| Why make my own website? |
| I decided to make my own website for a couple of reasons. The first was because the price of the company I chose to host my website previously had been slowly creeping up over the years. After another price increase to the host I was using, I was going to be charged close to 200$ a year for the most basic personal plan. |
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| The second reason is because of a lack of flexibility with my previous website. I felt like I had outgrown my current website, and I needed to change how I presented my portfolio. I couldn’t quite find a template that I liked - and I wasn’t allowed to use custom HTML or CSS unless I wanted to upgrade my account and pay more money. |
| The Process |
| First thing I needed to do was find a new host for my website. I heard about neocities - the modern remake of geocities - and decided to use them. I also needed to secure the domain name. |
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| Second thing I did was that I figured out what exactly were the issues I had with my current website. One big piece of feedback I got from a person at a job fair was that employers need to be able to see work that is relevant to the job, and they need to be able to find it quickly. I decided to sort my portfolio into 4 main parts: Art and design for all my static visual works like illustrations, character designs, etc. Writing would be my written works. Video and animation would be all my visual works that have a video format. And of course anything that didn’t necessarily fit into any of those categories would get their own miscellaneous category. I know this system isn’t perfect, mostly because a lot of my works tend to have overlap (For example, a script that I wrote and storyboarded could fit into both writing and art) but I think this is the best solution (for now anyways). |
| The third step was actually building the website itself. Now, I am not a programmer or a web developer, so I knew that there were a lot of things that I was going to need to teach myself. Thankfully there are tons of resources available at my disposal that I could use to help me. I also looked at other neocities websites for inspiration as for things like layout, visuals, etc. |
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| So what’s next? Well, the website is built, the content is online, but I don’t think I’m technically done yet. Like my last portfolio, I’m probably going to need to make adjustments eventually as my needs change. Also, I might want to change aesthetics a bit at some point - Add some cool little buttons, or change some backgrounds - And of course portfolios are living documents, so I’ll be updating the content on this website semi-frequently. |