Top WordPress Alternatives to Create a Portfolio Website

A portfolio website is basically a gallery of readymade works of its owner. This website may contain information about a person, contact data, interesting articles etc. However, the major mission of a portfolio website is to showcase the photo works. This project is one of the simplest in terms of realization: there are not many pages and not too much text here. At the same time, there are many photos. Page design and photo quality are a priority here. The rest of the elements recede into the background.

The goal of creating a portfolio website is to present the talents of a person in the most favorable light to attract new clients. This is a great promo tool. Creative people (like interior designers, musicians, photographers, artists etc.) are generally far removed from programming knowledge and web creation skills. No wonder they start looking for a professional when there is the need to create a portfolio website for them. These website specialists usually make portfolios using the WordPress CMS because of its popularity and convenience.

It goes without saying that WordPress is a great platform. An experienced user can even create a large online eCommerce website, a news portal or a mega forum using WordPress, not to mention a simple portfolio website. The service offers a rich choice of templates, plugins, code editing and module creation options and other benefits that make the platform a powerful and flexible web building tool in the hands of a real pro. WordPress is rightfully considered the most popular CMS in the world.

But what should an ordinary photographer do with a website created with this platform? A user may not have any idea of how the system is structured, what the modules are for and how to make use of the dashboard options. Consequently, a user won’t have any other choice but to get in touch with a web developer and order website management assistance, paying for the service. While you will simplify the web creation process itself, you will still face portfolio management problems in the long run. This will eventually result in extra financial expenditures and time delays. Do you really need such a website? Isn’t it simpler to create it on your own then to deal with all the nuances?

It definitely makes sense to create a portfolio website on your own, but WordPress is not the best solution for this purpose. People who don’t have any desire to learn the technical nuances of using a CMS won’t like this approach at all. If you use WordPress, you will have to explore the plugins, hosting settings, safety controls and so much more. As a result, you may be faced with a lot of inconveniences. This is not what you really need, is it? What you need instead is your own portfolio that you’ll be able to update from time to time, adding new publications without any extra problems.

A nice WordPress alternative that may be used to create a simple portfolio is a website builder with a visual editor. The simplicity of the service doesn’t mean that you will be able to launch portfolio websites for your personal use only. Even if you are going to create custom made websites for your clients, they will still prefer getting a website with an intuitive structure and dashboard. Otherwise, you will have to invest much effort and time into your readymade project management, thus leaving your clients unsatisfied with the need to make extra payments, or for you to be forced to continually provide support and training for the CMS without cost. Who will have the desire to work for free? That’s why you should carefully consider how to best approach your own and your client’s websites.

When it comes to CMS, you will hardly find decent WordPress alternatives just because the system is popular and well-developed. To complete simpler projects (promo websites, landing pages, blogs and, of course, portfolios), it makes sense to use less complicated web building tools like website builders. Let’s focus on the most effective web design services, namely, SITE123, uKit, Mobirise and Ucraft. You’ll get setup hosting, thematic templates, automatically generated databases and SEO. You can create websites in these systems without the need to worry about other technical aspects. This is much simpler and convenient.

If you manage to learn how to work with website builders, you’ll be also able to use a CMS if needed. You will already have the required experience to do that. However, starting your web building experience with WordPress is too harsh, especially if you are far from the web design niche nuances. You run a risk of facing too many problems in the future, with constant core and plug-in updates that can potentially break your website. There is no sense in exploring all the technical nuances just to make one website.

Now, let’s review the specifications of each website builder mentioned. All of them work well to create a portfolio website and come with a trial (Mobirise is an entirely free tool). You can test them in any order you need without paying for the opportunity.

SITE123

It won’t take you longer than one night to create a portfolio website with this service. Just select a template (all of them are responsive), a layout (there are 13 structure variants), a color scheme that can be manually setup and add the gallery. You can create a full-screen, single- or multipage portfolio with/without a sidebar, footer and header. These settings can easily be done in a  few minutes only.

All in all, there are 8 gallery types with versatile design in the system. You can publish your portfolio on the home page or any other page you wish. You can also add several galleries for different image categories. The number of photos to be added to the gallery is unlimited. If needed, you can upload 20 photo screens. This, however, will hardly be a good idea. Instead, it’s better to sort the photos out and publish them in different galleries joined by themes and separated by menu points.

Generally, SITE123 is a great tool for those who are willing to create an appealing portfolio website. No coding, simple dashboard, attractive templates, flexible design settings and the availability of a free plan contribute to the benefits of this system.

uKit

This is an impressive website builder to launch a portfolio. By using a “gallery” widget, you can publish unlimited number of photos. You can use the widget as many times as you need, which makes it possible to create as many galleries on your website as required.

uKit gallery can be set up in a simple and flexible way. Choosing the number of columns with photos (having chosen “1”, the images will occupy the entire screen without fields), adding photo signatures (visible or popping up) as well as alt/description tags will contribute to further portfolio website promotion.

All the templates are responsive, thematic and specially created to be easily adjusted to portfolios websites. It’s easy to create a photographer site here, for example. Just select a ready-made template, fill it with photos, information and publish. You can use color schemes of your own, Google Fonts and any combination of blocks.

Compared to other representatives of the contemporary web design niche market, uKit cost is worth the attention. This is one of the most affordable paid website builders of all. The system is well adapted to graphic content presentation, including large thumbnails, responsive templates and modern template designs. It looks great and you can master it in around 10 minutes. You will need one night only to create a portfolio website of your own, provided that you have prepared the photos for publication in advance and you won’t have to sort out and edit them.

Mobirise

I have included Mobirise into this review as the best sample of desktop website builders. It is a great choice for newbies willing to create their first websites. There are Mobirise versions for Windows, Mac OS and Android. The platform is available absolutely for free. You just download and use it. This is legally allowed for commercial projects, just like portfolio websites. It takes around 2 minutes only to install Mobirise, including the process of downloading the software from the official website.

The program makes it possible to create web pages out of readymade blocks, which also include a gallery. You can choose a block template (all the them are responsive), which is the only design style to create web pages. The number of galleries and photos added is unlimited. If needed, you can expand the amount of blocks, templates and other paid options. As opposed to cloud website builders, all Mobirise payments are made only once – everything you will buy for the account will be stored forever. The website builder itself is free. It’s not obligatory to purchase extra features to create a portfolio website here.

It’s easy to set up a gallery block. You can decide on the best distance between the photos and neighboring blocks, adjust gallery width, add a text and tags for quick access to photo categories, choose background color etc. Generally, the number of settings is limited here, but all of them have notable impact on the quality of photo presentation. Portfolios created with Mobirise look appealing.

The type of this website builder implies that portfolio websites published here require hosting or cloud storage. You can also save project files to the local server. To publish the websites online, the system allows establishing FTP server connection to upload/update websites created with the platform.

All in all, Mobirise is the best desktop software to create portfolio websites. It is simple, convenient and free. The platform is a real find for a newbie.

Ucraft

Ucraft is the best service to create a portfolio website with creative design. All templates are responsive and have contemporary look. Lots of them make use of the duo-tone feature that makes it possible to divide a block into two color contrasting areas to feature the content in each of them.

The dashboard is impressive and intuitive. It will certainly appeal to creative people. You can add a gallery as a separately designed block or a blank widget so that you are able to further adjust things as you see fit. It’s possible to choose the number of images that will be displayed per line, decide on the distances and gallery background color. You can add an unlimited number of photos.

Apart from that, you will also like block animations – parallax and several fade types. They will give your portfolio a more impressive look. You can also use a multilingual feature, if you aim to target foreign audience as well or set up your own blog with Articles App feature.

The system has several stunning templates to create portfolio websites, which come with demo content. What you need is to adjust the design as per your needs and replace the available photos/data with those of your own.

Ucraft is an easy-to-use website builder, which is a perfect choice for newbies with creative skills and ideas. It looks harmonious and makes it possible to easily launch small websites like portfolios featuring quality design.

Bottom Line

Anyone who needs a quality portfolio website doesn’t have to look for a web studio or a web designer. You can solve this task on your own with the help of website builders with visual editors. This is simpler than it initially seems.

You don’t need WordPress to successfully create a portfolio website. WordPress works well only for those users who are real niche professionals. You do not need a readymade website created with WordPress because with WordPress you will have to explore its nuances or hire a web designer to help you.

SITE123, uKit, Mobirise and Ucraft are the best services to create your first portfolio website. The result you eventually get looks professional and requires just a bit of money and time.

It’s close to impossible to decide on the best website builder. This depends upon the requirements of each user and each system has its own benefits. The smartest decision is to test the website builders on your own and make your choice. Good luck!

Written by Howard Steele,

TOP 10 Site Builders Rated by SWB

The post Top WordPress Alternatives to Create a Portfolio Website appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

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Design your way

Everybody loves Google Chrome, right? And everyone is looking for the best Chrome extensions.

With its incredible speed, simplicity and performance, it is easy to see why it is so cherished by everybody.

Specialists have developed a kind of interest in Chrome and that is why they created Chrome add-ons or extension which has almost the same functions as Firefox Addons.

So I researched about those extensions and I liked what I saw about them, and thus, I have compiled a list of the best extensions for chrome which Web designers can find useful.

WriteWell

Writewell is an unbeatable writing software which is very handy to start any sort of writing project such as ebooks, articles, blogs, novels, etc.

The Chrome extension provides a lot of templates and also outlines, samples, smart phrases and tips to steer you through the process of writing.

DomFlags

Drastically speed up styling elements processes with DomFlags, a highly remarkable extension which enables you to create shortcuts for keyboard for DOM elements!

It is just like having bookmark to navigate the DOM; this is definitely going to transform the way you work with DevTools.

 

Highly Highlighter

This is a fascinating system to bring people into a conversation: Highly allows you to share highlights from online articles, so attention can be drawn to the most important parts of writing.

Booom

Booom allows Dribbble to be improved by displaying bigger shots in records; putting Add and Like to Bucket buttons in records; allowing GIFs autoplay and it brings infinite scroll.

CSS-Shack

This great Chrome plugin enables you to make designs and export them thereafter for use on your website into a CSS file. It bolsters layers and contains plenty of the instruments that you are accustomed to from your standard picture editor.

MarmoSet

This splendid extension will obtain your code and produce depictions for your mockups and demos. You can likewise apply effects and themes to make pictures for promo materials and your web portfolio.

Firebug Lite

Firebug Lite gives the rich visual portrayal we are accustomed to in Firebug with regards to HTML components, DOM components, and Box Model shading. It gives some nice features such as reviewing HTML elements with live CSS editing and your mouse.

Stylish

This great extension makes it simple and amusing to totally update the visual style of a website page or webpage. Need to make a dark adaptation of YouTube or a dark form of Google? Stylish is ideal for you.

Stylish enables you to effortlessly oversee client styles. Include, erase, empower, debilitate, and sort out with a couple snaps of a mouse, no code to alter, no dark setup to discover.

Stylish’s partner site, userstyles.org, has a huge number of client styles made by other Stylish clients that you can attempt.

Image Downloader

If there is a chance that you have to mass download pictures from a website page, using this extension you can: See pictures that the page includes and connects to, sort or filter them by URL; likewise bolsters special cases and normal expressions, Optionally display just pictures from connections, Select pictures for download by either utilizing the checkboxes or specifically tapping on the picture, Devoted buttons to open in new tab singular pictures, Customize show border size, width, style and shading, put notifications and buttons you do not need out of sight.

When you click the button for “Download”, every chosen picture are saved to the download folder of Chrome. In the event that you do not have one, you should manually pick the save folder for each picture.

RescueTime

RescueTime is a special methodical service that assists you to see how you invest energy in your PC, cell phone and tablet. No manual information section necessary.

The online-application functions as one with the installable client accessible for OS X, Linux, Windows, Android gadgets, and ChromeOS.

Pinterest for Google Chrome

Pinterest is an instrument to discover your motivation and share it to others. Utilize it to gather things you cherish, sort out and arrange critical projects, and the sky is the limit from there.

StyleBot

Stylebot enables you to swiftly influence the look of any site (making use of custom CSS). You select an element and pick any modifications you want effect from the editor.

The font size, margins, colour, visibility and a lot more can be changed. The highly developed users manually write the CSS.

Making use of Stylebot, you can customize the appearance of your beloved sites. Also, it is a nice tool to debug the design of your website and learn CSS.

Appjump app launcher and organizer

After you have downloaded every extension included in this list, you would certainly have need for an organizer. AppJump is an extension that lets you find and start your apps and some other extensions swiftly from a drop menu located on your toolbar.

An outstanding feature it has is that it organizes extensions and apps into many groups. For instance, you can effortlessly detach your personal extensions from your work, for better time management.

 

Awesome screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is indeed a typical example of awesomeness. This brilliant extension enables the snapshots of the entire page or its part to be taken. After a screenshot has been taken, you can ring or underline pertinent parts, blur the unrelated parts and drop comments.

Chrome Sniffer

Chrome Sniffer enables you the framework of any site to be checked. It finds and shows any recognized Javascript library or Content Management System (CMS) on a site.

This brilliant extension is nice for those astonishing sites that make you wonder, “How is that doable?” At present, more than 100 frameworks can be detected by Chrome Sniffer.

Cloud Save

There is a giant leap from working locally to operating in the cloud. Being a designer and developer, you always work on the web and you are used to it, but are you also used to saving essential documents online?

If your reason is that it is inconvenient, it might be worth it giving Cloud Save a look. Cloud Save enables you to save documents from any site to compatible cloud services. You can save to Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive, and Flickr.

Corporate Ipsum

This is an exciting replacement for the usual Lorem Ipsum filler of text. Using this extension, you can fill your site with “corporate” words.

An instance of this extension is, “capably target enterprise- broad information with multi-purpose ideas.” Corporate Ipsum is based on the well known Mac widget of similar name.

ColorPicker

Exactly like its name suggests, ColorPicker is a suitable extension made primarily to choose and obtain color’s worth from everywhere on the website page. Furthermore, you can select an area and subsequently click on the color palette to spot how the color of the area transforms without you touching a single code.

Palette

Having trouble to find color idea from image? Then Chrome palette will get rid of your problem well by creating 64 color palettes or thereabout from web’s image for your needs.

Google Font Previewer

As stated in its name, Google Font Previewer enables you to take a quick look at font from Google Font index with options such as size, weight, style, and shadows. If you’re pleased with a certain font, the link and the code of the CSS given in the extension can be copied and pasted to your site’s code to make use of the font.

Web Developer

This is a necessary extension for web developers and web designers. Web Developer tries to give all the information you require from an active website such as viewing script and displaying object data.

Also, the extension is equipped with helpful tools such as color picker, validator and window resizer.

Pendule

This is a handy and useful developer tool which is comparable to the Web Developer, just armed with essential tools such as style viewer, validator and source viewer.

HTML Validator

One of the most excellent validating extension which can validate code of HTML of web or local host web page in both manual or auto mode.

You can as well opt to display the results of the validation in the website’s page or look at it in an entirely new tab.

Window Resizer

This extension is an extremely helpful tool which does precisely what it says it does – resizes the window of your browser to assist you with your reactive web designs.

Pick from a variety of well known monitor dimensions or apply custom resolutions and sizes for improved accuracy.

Project Naptha

If it ever happens that you work with set in text from a mockup image, Project Naptha can save you a lot of frustration. Text can be highlighted, copied and pasted from any image due to some neat OCR trickery.

WhatFont

This is a one of the most helpful Chrome tools; WhatFont enables designers and developers to recognize the fonts in use on a website page.

So, should you trip on a nice-looking font that you would like to use in your coming projects, all you need is hover above it and determine immediately which font it is.

YSlow

YSlow does not only check how speedily your website page loads, it as well tells you if something is slowing your web page down, if any.

Yslow examines your website page against twenty three of the thirty four rules recognized by Yahoo’s performance panel. It is a tremendously helpful tool to study web pages and it recommends ways to enhance their performance also.

DevTools AutoSave

An outstanding extension for all web developers and designers, DevTools AutoSave enables you to save any modifications that you effect on a webpage’s JS and CSS using the environment of Chrome Dev Tools to its source-file automatically. It is very simple to use and it will save you valuable time.

ColorZilla

The ColorZilla extension is a sophisticated colour picker, eyedropper, gradient generator colour picker, and more helpful colour tools which will assist with your design.

Ripple Emulator

This extension is a multi-platform emulator that can assist you to test your web application using various devices and resolutions. You can use it in combination with active development tools to carry out DOM inspection, debugging, and automated testing.

Streak

This extension is the vital tool to manage CRM and gives support to emails inside Gmail. It enables you to change a particular email or a whole discussion into an assignable and trackable, organised ticket that can be managed yourself or be shared with others.

Search Stack Overflow

If you are a web developer, that means you must have heard of Stack Overflow, the ideal place for any issue related with development. But if you haven’t heard of it, then you absolutely need to try it, the community is flourishing and it covers a lot of topics such as C# Java, jQuery and PGP.

This incredible extension includes a search box straight into your browser enabling you to explore the enormous Stack Overflow resources.

PHP Ninja Manual

It can be hard to remember all functions, therefore, if you have been spending hours finding particular functions of PHP on Google, PHP Ninja Manual is sure to draw your awareness.

It provides you with all the 5.5 documentation of PHP with illustrations in 8 languages without leaving your browser.

Perfect Pixel

Designers don’t like it when they make a spectacular design and it fails to match up completely when it is coded. Perfect Pixel is the ideal extension for developers who are determined to develop websites that have precise design representations.

This simple extension enables you to add a transparent image cover over the webpage top and carry out a per pixel evaluation between them to make sure it is totally accurate.

Code Cola

This tool allows you to view the source code of your work and it also works as a CSS editor meaning you can change the CSS style of your web pages’ instantly and also see the changes immediately.

PicMonkey

This is a simple free web image editor that enables you to alter web page screenshots and images. But that is not the special thing about it. It enables you to grab every picture and a screenshot of the whole page by just clicking a button.

As soon as you choose the image, you can modify it anyway you want to from adding effects to altering exposure.

Chrome Daltonize

Colour blindness or Colour Vision Deficiency is affecting uncountable people across the world. This resourceful extension makes use of daltonization, a system that enables the making of pictures more fitting for viewing by people with colour blindness.

This incredible extension can be utilized to reproduce how pictures show to people with colour blindness and to assist you create a handier web app.

Check My Links

Are you done with the building of a site? And have you checked and been through all the links? Regardless of your carefulness, it is unavoidable that you would have skipped one or two, and checking all of them is a tiresome task.

But using the Check My Links extension and it will search through every link on every page, highlighting legitimate links in green and invalidlinks in red.

Flickr Tab

Have your dull looking Chrome tabs tired you? Flickr Tab is the answer to your prayer.

It is a straightforward small Extension that shows a trendy Fickr photograph every time a window is opened.

Click the picture to view it in Flickr, or you can click the name of the user to see further pictures from the particular photographer.

Google Art Project

If you don’t like Flickr Tab with its silky image, perhaps you might like Google’s Art Project extension.

In each new tab, it will treat you to hi-res masterwork from people such as Van Gogh and Monet.

Should the images ignite your interest, then click on it and you will be transferred to the website of Google Cultural Institute which is packed with details about the creator of the work and the particular work.

Data Saver

This extension does exactly what is says: it lessens the sum of data that is used for browsing. If it is turned on, Chrome will make use of Google servers to reduce pages before they are downloaded. There is just a caveat though: Incognito and SSL pages will not be included.

Wappalyzer

If you have ever questioned about the platform a website being run on, Wappalyzer is ideal for you. The extension discovers content management systems, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools, ecommerce platforms, and a lot more.

Strikethrough

For people that use Gmail via browser, you could occasionally need to erase a part of text. You then spend several hours thinking about how to uncover the toolbar button that assists you to do this.

Unfortunately, such button doesn’t exist, although Strikethrough extension is fortunately here to assist. Allow the extension then observe the new button show near the Italic and icons located on your toolbar.

45to75

They have always told us that a great “thumb rule” is to maintain the measure) between forty-five and seventy-five characters.

No longer do we need to put the cursor at the line beginning and count up as we anxiously press the cursor key located at the right, all thanks to this brilliant extension.

As soon as the extension is enabled, make a highlight of some text, press the right cursor key, and watch the character count up in the menu.

Ending thoughts

Provided you’re a web designer, it is sure that you will love three of such tools at the least, and perhaps you will see some extensions you don’t have here.

Graphics/Web Design is really a hard task, but the above listed Chrome Extensions can aid your work and make it quicker and easier. We do hope you will find this really helpful.

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