Which Personal Portfolio To Use? - Updated!

McAfee said “no bueno - too risky” on the link to your second site, so I’ve only looked at the first one. My personal portfolio is terrible, so take my advice with a heap of salt, but I wouldn’t even be worrying about a portfolio until you have two or three projects that you’re really proud of. I mean ones that, when you began, you thought “Nah, eff this. This is too hard; I’m going back to digesting You Tube tutorials.”, yet you stuck with and finished, with a final product that made you kind of strut around your room and say “Yeah, I built that s*#t.”

2 Likes

If this: https://willjw3.github.io/ is your portfolio site, I’d say it looks pretty good :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Thanks. But, I really need to get some more significant projects up on it.

3 Likes

@brandon_wallace Looks like the custom one is winning.
10 votes for custom
5 votes for freeCodeCamp version
3 votes for the mixture

2 Likes

Somewhat mixed feelings here.
I would strongly recommend to get rid off the sound on custom. Nothing, and I mean nothing makes me close a page faster than getting unexpected sound - even more so in professional environment. If I got your CV, and I opened your portfolio, I’d close it the moment it started blasting my speakers (in fact I did exactly that when I first came to answer this post). Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it feels really, really unprofessional.

Now that I got this out the system ;), and managed to turn this clinging off, onto the actual “view” on the page.

  • custom version, even with sound off, is still much “bolder” than FCC. The colour, sharp edges and all - this kind of thing can be pulled off, and may make you stand out - but it may also work to your disadvantage if you encounter someone more “traditionally minded”. So up to you if it’s worth the risk. Perhaps stick to sharper edges/fonts but on somewhat more balanced colour palette? Or if you want to stick to red, make it somewhat less bold in terms of font size, edges etc. ? It just feels like perhaps it is a little bit “too much”.
  • I would also put a bit more content over the fold - at least the skills section, just to make sure that it is immediately noticeable, without the need to scroll.
  • what I really do like about the custom is that you present projects with quick “summary” of tech - rather than just screenshots that don’t tell you much, which you have on FCC version.

Overall, there is a lot of potential in the custom one, just remember it is the first impression someone will have of you as a professional. Make sure it comes across that way.

2 Likes

I agree, but I don’t hear anything…

2 Likes

Lucky you :wink: It’s a weird bells thing, coming from a .js file. Maybe you have an auto-block in your browser.

  const sound = new Audio("audio/tinkle-lisa-redfern-1916445296.mp3");
  sound.play();
2 Likes

No, there’s no auto-block. But now I see it says it’s playing audio, maybe my headphones are bad. Let me try other ones…
edit: yes, it was my headphones. Now I gear hear (edit: lol some typo :rofl:) it, and it kind of startled me… :astonished:

2 Likes

Both are cool, I’d mix 'em up somehow.
But please don’t play any sound effect - some users will find it very annoying.

2 Likes

@cryptographicfool Thank you for taking the time to view my work and leaving the useful feedback.
I will work on the project containers, putting them in rows on the custom portfolio was too easy.
I did have a hover effect on the tiles but it acted weird on mobile view so I removed it.
The navbar I had before was removed in favor of a cleaner one page design. I could add it back.
The font blinking effect is just a few lines of Javascript. I add each letter to an array, each letter in the array has a class added to it that causes a keyframe animation, the pattern is random.

2 Likes

@willjw3 Thank you for the feedback.

I am proud of the projects that I have created. They are written from scratch, no templates, no CSS frameworks, they are mobile friendly. I wrote the Javascript for the Chess Clock after going through only one Javascript tutorial and doing a lot of Internet searches. I was surprised it worked.
By the way, your portfolio is NOT terrible. I dig the color combination.

And, I am wondering why McAfee thinks my website is a risk. What did the message say? Was it the certificate?

1 Like

@lilianaziolek Thanks so much for viewing my projects. The feedback is very insightful.

Lol. Sound is gone.
I was wondering what people would think of the sound. I used it because no one else has done it. I thought it was cool that, by total coincidence, that the sound I found and the blinking font effect both stop at the same time.

The color red does evoke certain feelings in people such as love and danger, passion and rage, etc, etc. That is why stop signs, stop lights are red, Valentine’s hearts are red, red roses are popular on Valentine’s day. It may be too bright of a color. Hmmm….I’ll consider changing it to blue which is a more soothing color or perhaps burgundy or purple.

About the bold design, I am a creative person. I would lean more towards clients that appreciate creativity. I remember websites that are more out of the ordinary. Check out the awwwards.com, it has some of the craziest websites I have ever seen. The creativity I have seen on there blows my website out of the water.

@jugges Lol. The sound is gone.

2 Likes

I could tell that you were, and you should be. My comment was in no way an indictment of your work; my general advice to everyone (including to myself) is to go beyond thinking about “junior dev” jobs.

My comment about my own portfolio has to do with the kind of job offers I’ve received. For example, I’ve got a mock e-commerce site on there as a project, and from that I received an offer to work for an e-commerce web consulting/web marketing company building shopping carts. I tried it out, but it looked like they were going to keep my role limited while they hired someone else for a full-time position, which they did. He was also an entry-level developer with no professional experience, but they gave him a much larger role. When we worked together, it seemed we had roughly the same skill set. It seemed the main difference between us was that he had several outstanding projects in his portfolio, ambitious and well-done. I soon left that job to focus on building up my skill set using tech I was really interested in, and then building projects with that tech that would impress. That’s where I’m at now. I’ve made a few open source contributions and little by little more and more people are reaching out to me. I’m guessing that when I finally get around to updating my portfolio with the projects I’ve worked on over the last six months, I’ll have a better chance to receive more meaningful job offers.
Anyway, enough about me…

McAfee just said it was slightly risky, and I have a weak stomach, so I didn’t accept the risk.

3 Likes

Maybe because of the sound that came when you first loaded it? He might have thought it would really startle you. But, Brandon removed that.

2 Likes

Still get the warning, though.

2 Likes

Maybe the text flickering?

2 Likes

I don’t know what type of device potential employers are looking at your portfolio on but codepen does not work on iPads no matter the browser.

2 Likes

If I may, I had something to add about the chess clock page.
The app works very well indeed but there are a few things that you could easily implement in order to make the user experience a bit better on the front end side. I think this could be a good tool if the front end is at par with the functionality of the program. :slight_smile:

  • On the main page, the buttons are right at the edge of the page bottom, you could consider adding some bottom margin to the buttons so that these look a little better.
  • You could consider wrapping the app within a container that has its size limited to the viewport. (Maybe I am wrong on the terminology)
  • On the quotes page, I can see that you were going for the checker board style by using negative space and alternating the containers for the quotes, however it involves a lot of scrolling to read one line sentences. You could consider using inverted colors to keep the checkerboard pattern and have the quotes side by side.
  • On the About page, again you could add a bottom margin to the container (similar to how it is on the links page) because it is right at the edge right now.
  • Lastly, because there is a lot of scrolling happening on the links page, it would make sense to have the navbar visible throughout so as to make is easier for the end user to navigate to other pages.

You have some very good work going on and I am really excited to see the projects you come up with in the future. Maybe you are already aware of all these things and have just moved on to other projects, and that is all right. Remember that the feedback is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt and you do you. :wink:

2 Likes

Hi @brandon_wallace, you’re welcome :slight_smile: Ultimately, a lot depends on what your goal is, what priorities you have for your job (assuming that’s what your portfolio is built for). In extreme case, you may want to build two portfolios - one more “toned down” with which you apply for more “traditional” jobs (e.g. to bigger / older companies), and one “bold” which you might apply with for a crazy hipster startup :wink:

1 Like

@cryptographicfool Thanks so much for the feedback. You are the best.

  • what is the resolution of your screen? I could shrink the height of the two player divs since there is a little extra space there.
  • yes. you are using the correct terminology when you say “viewport”. I understand what you mean. Good idea.
  • checkerboard pattern for the quotes is a great idea!!! The only reason why I did it like I did is so that the background blurry checkerboard image would show though. It ties the website together since all pages have the same background.
    I am working on other exciting projects now that involve both the frontend and backend. It will be nice to have a few fully functioning applications.

@lilianaziolek Thank you for taking the time to offer your advice. It is nice to get the perspective of other people. Not everybody thinks the same way. It is nice to have this forum to discuss our projects.

1 Like