Create a Stunning Portfolio at Minimal Costs

Preparing a portfolio is the most prevalent way for artists to showcase a collection of their best works. It may be used to promote private sales or for showing self versatility and talent to potential employers. What started as a physical briefcase holding samples of paintings or photos has developed to an engaging online display, accessible to a much wider audience. Essentially, a web-based portfolio is a business card, a private art gallery and a resume, concentrated all under one internet address.

You may exhibit your works using any of the various layouts and designs available on the web. Many creators choose a gallery presentation consists of thumbnail images; others prefer a rotating image slideshow that focuses on a single large rotating image. Some artists embed their display into a blog or within a site that combines text and other content such as related video or audio players while others believe images speak for themselves with no need for explanations or supplements.

Nowdays, browsing the web, you can find numerous free WordPress themes to download and use. The themes are premade templates, designated to answer the demands of a specific occupation, subject or purpose. The themes require no programming skills; they are very friendly and easy to manage and usually come with detailed guides or tutorials, which you can follow.

If your target is costs reduction, there is no point in choosing a complex or an expensive premium theme, although it may provide you with a built-in image gallery or slider since this type of display will force you to pay high hosting and delivery fees, particularly if you care about getting fast upload and high performance to optimize your visitors viewing experience. Settling for a nicely designed text based site, you will get more than just a free theme. Simple content site may use free or extremely cheap hosting services that do not exceed a one digit number of dollars and even include a free domain.

After you complete building the initial site, setting a hosting plan and choosing a domain name, you can finally find the time to create the portfolio itself. There is an abundance of multimedia companies offering a wide range of rich media products. Image gallery and slideshow skins are the most popular presentations over the web and many platforms give them away for free together with a free WordPress plugin and free hosting and delivery services (limited to a certain amount of space and bandwidth per month). Many of the galleries and sliders designs include lots of customization options, allowing you to get a full control over your display appearance and performance.

At this point, assuming you already have attractive and intriguing images, all you have left to do is take a few simple steps. Download and install the suitable extension you are provided with; choose your favorite gallery skin; set your options and upload your images. The application you use will guide you through those stages and will automatically perform image resizing and conversions when needed. You may try and preview different kinds of skins before deciding, which one to embed into your page. Adding the gallery widget is a very simple action. You will be provided with a line of code you may embed anywhere on your page.

The great thing about this kind of rich media presentations is that you get a professional display, which you may add to any location on your site without using your site’s server quota. Many platforms offer full scalability, remote access and CDN services, meaning you and your visitors can enjoy a fast and reliable delivery of content with no extra payments.

The market competition works for the user’s benefit. Companies are fighting for traffic and are willing to embrace users even as none paying customers. If a portfolio is all you really need with no e-commerce services or heavy traffic requirements, there is no reason to invest much time or money. Free themes, cheap hosting services and free gallery skins are available out there. Choose your work samples wisely; do not use more images than you really need. Remember you can update and edit your gallery at any given time. This way, you will have an amazing portfolio, which will cost you, in the worst case scenario, merely a few dollars per month.

About the Author!

July Shaff is a content manager at Cincopa company. Cincopa is a leading multimedia platform that provides a wide selection of rich media products and solutions. It offers various image galleries and slideshows, audio, podcast and video players and highly advanced hosting and delivery services.