Showcase Your Creativity with a Portfolio Site
Do you shoot photographs or video? Illustrate, paint, or draw? Design things? If you answered “yes” to one or more of the above, WordPress.com is the perfect place to show your stuff. We’ve just launched WordPress.com/portfolios to help you build an online portfolio you’re proud of.
Over 30 portfolio themes
You need a canvas that lets your work shine. With over 30 portfolio themes to choose from (and over 200 total themes in our Theme Showcase), there’s surely one that reflects your style.
Customize your theme
Your online portfolio is about you and your personal brand. All of our themes let you set a custom header image and a custom background image or color.
Turn your portfolio site into a work of art in itself with the Custom Design upgrade. Choose the fonts and colors that match your personal style, and tweak your design even further with Custom CSS.
Manage your portfolio
In addition to themes, WordPress.com provides heaps of tools you can use to maintain your online portfolio and communicate with clients and prospective employers.
Stunning images
Your images are everything. Our themes and tools are designed to make your images look great. Do you have special projects that you want to highlight? Some of our portfolio themes, such as Skylark and Simfo, come with featured post sliders that show off these projects with beautiful featured images.
Featured Sliders in Skylark and Simfo
Perhaps you’d like to show off a bunch of images at once? For that, we make it easy to insert image galleries. Your galleries can have a variety of styles. Rectangular photos, circular photos, a slick image Carousel view, beautifully tiled layouts, and more — it’s up to you.
Even more killer tools
- If moving pictures and sound are your thing, we make it easy to embed external video and audio. Want to upload HD video and audio directly to your site? The VideoPress and Space Upgrade have got you covered.
- Blog your latest news. Let visitors subscribe to your posts and regularly receive email updates.
- Connect with clients and prospective employers — add a contact form and upload a PDF of your resume or CV.
- Start a group portfolio by inviting other WordPress.com users to contribute to your site. New users can create an account and join in, too.
- Get noticed — our sharing buttons let your visitors spread the word across multiple social networks about the projects that inspire them.
- Put a professional finishing touch on your site with a Custom Domain. Your own domain is easier for your friends, family, and prospective clients to remember. It’ll also just look plain awesome on your business cards and resumes.
You’re in great company
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these lovely sites users have built on WordPress.com. Some are strictly portfolios, some combine a portfolio with a blog, and all of them highlight the wide range of versatility WordPress.com has to offer.
Robin L. Stewart
Craft Schmaft
Monkey Works
Devine Design
Illustration Age
Incito Photography
Sean Azzopardi
Harry Kenney-Herbert Photography
Sven Seebeck Photography
So, polish up your best stuff and head over to WordPress.com/portfolios to start crafting that portfolio site you’re proud of. In the meantime, we await the masterworks of your imagination.
- January 16, 2013
- New Features, WordPress.com
WordPress.com News 
This is better than fantastic. I have been pondering on the need to start creating a portfolio, but was at somewhat of a loss on how to do it online. THANK YOU!
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Reblogged this on Egill.
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I’ve been unable to find a WordPress theme that features libraries, or diaries.
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Hi there,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’re always interested in new ideas for themes! In the meantime, have you seen our free theme Academica? It’s great for education and could work well for libraries. We also have a nice selection of Journal themes in our Theme Showcase that would also work for keeping an online diary.
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Reblogged this on Matt Thomas and commented:
To every thing there is a season, and a theme for every designer under the sun. No more excuses for lame portfolios!
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I love the front (loading) page of Sven Seebeck Photography. Is it something that’s available with the theme or was this something that he did himeself?
Thank you for your response in advance,
Jean
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Hi there,
The Sven Seebeck Photography site uses the Anthem theme with a static front page, and Custom CSS to achieve the front page design.
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Would it be possible to convert a current blog into a portfolio site? Or is it best to just start from scratch so to speak?
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It’s up to you! You can certainly convert an existing blog into a portfolio site by switching to one of our portfolio themes and then uploading your images and adjusting your content accordingly. If you have a lot of existing content that you’d need to reshuffle, it might be best to start a second site for your portfolio. But again, there is no right or wrong way to do it, only the way that works best for you.
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What is the main difference between portfolio & a normal blog? Am I able to transfer a recently created blog into the portfolio settings?
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Hi there!
Yes, any blog you create on WordPress.com can be a portfolio site. Just switch to a portfolio theme (if you want your site to look like a portfolio), and then upload your images and set up your pages accordingly.
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Great Idea! I was considering making one that is why I started my second blog for more frequent writing and photography, this might just do it!
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Thanks for that. I just tried out the image galleries; they work really well. Just one tip for people making a portfolio-style site–when putting together a portfolio, it is tempting to arrange everything using pages (rather than posts), but WordPress.com pages generally don’t seem to show up very well in search engines. If you want someone to find a particular article or set of photos via a search, it might be a better idea to use a post (instead of a page). Pages still have their uses, though; I use them for things like contents pages and for content that I would rather people didn’t find via a search engine (like a Terms of Use page).
The ‘Custom Menu’ feature is also very useful for portfolios.
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Amazing, i like my hatch theme alright, i just wish i could make the test area black as well.. i want everything in black..
🙂
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I’d love to see a portfolio theme for writers who want to show off more than just blogging skills. I have articles and other pieces published online that I’d like to pull together into a portfolio (some have images, some do not), but I’ve never found a theme that looked right without photos/art to accompany every article.
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WordPress is an amazing way to create your online portfolio.
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I wish you had had these a few months ago, would have saved me so much time instead of having to do my own.
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Awesome stuff!
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Great article. Another option is Pinterest, which makes it super easy to create a portfolio. I’m a web designer and purposely chose Pinterest for its simplicity and effectiveness but will look in more detail at this option now.
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I really like these! Nice, clean, sharp.
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This is great. Thank you so much!
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If your work doesn’t involve photography or illustration, you can still create a portfolio. How?: Showcase your mad Excel skills by showing a complicated spreadsheet you created. If you’re a writer, you can post excerpts of your work. If you’re a project manager, you can include an example of a critical path. If you’re a sales manager, you can prove your expertise with a graph of your exceptional sales results. If you’re a PowerPoint genius, you can show a couple of pages of your most exciting charts and/or graphs. If you’re a resource or HR manager (and really for any professional should do this), you can post (once you’ve obtained permission from the parties involved) positive comments and praise you have received!!
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Hello, I was wondering if a portfolio website can only be used if you are photographer or draw things etc.? I am not a photographer, but I have a blog and a couple of websites, plus some desktop/mobile applications and Flash games I developed. I am a student, and I need a place to put all my stuff together for a job portfolio. What can I do?
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You can use a portfolio website to showcase just about anything! Flash cannot be embedded on WordPress.com though, so you would need to screenshot those and link out to them.
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This is great! I created a portfolio with the Gridspace theme, which looks and works great.
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Very cool. I will definitely look into this for my blog
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This is brilliant! I find portfolio sites very elegant and flexible enough to play with. Thanks WP!
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