Why Should I Make A Developer Portfolio?

Having a developer portfolio is beneficial for multiple reasons:

Easy way to showcase your projects and skills
Most job applications will have an option to enter a website url
Great way to build your online presence

Mistakes Developer Often Make With Their Portfolio

Where a lot of people agree that a portfolio is not effective is that junior developers who try to make their own portfolio will oftentimes spend too much time worrying about small details rather than building projects that a recruiter will care more about.

Why It's Important to Know These Developer Portfolio Resources

The ideal scenario for creating a portfolio is that you don't spend a long amount of time developing it. Ideally, you find the inspiration you need, tweak it to your liking and then launch it 🚀

When you're just starting out, it's difficult to find the best resources to help you speed up development, that's why I've created this list of all the resources you need.

Finding the Perfect Font:

Fonts are typically not the most important aspect that you should worry about, but it's okay to browse some fonts that suit the personality you wish to portray on your developer portfolio. Here are some I recommend:

If you want to also create a well balanced typography system (font sizes for heading, paragraphs, and body text) for your portfolio, pair one of the websites you use to find a font with Typescale

Design Inspiration:

dribbble - platform for designers to share their projects, including creative portfolio ideas
Behance - portfolio site that features work from wide variety of industries, including web development
Awwwards - showcases top web design and development work
webportfolios.dev - showcases developer portfolios from real developers for practical and inspiring designs
onepagelove - showcases well made one-page websites, including developer portfolios

Design Tools (optional)

Most developers can skip this step if you already have a simple design in mind. Often can lead you to over-designing your portfolio, and not being able to code what you have designed.

A good tool for this is Figma a great design tool for creating layouts, design assets, and project thumbnails, most popular among designers and developers

Color Palettes

Your portfolio will have different tones depending on what color palette you choose, this plays off of color psychology (how blue often represents trust).

Coolors - generate random color palettes, and browse gradients
ColorHexa - generate a color palette from a single color, with support for text, background and border color for selected color to ensure color has good contrast.

Animation Libraries (optional)

If you have little web development experience, it is recommended to skip this step. CSS is a good starting point for beginners to understand the fundamentals of animation.

GSAP - lightweight javascript animatoin library for complex animations, good for both simple and advanced animations
Framer Motion - react-based animation library, great for smooth, declarative animations
Three.js - javascript library that allows you to create 3D animations, good for complex animations with interactive graphics, and you can import blender models.

Hosting Platforms For Developer Portfolio

Once you have completed developing your portfolio you are ready to upload it to the internet! Here are the best services to make this process easier for you.

Vercel - great for hosting static sites, especially if you're using Next.js
Netlify - good for static sites, offering easy integration with git.
GitHub Pages - host your portfolio for free, perfect for static websites, the simplest way to upload your portfolio to the internet.

If You Want to Launch a Quick Portfolio: Portfolio Templates

Vercel Next.js Templates - free developer portfolios
onepagelove Templates - offers free and premium templates for templates using webflow, framer, HTML and more.
ThemeForest Templates - premium portfolios built with webflow, HTML, shopify and more

Wrapping Up

Creating a developer portfolio is valuable to showcasing your skills and projects, building an online presence, and connecting with potential collaborators. By using the resources outlined here, you can create a portfolio that demonstrates your abilities without spending unnecessary time on minor details

I'd love to hear from you-what did you find most useful here? Any other tools or resources you'd recommend? Let's continue this conversation in the comments!