Sites to boost portfolio

henke

Hi

I am interested in a career in Web Development and/or Design. I am currently working on a portfolio website that I can submit with job applications, the problem is at the moment I have no website projects I can list on my portfolio.

I am just wondering does anyone have any good sources of some websites I can do for free in order to boost my portfolio and show exactly what I can do. As I'm starting out I'm aware I can't really charge for a site.

Any help would be great.

Cheers

Eoin

You could start by contacting local interest groups or charities to see if they could do with a free site

lil_lisa

You could have a quick look through here and see if anyone still needs some work done. If this doesn't work out or you're not feeling confident enough then build your own site. Come up with some small function that could be useful on a website and develop it with the languages you know. Make it look nice and show off what you can. As you start on one small idea you might build it into something else.

Dave!

Just make them up! Create some fictional local business, a band/musician, pub, whatever, and throw together a site for them

Freddio

I did a site for a charity when I started out and it opened other doors.

Also if your in college, there is bound to be a number of clubs and societies that would need a dig out.

henke

Cheers for the replies. Very helpful

chakotha

Do you know any photographers or artists you could do a site for?

henke

chakotha wrote: »

Do you know any photographers or artists you could do a site for?

I don't. Not of the top of my head anyway. I think I will try contacting local charities and see if they want a site. Also I think the idea of just making up some sites to show off my skills might be an idea.

onemorechance

Look at job adverts that you would like to apply for. Use the technologies that they mention in their adverts in your site.

Examples are javascript (including libraries such as jQuery), Google & Bing Maps, Facebook and Yahoo API, AJAX, CSS, Ruby and maybe even CMS such as Joomla, Wordpress. Your server technology will be important also, such as J2EE or PHP. Try to use an IDE such as Eclipse, build tools such as Ant and version control such as CVS or Subversion. Then you have database technologies such as Oracle and MySQl.

Trojan

MichaelM1987, would you consider yourself more leaning towards the design (graphics) or development (coding) end of things? What's your background?

I'd agree with the suggestions above on making up a business or organisation for use in your portfolio easier than dealing with a real client who can be difficult, even if you're working for free. 95% of logos in our LogoBurner portfolio are from real businesses, but my designer made some awesome stuff that I simply had to include, even though it wasn't from a real company.

Also one of the great things about a portfolio is you can fill it with "The Director's Cut", i.e. what you believe are the best designs/layouts/etc, even if that's not what the client choose in the end.

Feckfox

Trojan wrote: »

I'd agree with the suggestions above on making up a business or organisation for use in your portfolio easier than dealing with a real client who can be difficult, even if you're working for free. 95% of logos in our LogoBurner portfolio are from real businesses, but my designer made some awesome stuff that I simply had to include, even though it wasn't from a real company.

Tell your designer that your site is terrible on netbooks / lower resolutions :pac:

Trojan

Feckfox wrote: »

Tell your designer that your site is terrible on netbooks / lower resolutions :pac:

Good point. The site doesn't look great in several different resolutions (mainly ultra-low, and ultra-high).

That's my fault, not the graphic designers - you'll note the logos themselves are awesome

That said, the site is usable, and even looks good, on many high resolutions on standard desktop type resolutions e.g. 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200.

Netbooks and mobile devices are something we need to address when it makes sense from an ROI perspective, but for the moment it's "Good Enough Software".

Thanks for the feedback.

henke

Trojan wrote: »

MichaelM1987, would you consider yourself more leaning towards the design (graphics) or development (coding) end of things? What's your background?

I'd agree with the suggestions above on making up a business or organisation for use in your portfolio easier than dealing with a real client who can be difficult, even if you're working for free. 95% of logos in our LogoBurner portfolio are from real businesses, but my designer made some awesome stuff that I simply had to include, even though it wasn't from a real company.

Also one of the great things about a portfolio is you can fill it with "The Director's Cut", i.e. what you believe are the best designs/layouts/etc, even if that's not what the client choose in the end.

Hi

I would say I am stronger at the development side of things. I wouldn't have a good head at coming up with a design but I think I'm fairly good working with CSS and would be able to implement a design. I was doing an internship last year and done quite a bit of CSS and also some JavaScript.

Cheers for the feedback. I will probably try and come up with a fake business or organisation and create a site for that.

km991148

Trojan wrote: »

Good point. The site doesn't look great in several different resolutions (mainly ultra-low, and ultra-high).

That's my fault, not the graphic designers - you'll note the logos themselves are awesome

That said, the site is usable, and even looks good, on many high resolutions on standard desktop type resolutions e.g. 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200.

Netbooks and mobile devices are something we need to address when it makes sense from an ROI perspective, but for the moment it's "Good Enough Software".

Thanks for the feedback.

Sorry to derail the thread (and sorry to critisise - but its hopefully constructive!) - but I would sort out the navigation issues - on FF3 I can only scroll the portfolios with up & down arrow keys and not at all on ie8 + print samples jumps direct to youtube - wouldnt it be better to embed the video?