Personal Developer Portfolio

I built this portfolio to showcase some of my skills and better myself as a developer. After hearing about Craft CMS and how popular it is within the web development world, I decided I wanted to get some experience using it, so I built this portfolio as an opportunity to learn the platform.

Rather than building a static site, I wanted the project itself to demonstrate my development skills. I decided to use a CMS so that I could manage my projects dynamically, while building reusable components and templates to keep the site consistent and maintainable.

This portfolio uses Craft CMS and Tailwind CSS, two technologies I have never used before.

Learning how to use Craft CMS has been very useful. I have built different entry types, such as Projects and Testimonials. I have had to really think about all the fields that I need on these different entry types, for example, I have added a field to my Project entry type to link to any Testimonials, so that I can create Testimonials directly related to Projects. As well as this, I have learned how the assets functionality works, creating an Uploads asset volume to manage site images. I found that I needed to add captions and attribution fields to my uploads, so found the settings for this and added the fields.

I have found myself adapting to Craft CMS quickly, and shaping the platform to my needs. An example of this is my project entry type. I have quite a lot of fields on this entry type, four of which are WYSIWYG editors, taking up a lot of room. I have learned how to create new field layout tabs, and better organise my fields, which has made the content writing process much easier and quicker to navigate.

Tailwind CSS has also played a huge part in the development of this portfolio. I had heard of Tailwind in the past but didn't like the idea of having long class lists in my HTML. When I first started using Tailwind I found it a little tricky to use, as I wasn't sure on all the utility class names, but the more I use it I am finding it very quick. I've found that I am able to prototype pages quickly, and then go through and tweak things as I go.

I installed DDEV and Docker, and have been working in a local container to run my Craft site while I build the portfolio. The site is templated using Twig, which allows me to create reusable components and easily plug data into different pages. I have used Astro and Handlebars before, so Twig was quite easy to pick up. One example of this is the project page template. A single template pulls data from different project entries, allowing every project page to share the same structure while displaying different content.

In the past, I have spent time building custom features, for instance, hand coding image galleries. For this project, I decided I wanted to use plugins and third-party libraries, to both speed the development process up and showcase my ability to use these external libraries. One example is PhotoSwipe, which I am using to provide lightbox functionality for project galleries. I have also installed the CKEditor plugin directly into Craft CMS, so that I can write content for my pages easily, rather than having to hard-code HTML.

This portfolio has been an incredible project for me as a developer. I have learned so many new skills and more efficient ways of working, and will continue to use these skills for years to come.

I feel like I have gained a lot more confidence in picking up unfamiliar technologies and adapting to them. I took my prior knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Astro and hit the ground running when it came to using Twig and Tailwind. Instead of just learning these new skills, this portfolio has given me a platform to showcase what I have learned, rather than just giving me somewhere to showcase past work.

The use of a CMS has made writing content a breeze. I haven't had to write all of my content in HTML, and then keep creating new pages to display said content. The CMS has really streamlined the process of adding and updating content as the portfolio has grown.

I am still developing this portfolio and plan for it to keep growing. I am aiming to keep polishing features and adding new functionality to really showcase what I can do and who I am as a developer.