Ask HN: Feedback for personal portfolio site?

[SevereOverfl0w]

Hi HN.

Been working on a new portfolio[0]. I'm trying to break into freelance web development. I've changed a lot of things recently, using techniques learned in Daniel Pink's "To sell is human"

I'd love to hear about anything & everything you have to say, good or bad. I want to make sure that my portfolio turns a "maybe" into a sale.

All source is on github[1], so feel free to critique the source code as well if that's more your thing.

Hoping you guys can give me a few general tips on where to go next in pursuing freelancing.

[0] http://dominic.io/ [1] https://github.com/SevereOverfl0w/Portfolio

[tlack]

first, i think it looks good. the following are a bit nitpicky.

you should focus more on your work, and tell the story behind what occurred on each project.

put yourselves in the shoes of a potential client: they probably want to know how the process works, etc.

remember, you want people to buy your services, so show what those services are front and center. big pictures. don't hide the detail behind the click (in the modal). put it out there. make it the star of the show.

i'd alter the tone to say "what can i do for you?" rather than "what can you do for me?" i think the former is a more common style.

i'd drop the bit about the deposit. it's not really useful - 40% of what exactly? if it won't make or break the customer choosing your services, don't bring it up so early. if anything it might be better to express the price class of your service (in general ranges), but leave everything else up for debate once the person contacts you.

the top nav menu doesn't do much on a site this small; perhaps that space could be used for dramatic effect rather than this utilitarian role.

i think that's about it. good luck in your venture!

[SevereOverfl0w]

Thanks, it's been a lot of work getting here.

Yeah, expand on the information a little bit. I was trying to strike a balance between too much & too little information.

Do you have any suggestions on how to expand the portfolio like that (no modals), without cluttering the page?

Okay, easy peasy!

That was my attempt at trying to describe the process. I failed terribly! I'm going to have a little think about a better way to describe the process (and more of it) in a concise & clear way.

Any dramatic effect suggestions?

Thanks a lot!

[UnoriginalGuy]

> Create a plugin, extension, or theme.

For WHAT? I assume you mean wordpress, but it would be best to say that.

> Create safe website update procedures

What does that mean? Reads like you ran out of stuff to bullet so you tacked on something which sounded good.

I'd also included database technologies in your "What can you work with?" section.

When I click on "Featured Work," I get a modal dialog and by far the most important thing on that is the "View Live" button, but it is extremely hard to find since it blends in with the other text on the page.

Also that dialog looks unbalanced. You have two things on the left and one thing on the right. It either looks like "Technologies used" is incorrectly positioned OR the title/link are incorrectly positioned. Regardless for such an important dialog it feels really poorly thought out.

Overall I hate the modal dialog. Here's some examples of what others have done:

http://cleayweb.com.au/ http://www.sarahevansdesign.co.uk/

Both have a Featured Work page. It is better on both than yours.

Also why is the Contact Form so tiny? It feels like it was pasted onto the page with no thought to how the rest of the page looks. Like tiny hard to read text boxes are never nice. Go look at Microsoft's Microsoft Account signup page, that's how big textboxes should be.

The image behind the "HI, I'M DOMINIC MONROE WEB DEVELOPER" stuff is so fucking huge that's almost all I can see when I load the page. I can just see the top of your heads in that photograph. What resolution are you developing for? And why is that image so important to your product? Is THIS[0] really the most important thing on your site? Not, you know, content...

[0] https://static.pexels.com/photos/3925/desk-ruler-designer-ch...

[SevereOverfl0w]

I had intended it to be for anything. I know a lot of languages, can pick up more, and an API can be learned. As I charge a flat rate, I'm happy to figure it out. However, due to the confusion, I'm going to try rewording it.

I've worked with a previous client who was editing the HTML live in production. I helped them create split dev/production areas, and use a git-based workflow so they could try out changes in development, and then migrate them to production safely when they've checked their changes are okay. Again, clarity is going to be attempted here.

A lot of them don't have a "View Live" due to them being API/backend work. So I haven't prioritized. I absolutely love Sarah's work pages. It gives a great amount of detail, but also provides a summary. Daniel's seemed to be a non-modal version of mine, but it greatly restricted the numer of items he could have.

I think I'm going to try pull my portfolio out into data, and generate additional pages for each. Then create a small brief or summary, and do a card-style design, with the images & summary below.

I'll reduce that, I think I got myself all caught up with the big, images used on techy websites. Or make it more relevant, either one.