Seminar on Web Presence

Today I attended a workshop on creating a portfolio website with a tutor Ben Hodson
I learnt the following:

Before setting up a website it is key to ask yourself who is your key audience?
1. Clients
2. Employers
3. Colleagues

What is the primary purpose of the site:
1.Get Clients
2.Sell Yourself
3. Make money

4.Make direct sales

5.What is your best work?6.Always get as many opinions as possible
7.What are your greatest accomplishments?
8.Have you sold some work?
9.Have you had work published?

What is your style?
1.What makes you unique
2.What is it about you that makes you employable? Work long hours, work cheaply?

Who's portfolio do you admire and what elements can you implement in your design
Research:
1.Look at other people on the internet
2.The platform is normally quite minimalist
3.You want the portfolio work to pop out of the screen

Building a website from scratch
If you want to build your website from scratch, it is a lot of hard work. If you want a job that may require these skills then its worth considering but it is not the quickest way to showcase your work. It takes time and dedication. You can befriend or collaborate with a professional who is just starting out as a web designer. Website management requires a CMS Control Management System:
Wordpress
concrete5
CMSlite
expression engine
joomla
drupal
textpattern

Or a hosted CMS - does all the background work for you
Spuarespace
Virb
VAEAll of these require a subscription, a monthly fee, but its a vey professional choice.

You also have Social Media

Tumblr
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Google+
Instagram
Flickr
YouTube
Vimeo

Get people to follow you and this would be a strength that could be used in an interview.

Dedicated Portfolio Websites

Behance
Deviant Arts
Carbon Made
Redbubble - put images on the and t-shirts could be sold with your image on.
Photo Shelter
Design Taxi
Communication Arts
Livebooks
Smug Mug

Behance is the one that Ben recommends for Fashion and ease. These are all free to use.

Blog platforms
Wordpress
Blogspot
Blogger
Blog.com
Jux
Weebly

Mostly free, but the downside is that they only work in chronological order or upload, also it date every upload so if you haven't touched the site in weeks then its obvious to the reader and it appears out of date.

Resources:

www.dandad.org/awards/students
www.cssawards.net
www.w3.org
www.thebestdesigns.com
These websites can help you to achieve a top quality website be looking at others to help inspire

Online Portfolio content

Less is more - no less than 10 but more than twenty means they need to be outstanding in order to keep the viewer engaged long enough to stay till the end.
Everything in the portfolio needs to hold its own.
Show your website to colleagues - get constructive feedback
Only use what is important
RESEARCH - make sure you keep aware of what is going on out there
Branding - the biggest branding is your name.Make sure its consistent, tie in all your public audience platforms but keep it minimal and  backgound. 
Tag-lines, be clear who you are and what you want to be and get your portfolios to reflect that.
Language and communication - don't be boring but keep it professional. Keep it chatty. Keep it short, keep it interesting and inspire people.
Keep it relevant, keep it short.
Blog - maybe add a blog to your website even if you don't have a blog website
Contact - always give at least two ways of contacting you. without this what purpose does the website have. You may be missing a chance of a lifetime without it.
Be careful with music or anything that it directly connected to personal taste - it may irritate without  meaning to.
Ask them to contact you - Please contact me for more details. Research shows people are 80% more likely to contact you if you ask.
Navigation - top to bottom, left to right.

I am going to take another look at my website and ask my colleagues, peers and tutors for feedback so that I can improve it for hand in.