Switching to Adobe Portfolio

[NessIllustration]

Recently there was a discussion here in the forums about the best options for making a portfolio website, and it even got a bit heated hahaha

I'm a fervent fan of Wordpress - I think it's a great platform that gives you complete freedom and infinite customization options, and it's a lot easier to use than people think. It's a great option to save money if you're willing to Google a few things and DIY it yourself.

That being said, while hosting is inexpensive for just one website, if you make several sites the hosting can get a bit pricey. I'm currently building a few more Wordpress websites and I got quite a shock when I received my hosting bill! So I started looking for a solution to reduce my costs. In the end, I decided my portfolio website is the only one that doesn't need a lot of fancy customization. So I'm switching to Adobe Portfolio and I've been so pleasantly surprised that I wanted to share.

Adobe Portfolio is Adobe's simple all-in-one portfolio building platform and it is FREE for Creative Cloud subscribers. Meaning if you are currently paying for any Creative Cloud program, such as Photoshop which most of us are, you are entitled to build up to 5 portfolio sites with them at no cost.

Hosting is free and they hook you up with a free yourname.myportfolio.com domain name. There's also the possibility to buy a custom domain name to connect for a more professional look (around $10-15 a year).

They have several nice themes to choose from. I chose the Mercedes theme, which I really like for its simplicity and clean design. It took me all in all about 2 hours to make my website from beginning to end with an about page, a contact page and a work page with 3 sub categories. All that's left is for me to connect my domain name to it.

If you're curious you can see my new website (sans domain name) here: https://mattenessa.myportfolio.com

So yeah, if you're just starting out, don't want to go into complicated stuff and just want a simple, effective and super affordable portfolio site, I really recommend Adobe Portfolio. It's great! Very user friendly and easy to use. And if you're a Photoshop user it's already included if your monthly subscription fee!

[sigross]

@NessIllustration That looks boss and easy to navigate. Great portfolio. I think I might switch to save some money. As I'm already paying loads for Adobe CC, may as well get my money's worth. Can you add a blog?

[NessIllustration]

@sigross Thanks! It doesn't seem like you can add a blog on the website itself, sadly. It's a very simple portfolio platform. However I'm sure you could go around that by hosting your blog on blogspot or something, and adding a header link to goes directly to it on your portfolio site. Not ideal if the blog is a big part of your site (personally I've never used the my blog on Wordpress even when I had one, so that wasn't a big issue for me..) Anyway since it's free, nothing prevents you from taking an afternoon to build a site as a test, and then decide if you like it or not

[sigross]

@NessIllustration my blogging has died off this last year, so it wouldn't be a massive loss! Keeping it simple sounds more appealing.

[DOTTYP]

@NessIllustration Your website looks great, I am trying to build a website with Adobe now, but I am finding it a bit difficult as I dont know what I am doing luckily I did not try to build my own or I might still be doing it this time next year.

[NessIllustration]

@DOTTYP Best of luck Lisa, I'm sure you can do it! And you can always ask for help in the forum, I would be happy to help you and I'm sure many others too

[DOTTYP]

@NessIllustration Aww thanks so much I will try for a few more days and then ask for help I am not very good at technical things

[burvantill]

that looks really nice. great job!

[Amanda Jean]

I really dig Adobe Portfolio for my own purposes. Once you understand how it works, it's very easy to use, and yes, conveniently free if you're a CC subscriber. I don't regret the lack of blog, but just forward a link to my tumblre (which I don't use that much anyway), and have it set as a subdomain on my website, so it still has a common url. The templates are slightly different, but not too much.

I mean to rejig my site a a bit, but working on new content first. That's more important.

You can still use meta tags and track visits using google analytics, there's a setting in the site editor somewhere.

[NessIllustration]

@burvantill Thank you hun!

@Amanda-Jean Your website looks great, you did a really good job!

[Jose A Nieto]

Hi @NessIllustration I was wondering how did you manage to make that theme look like that? Organize it that way, it is super easy to navigate and exactly what I was going for but I couldn't figure it out. A little help?

This is my site: https://jasdroide.myportfolio.com

[NessIllustration]

@Jose-A-Nieto Actually your site looks quite a lot like mine design wise, it's just that you have more categories Like in your header you have Illustration, Storyboard and Character design whereas I just have "My work". Inside the my work section I made 3 subcategories. I think yours gets a little harder to navigate because you have 3 categories in your header, and more subcategories to that. For example, your Illustration category is divided by projects, but that not necessary. I think you ended up like this because you imported your projects from Behance, yeah? Instead, for each header category you can create a blank page, then use the "grid" widget to import all your illustration. That's all I made the masonry grid on my site

[Jose A Nieto]

@NessIllustration Yeah, I imported it all from Behance. I'll import everything manually then, I like yours way better than mine

Thanks!

[DOTTYP]

@Jose-A-Nieto I think your site looks really good i dont see any problems.

[Jose A Nieto]

@DOTTYP Thanks! It is ok, but Ness's is easier to navigate

[NessIllustration]

Update: I FINALLY managed to connect my domain, which was unnecessarily confusing and convoluted LOL.. If you're making an Adobe Portfolio site I'd recommend just buying your domain through them and save yourself the trouble. I already had my domain with Go Daddy and the instructions were so techy and insufficient that I ended up having to look up tutorials to figure out what I was missing. Ah well, all done now!
nessillustration.com

[Amanda Jean]

@NessIllustration Ha! Yep, I experienced that too. Adding a subdomain was a toothache and a half as well!! But I've had my domain for a few years with GoDaddy, so didn't really consider changing over.

[MichaelaH]

I also have adobe portfolio, very happy with it, bought some domain, and like @NessIllustration it wasn't easy intergrations, but it works now.

[NessIllustration]

@MichaelaH They should really fix that!