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Jaytee's avatar
Level 39

Opinions on Portfolio development (Hosting wise)

Don't ask, but I've never put a portfolio website live. I've usually just emailed potential clients / employers through with a few code samples, and images of designs I've created. Employers that I've worked for have also asked me to conduct a practical test, which is where they are most interested.

I'm looking to start picking up clients properly, so have decided to start on a Portfolio. Hell, if users with no concept of learning on this forum can pick up clients, so can I haha.

I'm curious tho. I've been stuck between building a static-site or a Laravel site.

Right now, i'm leaning towards a static-site with TightenCo's Jigsaw. I don't have a reason to have a site running server-side, as it's really just a showcase, and it would be the optimal solution.

But, I'm thinking about the future, what if I want to put demo projects on the server than can be ran, or handle form submissions (as with static sites, you can't do this without the use of a service like Netlify) etc, or build a blog, or want a database. I know of course, I could have separate apps for things that would require server-side stuff, but I think you understand what I mean.

The idea was, if i build a static site, it can just live on Github pages with a custom domain I've got.

Reckon I should just build a website with Laravel instead? That way, my problems are solved for the future, and should I need to upload / expand with features that require a server, I can easily do so. I'm not sure why this is a difficult decision for me to make, but it is. It's just one of those things in my brain. I guess it's because the site is only going to have about 5 parent pages (to start with), with nested pages between (e.g: projects and project/{nameofprojectorwhatever}

How do you guys host your portfolios?

P.S: Where's the best place to start as a freelancer to get clients? I'm not wanting to look local, as it's quite low-demand at the moment (I know this from experience). International would be ideal. Please don't mention sites like Upwork and Guru etc. I've been developing in Laravel for about 5 years, and I have quite a presence on this forum which can back that up. Those sites are a joke for getting work.

Cheers

0 likes
9 replies
mabdullahsari's avatar

Gatsby/Gridsome is probably what you're looking for. I'm building my new portfolio site with Gatsby and it offers everything I'd need for such a site. Fully client-side app solution with routing & seamless SSR.

Especially Gatsby's GraphQL API is very powerful, meaning you can also host an entire blog if you'd like in the future without any hassle. (Dan Abramov's overreacted.io is a fine example).

I'm thinking about hosting my site with Netlify's free plan as it's more than enough for what I need and it has some easy to work with form submission solutions which you can also leverage with Gatsby.

But, yeah you need to know a little bit of React/Vue for these solutions :) Laravel seems very "overkill". GL!

PS: Waiting for your findings regarding route param injection in controllers ;)

jlrdw's avatar

A full fledged site would be a good idea also maybe with a login of admin admin

Then have a nice looking menu where the potential client can choose various features and how you handle various features.

I know especially in a business type application most users for example are interested in entering data quickly with very efficient and easy to fill out forms.

Also another feature that a business likes is easy lookup tables.

Just an example but say you are designing Logistics software and you go to a assign which driver or which carrier is doing a particular load, that's where a nice quick look up table to choose the carrier or driver comes in handy.

So you can show potential clients you can easily program the in the features they are after.

Just a suggestion. And that's really all I know because all I've ever done is business and bookkeeping type applications.

Sorry I missed (hosting wise), but will leave the suggestion.

Jaytee's avatar
Level 39

@mabdullahsari I'll take a look into it. Cheers.

P.S: Test app has been installed and booted, but no solution yet :/ I haven't forgotten

Jaytee's avatar
Level 39

@jlrdw Yeah I was thinking about just doing in it Laravel. That way i'm setup to tackle whatever I need to.

I'll add a lookup table which shows all the times i've won B.A when we've been helping together ;)

I'll have a specific section too. "Times I've achieved Best Answer against @jlrdw ": and then link some threads haha.

All jokes aside, cheers.

jlrdw's avatar

@jaytee I will confess you are probably much better at eloquent than me, I barely use it. I am still old school and normally use getPdo(), but of course I bind parameters. I use custom Auth. But I also use cakephp and yii, so I stay away from framework biased code. In fact my code looks more like the vendor folder code (PHP).

But I just got used of normal queries after years of java (jdbc, servlets, jsp, ejb). But I am guessing you freelance.

My advice to you if you are still young, try to get on with a big logistics company, or at least a good medium logistics company on the programming / I.T. team. You won't be sorry.

That's what I did, logistics - dispatch - a/r - a/p, etc. Semi retired now, just smaller php apps now.

Another good career is collections. My son works for a large firm that for example will have a whole large Hospital chain turn over A/R to them. He programs in conversions, where he takes whatever format they used and converts it to their database. More to it than that, but it's also a good programming job.

Jaytee's avatar
Level 39

I'm better at Eloquent, you're better at raw sql. No disputing that one

I was with a large company (60,000 employees), but the environment and day to day operations were no where near what I imagined. The only good thing about it was the salary, and the fact we used frameworks like Laravel and Vue. No access to the development tools I required, was using hardware that was slow (the hybrid HDD had shit itself, still never got replaced, so running a simple command like making a model took a couple of minutes, whilst the rest of the team were almost instant)

jlrdw's avatar

I admit, I was blessed when younger landing the career I did. Remember, a career (job) isn't always exciting, that's where you need a good hobby. Have the motto "work hard and play hard" haha.

Jaytee's avatar
Level 39

How did you get through it all these years without getting bored constantly ? I say all these years, how old are you? And when did you begin your career? I'm 22 at the end of the year (literally). Started coding when I was 15, but didn't start PHP until I was about 17. Haven't really expanded to other languages yet like Java etc. More just web languages

I actually hit a burn out stage when I was at that company. Working on the same shit projects everyday, with the exact same concepts. Always using datatables etc, no sort of freedom to create something that looks a bit better. Same database (pgsql) (not keen on pgsql, compared to mysql. I know it's powerful for geo stuff, but we only had two apps that were spatial data). etc etc

jlrdw's avatar

At he trucking company, yes things got routine, but not so routine that I got bored. My title was database manager, but I did other things as well, stayed busy. In the evenings I would help with calling companies to find "back hauls" for our trucks, etc.

But that's nothing, I also worked for the State of Texas for a while afterwards. For a State, you do things their way, no arguments.

But in a case like yours, being young, you could have a good programming job, even if boring sometimes, and sill freelance sometimes if you wish.

I started programming in (dbase 3), many years ago In the Air Force. Back then no Microsoft Windows, No forums, you either bought a book or went to library.

Dbase was big in it's day. I also have done some business apps in MS Access along the way. It's been a while now.

What's crazy, is I miss the old MS Dos no Windows days. Crazy right.

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