Job hunting can be pretty difficult for creative professionals. You’re not in a field like financial services or the sciences, where you’ve got a good transcript and hard numbers to back you up. You’ve only got your work – and it needs to speak for itself.
It can’t really do that if no one can find it.
Whether you’re a graphic designer, a musician, an artist, or a content marketer, you need to have a place where you can showcase what you do. A website to which you can direct both prospective clients and curious friends/family. And in building such a website, WordPress is one of your best options.
Here’s why.
It’s Easy To Use
WordPress isn’t the most popular content management system in the world for nothing. It’s extremely easy to use and manage. I’ve known plenty of writers, for example, who wouldn’t know proper coding standards from a hole in the ground – they’re able to use the platform without any difficulty whatsoever.
Even if you’re building your website from the ground up and just managing it with WordPress (in which case, hire a web designer), most of the work that goes into setting up a portfolio site is at the beginning. Foundational stuff. The day-to-day is nearly effortless.
Plugins
Ease of use isn’t the only benefit to WordPress, either – the biggest advantage it offers is versatility, and much of that through its plugin ecosystem. Want a plugin that lets you seamlessly configure a beautiful, searchable photo gallery? Or how about one that lets you customize how each element in your portfolio is displayed and organized to visitors? WordPress offers all that and more.
At this point, given the size and age of WordPress’s plugin development community, I’d go so far as to say that there’s a plugin for everything. And even if you can’t find a plugin to do what you want, you can probably get someone to code it for you.(or code it yourself, if you’re willing to learn PHP).
…And Plenty Of Perfect Themes
Last but certainly not least, let’s talk about themes. Tons of creatives use WordPress to host their portfolios online – many theme creators maintain portfolios themselves. For that reason, there are a ton of elegant, beautiful, and snazzy themes you can use to customize your site’s layout, both free and premium.
So long as you only download from reputable, trusted sources, you can make your website look however you envision.
Show Your Creativity
So, why use WordPress as the backend of your portfolio? The better question is why wouldn’t you? While there are certainly plenty of other content management systems out there that could work, WordPress remains one of the most effective, efficient, and easy to use.
