounter these. From articles, I get ideas, in fact I did read a lot(?), but that’s a one sided learning and felt incomplete.
This site is really great!
Hi, I have claimed the certification, so I have disabled it. but I will, if need be! Thank you!
If you came up with the design on your own you obviously have a bit of a designers eye in you. The usage of lines and boxes is really interesting.
I’m not a designer myself but I’ve worked alongside them long enough to know how to spot a few things.
Scrolls inside scrolls is usually a bad user experience (although rules can be broken)
The flashing text at the top is distracting and makes reading difficult
Not sure if the flicker or flash is intentional but for me I see the font switches back and forth and everytime the font switches there’s a brief moment where the page flashes
The arrows should really be SVG icons. You’ll get a much better look out of them and controlling the position will be easier. A lot of the arrows look like they’re butted up too close to their surrounding elements
Hovering over the “start a project” button causes the page to shift slightly as you add the border-bottom. You could fix this by always having a border and adjusting the color of all 4 sides on hover to match the look you want. This way the button itself won’t be changing size on hover
The project section is difficult to read on mobile. Having breathing room is an important part of good design but on mobile you also want to make the best use of space on small screen. The container where your projects are listed has too much margin for mobile, and then inside that container there’s too much padding. The width of a project thumbnail ends up being half the width of the phone.
As a sub-point to this, the text under each thumbnail should probably be a little bigger, but is also a good indicator of how much space your thumbnail should be taking inside that container.
From a portfolio perspective I see a few things that should be addressed as well.
Personally I would not link to Codepen when you’re trying to showcase that you build professional websites. It’s OK to not own a domain for your projects but I would host them somewhere like GitHub pages or Netlify (I prefer Netlify). It’s free, and easier than you might think but it adds a level of professionalism to your portfolio that I think is important.
Tell me more about your projects. What was your thought process? Why did you choose the tech you did? What skills were you trying to demonstrate? Which skills were you purposely omitting? If you wanted to go the extra mile you could even link to a blog post that gives a bit of a case study for each project.
@jwilkins.oboe Already touched on this, but FCC projects as-is seem no different than class projects at school. Nothing wrong with showcasing them! But now that you met the requirements for the certificate, I would revisit those projects with your new skills and see how you can expand upon them. Make them something that’s not just a class project but something that shows you know what you’re doing (even if that’s just at a junior level of proficiency).
Lastly, I would add the dressing so to speak. This means adding a favicon and adding the correct meta tags for SEO and link sharing at the least. If I share a link to your site in Slack for example, I expect to see slack “unfurl” that link with a description and image. If your site came up in a google search I expect to see a title and description. If you ever add more pages there should be a sitemap for search engine crawlers. These are small things that set apart a class project from a professional website.
Keep in mind that it’s normal for this to be an ongoing process. I recently redid my portfolio site and it’s very much an MVP and violates some of the points I made. I plan to keep iterating and improving on it but I wanted to start with something extremely simple and play with Gatsby https://www.danjfletcher.com/
Also, I hope this doesn’t seem spammy but I actually uploaded a YouTube video that shows exactly how to take your Codepen projects and host them on Netlify .
I wouldn’t self-promote my own content normally but it’s the only video I know of that addresses this exact scenario and I specifically made it knowing people working on the FCC curriculum have this exact pain point.
I like the design, eye-catching and dynamic. The refresh “flash” for the initial screen is a bit stressful
I found the vertical scrolling of the projects within a box a bit annoying, as I use my mouse scrollwheel to move down the page. Maybe change to a slider or else just let the project section out of it’s box?
I would also suggest eliminating the scrollbar for the skills boxes in the about section.
Hey! These are really interesting points. I will keep these in mind. Especially, the point you made that Professionalism in the portfolio AND projects I showcase has to shine. Even tackling the SEO and meta tags. Those are really good point I didn’t think of. I will definitely have to learn about them too!
Thank you for this. I will use this very website as a guide to improve not just the portfolio I have but also the methods I practice as a developer. THAT is how helpful this community is to me. The website could singlehandedly help newbies such as me, it’s almost like curated for us.
Additionally, I really am in need of employment, so I’m shamelessly asking please connect with me if ever I am potentially a fit for a developer role OR intern OR anything that would help me earn. Thank you.
.
