Being willing to learn and explore is crucial to growing as a UI/UX Designer and Front-End Developer and also staying relevant. As a way to demonstrate my commitment to learning, I decided to create, design and develop my own portfolio website from scratch. Having my own website allows me to showcase projects I've worked on.
As part of my research for creating a portfolio website, I spent a lot of time reading articles from online resources such as Medium.com, SkillCrush.com and UXPlanet.org, as well as watching YouTube videos made by DesignCourse and Traversy Media for insights and tips. I also reviewed numerous examples of well designed and developed portfolio websites for inspiration. I made a list of my favorite portfolio websites (which I still update often), and this process is ongoing since I am always interested in learning how I can improve this website.
First, I created a sitemap that helped represent the main navigation, which was purposely kept small to ensure that the website content could be quickly and easily accessible. I also created low-fidelity wireframes to map out the website's structure and page layouts for both mobile and desktop.
Design element highlights on the website include using the Typekit API to add web fonts, adding subtle animations, creating a mobile side nav, creating a timeline, adding filtering and hover effects, and creating a PHP contact form.
Once the website was ready to launch, I purchased a domain and a web hosting plan with GoDaddy.com and uploaded all of the web pages and assets to the file manager. I also purchased a website security plan and set up a custom email address. I also had an SSL certificate installed, and updated my .htaccess file in order to redirect visitors to the secured (HTTPS) version of my website.
