Setting Up Your Online Portfolio

I've been asked a lot recently how someone would go about creating their online portfolio, and whether a photographer, model or artist, you need this to really do something with your talents. Big thanks to Marc Scheff for this tutorial!


If you need a website, you can have it fast with thousands of good looking templates to choose from. Here I will walk you through the basic setup. It’s so easy I didn’t even include screenshots.

Many artists are interested in having their portfolio online, but it’s too hard to manage. In the second part of this page, I tell you how to get your portfolio up there quickly, easily, and with an incredible tool that lets you manage your images.
CREATING YOUR SITE

Get the site up

Option 1 (a little $$ and more control)

1. Go here: http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?78115, and sign up for the basic plan (note: sign up for a year and get a big discount)
2. When you’re done, you’ll get an email linking you to your admin panel, go there now (http://panel.dreamhost.com)
3. In the admin screen and click on Goodies -> One Click installs
4. Select WordPress, and Install it on your url
5. You’ll get an email with a link to your new WordPress site, follow the instructions and you will land in your WordPress admin screen (the url will be http://www.YOURURLHERE.com/wp-admin)

Option 2 (free, less control)

1. Go to www.wordpress.com, get an account

Pick a look

1. In your WordPress panel, click “Presentation, and select a template. Click on “view site” to see the new look!

Make pages/posts

1. CREATE new pages and posts by clicking “Write” and then “post” or “page”
2. EDIT pages and posts by clicking “Manage” and then select “Edit” next to the post or page you wish to edit
3. SETUP your options by clicking “Options.” Change the name of your blog as well as lots of little details you might not have thought of (in Options->General, you can set your homepage to be the blog (i.e. a page that shows all of the posts you’ve written) or a specific page (e.g. if you made a page called “home” you can set this as the homepage)

CREATING YOUR PORTFOLIO

Now you will put all your images in a Flickr account, and link to them from your site. This is smart because now you don’t host your images, and also people search flickr like nuts, so it’s good exposure.

Flickr

1. Go to Flickr.com
2. Sign up for a pro account (worth the $25)
3. Upload all your images
* Use the upload interface to upload a few images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/
* Use the bulk uploader if you have lots of images (this is my personal preference, it’s drag and drop easy): Download the Flickr Uploader here
4. Click on the Organize button on the main flickr page, then drag/drop your photos into sets (e.g. portraits, landscapes, whatever)

Now you’re going to create a page in WordPress for each of the sets you made in flickr, see Pictobrowser’s site for an example of the interface. You will copy the code from my page into your page.

Placing your Portfolio on your site

Option 1 (if you have your own url, not on wordpress.com)

1. Go to Pictobrowser’s site, and click the “info” link on the bottom of the flash movie
2. A form will replace the gallery, enter your flickr username and then copy the code it spits out
3. Go to your wordpress admin screen (likely: www.yoururl.com/wp-admin) and click Write -> Page
4. If you see two tabs labelled “Visual” and “Code” at the top of the text area for the page, click on “Code” before pasting
5. Paste the code into the page
6. Hit save

Option 2 (for people with free accounts on wordpress.com)

1. Make a slideshow here, and paste it in: http://www.slide.com/arrange?cy=wp

Portfolio complete.