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Brian Barbour
Brian Barbour

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Finished My Portfolio Site

https://bbarbour.dev

So, I finished my portfolio site. I am pretty excited, and looking for some constructive feedback. I know it's not perfect and that I have a long way to go before I'm a top-notch Front End Developer. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out.

Also does anyone have tips on using your portfolio as a tool to help you get a job? Is there a best practice to point recruiters/potential employers to it?

I'm just wondering now that I have a portfolio, how I should best use it.

Top comments (18)

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coderfoundry profile image
CoderFoundry

Good job on your portfolio site! You avoided two problems we often see - over-design, and old content. So good on you for having a simple, pro look and up-to-date blog.

Bobby Davis made a video on how to create and show a coding project to win a job.

Hope it helps you!

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flrnd profile image
Florian Rand • Edited

IMHO you did a great job in general Brian. The only thing I see a bit off is the resume section. That embedded frame is weird, and for some reason I had a flash back to the 90's and java applets. I'd change that section for something more personal, present yourself and let people know you. And a simple link for your resume is enough in my opinion.

That's the only thing it comes to mind to add something useful, like I said, it's pretty cool already.

EDIT: Few more things! From a UX point of view, make the screens captures or the whole card clickable, you don't want your users wandering their mouse around looking for where the hell do they have to click! That, or make more obvious what parts of your web implies action. Never take for granted that it's obvious. Check material.io/design/components/butt... A lot better explained than myself.

Another thing is to avoid redundancy. You have the project title link and a live site link pointing to the same place. Why two links pointing to the same place with different formats? Just choose one and make it very clear that those are actionable places in your web.

I hope it helps!

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bbarbour profile image
Brian Barbour • Edited

Florian, thank you SO SO much for your suggestions.

I actually implemented both of them in my latest build. Resume now is a link that opens in a new tab and the project cards now have action buttons to make it obvious for users.

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flrnd profile image
Florian Rand

Wow that was really fast! One last thing I'd probably keep both bottons toggether, but I'm a bit obssesed with little details (old graphic design habits).

All in all, pretty good job! 👏

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bbarbour profile image
Brian Barbour

I'm still training my eye for the design parts of Front End Development. So, this is super helpful.

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chiangs profile image
Stephen Chiang

Congrats on being "done"... But we all know... It's never really done. 🤪

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zcdunn profile image
Zack Dunn

Hey, congrats on this milestone! Now that you're happy with where your site is at, maybe look into adding some IndieWeb features. You could add things like microformats and webmentions so you could use your site as your home on the internet and communicate with other indiewebbers

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desi profile image
Desi

I really like this a lot! I don't have any technical feedback but I really like how you've done your project examples - I've been trying to think of a good way to lay mine out, and yours is really nicely done.

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bbarbour profile image
Brian Barbour

They are React components, so if you want them let me know and I can give you the code! :)

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zimmer profile image
zimmer

Hi Brian,
Good beginning, If I were you I would make my code more clean and readable.
It'll be good if you'll separate style and script in different files or even folders.
Also, I'd use more styles and effects like :hover :transition and so..

P.S. Keep it up and do more experiments.

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bbarbour profile image
Brian Barbour

Oh it is in my repo. But, I used Gatsby, which generates a static site at build time.

 
bbarbour profile image
Brian Barbour • Edited

That's so weird because there is a wrapper set to 100vw.

EDIT: It was my animation on the image. After I turned that off its fine and doesn't move the viewport.

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bbarbour profile image
Brian Barbour

Can you elaborate on the scaling thing?

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Travis Simpson

This is really cool and clean! Definitely an inspiration in design and aesthetics I shall reference when redesigning my portfolio site, that is right now just a landing page :D

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shernz profile image
Shernz

Amazing!!!