Philly Site Builder

This is part I of a 4 part series on getting your first job as a web developer or designer.

Part I: The Portfolio Site
Part II: Finding the Jobs
Part III: The Interview
Part IV: Freelancing

The Portfolio Site

Your number one asset is your portfolio site. I’ve learned that the best way to BUILD a portfolio is really to take just about any job that crosses your path. It kind of sucks, but that’s kind of the nature of starting out doing anything. Of course once your established you’ll want to be a little (or a lot) more picky. Plus it’s great experience in learning how to deal with clients and manage a web project.

Your portfolio site should reflect ONLY your best work.

If you are not a designer than I highly recommend you hire one to design your site. While it is not important that your site is incredible flashy, it is important that it is modern. It also important that your code is clean, commented, and easy to read through. If you are a developer, then it is very likely a potential employer will look at your source code. It’s the first thing I do when hiring someone. Basically, someone should be able to take a look at your source code and know exactly what everything is, and what it does.

Here is a great article which goes into further detail about presenting your best work in your portfolio.

Resources

Domain Name Registration: Go Daddy is the preferred site for purchasing domain names.

Site Hosting: Dream Host is inexpensive, offers a variety of hosting levels depending on how much site traffic you get, and offers pretty good tech support. They also have one-click word press install.

Design Trends: Smashing Magazine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Design, Development, Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.