Website Woes & Tips, Part 2

Here are some tips to personalize a Carbonmade portfolio to make it feel more like a website.

Customize Thumbnails Into an Image Grid:

You can use the Carbonmade template as is for your website, with different thumbnails for each category (like the image below) or you can break up a larger photo for more visually impact.

For the most dramatic and successful use of this tweak, check out the amazing portfolio from Kristen Ulve. This portfolio uses the wide thumbnail option.  There is also this one from Gilad Seliktar that uses a grid of three thumbnails.  And my portfolio uses the 2 across grid format.

(My first version of the website and here is the new one)

To change the thumbnails, first go into your Carbonmade account and hover the cursor over the thumbnail image, a 'change thumbnail' button will appear. Click on it and it provides the dimensions of the thumbnails.  With  photo imaging software break up a larger image into boxes that fit the thumbnail dimensions.  

Turn Projects into Pages

With the paid portfolio you have 50 projects or pages.  These pages can use html to create pages that offer more information than what you may want to include in the About page.  I also think the about page can get overlooked and some things - like a "contact page" or 'services offered" deserve their own space. 

A few extra pages I included were: contract, follow me (with my social media links), presentations and books. 

HTML Cheatsheet - add images to your page, live links, make text bold or align your page with a few basic lines of html code.

Take Advantage of the Footer

Under the 'Personalize' tab you can add your name with a copyright date.  This area also accepts html code and you can add in the code for your newsletter subscription box, contact information and links to your blog, twitter and facebook.  This footer shows up on every page.  So at the very least, as your contact information here to so your clients can easily reach you. 

Customize Your Banner

Under the same 'Personalize' tab you can add in your logo to brand your website.  I use a hand-lettered logo that appears on my blog and print materials for a cohesive visual.

Your Own Domain

In general you don't want your portfolio to address to be www.yourname.carbonmade.com - this is called a subdomain name, which is the default.  Carbonmade offers the option to use your own domain name so that your portfolio will publish as www.yourname.com.  It's more professional to have the domain name.  There are directions to follow and help available through carbonmade to set this up.  Another option would be have your domain name forward to your portfolio.  Check with your hosting company for details on how to set up a domain forwarding. 

Website Woes & Tips, Part 1

So I started my weekend off with every intention of creating a new portfolio website.  I had looked over my options and thought the most professional way to go would be to self-host a Wordpress blog/website combination that featured a gallery of my work.

I bought a new domain name - it was time for a change. I knew that Go Daddy had hosting support for Wordpress, so I purchased the hosting package.  After getting things set up, I went off to find a template that fit my needs

Okay - fast forward to 3 hours later.  I could not find a template under $50 that fit my needs.  I settled for one I thought I could do a little adjusting with and purchased it.  Off to Go Daddy to install and start posting.  Only wait, it's not easy to hack.  It's not intuitive and I quickly realize I have no idea what I'm doing here.  I need a tutorial, I need a manual, I need a class, I need a designer!  5 hours into the ordeal I say to heck with it.  I'm going with a portfolio site.

An hour later, new website is up and running and ready to go.  With a little help from Godaddy, I transferred the domain name to the portfolio site and created a subdomain for my blog.  Everything now publishes under heatherpowersart.com.

I went with Carbonmade for my portfolio site for a couple of reasons:

1. I had tried their free version and liked how easy it was to set up.
2. Great value - for the same price I was paying for a 10 page website. I get 50 projects (pages) and 500 images.  It's ad free, they have tech support and you can have private projects that aren't published on the site. Oh and it looks good on mobile devices and has a separate page for each image.
3. I saw that Julie Fortenberry was using it and liked the way it looked, it was nice to see someone else using it.
4. I knew from looking at some of the examples that you could do some tweaking to customize the site to make it look less like a template.

So my advice - if you are not a designer and are looking for a webite option, I recommend going with a portfolio site that you can customize and use domain forwarding.

Why torture yourself with trying to design a website?

Find something that is simple to use and minimal in design so that your artwork is shown in a professional manner.  Then after you get a big juicy book contact, by all means hire a brilliant designer to create the website of your dreams.

Join me tomorrow, I will share some little cheats that I did to make the Carbonmade template more like a website.

*I'm not affiliated with GoDaddy or Carbonmade - just happy they exist!