Please critique my portfolio!

Hello,

I started seriously learning web development in July/August. Before that I took a Java OOP class in HS and self taught C++ when I was 13. I would like to know where I am in terms of job readiness and also see how well my portfolio is put together.

My portfolio can be found at http://kylecrfahey.com.

Thanks in advance.

Nice portfolio

Here is a good list to measure yourself against:

https://forum.freecodecamp.com/t/computer-guide-get-job-ready-with-1-fcc-cert-3-projects-2-courses-and-10-books/64027?source_topic_id=67265

Nice :slight_smile:
I was looking through your github projects and I found one react app: github-battle. What does it do? :smile:
I tried it but it seems it’s not over yet.

Awesome! It would be nice to have a fixed navbar, that way you wouldn’t have to scroll back up to click on a new section. Also the text in the top image is cutoff at the end. The image slider is a nice touch by the way.

Here is my opinion:

  • I don’t recommend using bootstrap for a portfolio. Show them you can create your own responsive site and media queries without a framework.

  • Your hero img is not centered for me and it gives a bad first impression. margin: 0 auto? Link of what I see in Chrome: Image

  • You should have a smooth scroll for the nav links on your page. The instant jump is a bit apprupt.

  • On a single page layout your nav should be fixed and allow the user (aka someone who wants to hire you) to get around quickly. They arent going to spend a lot of time on your page and they want the information yesterday.

  • Viewing your first project I see this IMAGE I thought your project was broken, is it? Is that how it loads by default. I refreshed the page 5 times before reading the small text saying I need to pic a category. Don’t assume users know what to do on first visit.

  • Whats going on here: IMAGE .social-links has some weird margin-left in ems to center it? its not centered. Are you only partially using bootstrap?

  • Also I want to see your skill set on the site. Clear and easy to read. How long have you been working with said language? People want information fast especially if they have 20 other candidates to check out.

Not trying to tear you down. You should be proud of your site and projects but details matter when trying to get a job. If something is out of place its going to reflect poorly and when you are up against someone more skilled or with more experience or maybe someone with less experience who looks perfect on site and paper, this is going to hurt your chances. Best of luck and keep on progressing!

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Austin, I really really really appreciate the honest feedback. I believe that flattering words lead to very bad situations so I very much thank you for your blunt advice.

You have confirmed what I have thought for a while. I need to brush up on my CSS. Thank you!

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My thoughts:

  • Your portfolio breaks on screens larger than 1440px (Screenshot – I’m on a 1920x1080 resolution.)
  • The font colour for your nav links are too light. (Here’s the contrast b/w your nav link colours and your background color.) I notice that you use an orange colour for your social links, you could also use this on your nav? This is obviously stylistic and you don’t have to agree with me on this, but typically you want your navigation to be noticeable.
  • I noticed you were using HTML5 tags, so knowing the difference between when to use a section vs a div tag is important. For example, it’s probably more semantic to put your logo, nav and hero image in a <header> or even a <div> than a <section>. Here’s your site on HTML5 Outliner. Ideally you’d want your name to be the topmost #1 and everything else about you to be subcategories. Projects is the topmost #1 because it’s an h1 in <main>.
  • Just wondering why your about section isn’t in <main>? This is your portfolio so you want information about you to be included in your portfolio’s main content.
  • I’d suggest giving your sections a margin-bottom for some white space/visual breathing room.
  • Please don’t use headings as a way to style your text. Think of them as headings in a document and not as a way to make your text bigger or bolder.
  • This is personal, but I don’t like Bootstrap’s 14px body font size default b/c it’s usually better to leave the user’s browser font size to the default setting. I also find it too small.

Hopefully these help and that they didn’t come across as too harsh or anything.

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Thank you. Honest feedback is good feedback. Just curious, where do I use headers to style text? I’d love to fix it, but I can’t find it.

It’s good that you are so open to feedback. It is a big part of growth and learning and its always better to have more than one pair of eyes on your work. Keep your good attitude and open mind, you will go far!

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I am only going to focus on language and wording, and I hope you find it relevant.

I think you achieve a pretty good balance of speaking of past experience that led you to where you are, and adding also a few words on personal interests. But trying to think like someone looking to hire, I am not too sure I see what your specific focus for the future is. You write “… determined to dedicate myself to learning as I pursue a career in what I love.” But after that you speak no further on how that career would look like,. You mention programming of course, but that is a very wide encompassing term. What kind of programming?, What kind of projects or problems do you enjoy working with? Are you looking for employment or are you available for freelance gig? Have you done any commercial work already? You do list the technologies further down in your portfolio but they don’t tell a story of you.

I hope that gives you some thoughts on how to work on your portfolio.

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Maybe it’s just my computer, but the maps project does not come up for me.

I think it bears mentioning that our future as web developers doesn’t hinge on CSS expertise. Your other advice is spot-on, but there’s nothing wrong with using Bootstrap and other frameworks. You’re still going to have to write some custom styles to get something worth looking at. My own site uses Bootstrap and I still have several hundred lines of Sass.

I think the issue with this is where do I learn SASS? I’m struggling with that now.

I added some jQuery to automatically invoke Coffee as the default function yesterday. Maybe try again?

Sign up at CodeAcademy and take the Sass course. Keep the documentation handy.

I see you made some changes. Having the listed skills looks great. Even if they are on your resume its nice to have everything right there for viewing. Are you still working on them? Curious why cursor is pointer in that section.

Also the fixed nav may need a background: #fff; to avoid this