Showing off your work with WordPress

I’ve recently built three websites – one for a landscape design company, one for an interior design company, and the last for a graphic designer.

For each of these, showing examples of past work is crucial.  A picture is worth a thousand words – and all the more so in design.  Design is so subjective; clients understandably need to see examples of your work and style before they commit to working with you.

Keeping the portfolio up to date is important too.  Primarily for the reason it shows you continue to be busy, successful and up-to-date.

Enter WordPress.  It’s perfect for this situation, allowing us to create a bespoke administrative interface which includes a specific area for adding and managing portfolio items.

Think of it in terms of an old fashioned hard copy portfolio – when you’ve completed a new project, you’d add a new page to your portfolio, with perhaps some photos of the work you’ve done and a description.  Maybe on each page you’d have a consistent set of information – let’s say title, date, project value, and location.

Now port that over to the website world.   WordPress Custom Post Types allow us to set up a bespoke area for projects, making adding a new portfolio item as easy as adding a new page or blog post.

All they do is click on ‘Add Project’, and fill in the relevant fields – set up specifically for their requirements – and upload a photo or two.

The project will then automatically appear in their online portfolio – and perhaps we’d show a couple of recent projects on the home page too, creating some interest

Clever, efficient.  If it’s something that you think could be of use to you, let me know.