Free Online Portfolio Services
Just the other day, I was asked by a friend whether I could suggest a way for her to easily show her design portfolio on the web. I’ve been asked this before, and have since taken some time to research portfolio website services so that when I’m asked again, I’ll be armed with a good answer.
It turns out there are a lot of these kinds of services. It’s the kind of thing that makes a web developer think ‘why didn’t I think of making this?’ so it’s quite natural that several have thought of it. I put several of these services through their paces putting together a simple portfolio site of my own with just a couple of projects and some bio and contact information. Following are outlines of a few of my favorites free online porfolio services.
Krop
URL: www.krop.com
Krop is an ingenious website. It combines two things a creative professional thinks about when promoting herself on the web. The first thing Krop does is allow you to create an online portfolio website. But Krop goes on to give you a reason to have a portfolio website in the first place by acting as an online agency. Krop lists job postings!
I found it very easy to get myself setup with Krop. I signed up and was immediately logged in after entering an email address and password. From there I was led through a getting started wizard which walked me through the steps of writing a resume, and uploading image sets for my portfolio. After completing the wizard, I was able to very easily modify my entries and add new ones.
After getting my presence all setup, my next area of exploration was the job listings. A little bit hidden at the bottom right of the profile page, you’ll find a link to ‘View the Krop Job Board’. I couldn’t have been more pleased. I was immediately presented with a list of the most recent jobs posted and two search fields. One for location, and one for keyword. As I typed the word Vancouver into the first of the two, the list instantly refined search results to my location of choice, and there were even a few postings that I could be interested in!
All said, Krop is a terrific service. It provides a very simple and easy way to produce an online portfolio presence, and includes an in-built job posting system. If you are looking to host your site at your own domain, show off your stuff in a fancy template, or host lots and lots of images, you can upgrade to the Pro version of the service for $9.99 per month. About the cost of a good web-hosting package. I’ll definitely be recommending this one.
Carbonmade
URL: www.carbonmade.com
The first thing you’ll think when you click on to Carbonmade is fun fun fun! They have one of the funnest looking websites I’ve ever seen in an online service. If you’re a code geek like me and have a look at the document source for the frontpage, you’ll see an immaculately clean xhtml1.0 document obviously written by somebody who should be speaking at An Event Apart. All fun aside, thought, this is a solid portfolio service.
I signed up by filling out one short form with an email address, password, and my chosen portfolio title and subdomain, and was immediately logged in the service. Once inside, I was uploading my first project image, and brought to the main portfolio admin page to fill in the details of my new project. Also accessible from the main portfolio admin page are some selectors to choose the kind of page layout I’d like my portfolio to have, the type style and theme of my portfolio, and an ‘about’ dialog which I can fill in with my contact details, and a brief bio.
Viewing the portfolio website I had just created, I was startled to see just how simple it was. Carbonmade portfolios are very stark, really allowing your content to do all the work. When I click on one of the project thumnails on my new portfolio page, I’m led to a simple lightbox style image gallery with the project title and URL at the top. Clicking the About link, I’m shown my about page with all of the contact info and bio I had entered.
Carbonmade is a totally sufficient portfolio service with a fun interface that creates very simple portfolios. If you need to store more than five projects you’ll be asked to upgrade for $12 per month allowing you to store 50 projects and many more photos or videos. If dead simple is what you’re looking for in a portfolio service, this is the one for you, thought, I don’t think I’m going to recommend it to anyone. Firstly because I think it’s just a little too simple, creating some very small pages if you don’t have much content for them, and because of the five project limit.
Tumblr
URL: www.tumblr.com
Tumblr isn’t exactly a portfolio service. It’s more like a subset of wordpress, only without the rough edges. That said, I have seen several creative portfolios built in tumblr, so I decided to add it to the bunch.
Signing up for Tumblr is as easy as can be. It asks for an email address, password, and subdomain name for your new blog. After answering a captcha you will find yourself logged in and presented with a row of things you can post to tumblr and a giant balloon tip inviting your to create your first post. I started by posting a couple photos with descriptive captions to get my portfolio going right off the bat. After writing about a couple of my projects, I took a look at what I had created, and found it looked exactly like what it was. A blog. To fix this, I opened up the Customize interface by clicking the Customize link on the right, and chose the Cargo theme for my blog. Now it looked more like I expect a portfolio to look, with a grid of project thumbnails and descriptions.
To create my bio page, I went back to the Customize interface and created a new Page. I called it About, and typed up a bio and some contact info. I now had an about link in the navigation menu of my portfolio blog which led to a static about page. There’s also an archive link which will display your projects and posts in a calendar style for people to browse chronologically.
Creating a portfolio site this way will seem a little clunky to some. It is clunky! There’s also no way to display a tumblr blog at your own domain, which will certainly rule it out for some. But if you like the idea of a blog style portfolio site with projects posts and ordinary blog posts you’ll find tumblr a good fit. There are several ‘Premium Themes’ designed specifically for portfolio sites which you’ll certainly find helpful for around $30 to $50, or you can create a custom theme of your own if that’s your thing. I’ll be recommending Tumblr as a portfolio service to the more web savvy people I know.