Portfolio websites

[lollige]

I noticed that a lot of people here have a nice portfolio website.
I have started on things a few times myself as well, but I never get to finish 'm, and they are never how I want it.

How did you guys make your potfolio websites

Did you first do a lot of sketches, color tests? Anything you can show? 
From scratch written CSS files and html, or did you have a base? 
How do you keep it updated? Do you have PHP scripts that allows you to add pages without having to manually edit everything, or uploading everything on FTP? 
Or wasn't it even build by you, and did you only put in your content? 

Please tell about it, and show your links to your portfolio websites


At the moment I am experimenting with a CMS (drupol) and an (slightly modified) premade template.

[crisnmp]

Not really a portfolio but is like most of them except it has no content. I started with a crappy site and constantly updating it. Most of the CSS from scratch and I update it by editing the php and adding content manually. Which is not the best way but I'm too lazy atm and the fact that I rarely update.
if($site=="m"){echo '<title>CrisNMP :: Index</title><h1>New Layout</h1><div class="descr">Feb 02, 09</div><p>Those who want to see the old site click <a href="index2.php">here[/url].</p>';}

Which eventually gets too messy lol.
However when writing the CSS from scratch you might come across problems with inferior browsers such as IE. I haven't bothered to fix it but it works in FF/Opera/Chrome. In IE it doesn't display the content where is supposed to and the width + alignment doesn't work. Also the favicon doesn't work in IE either () As for the colours, they're not unique and I've seen them on other sites.
Beware of my site with no content.
http://cris.squadcoding.com/
Old one:
http://cris.squadcoding.com/index2.php

[TrevoriuS]

I'm currently making a new one, replacing one that's about 2 or 3 years old by now; and never finished to begin with. And what I ended up doing was selecting my best piece of art, and expand it; redesign it, to make it into a website. As I'm a 3D artist I now have an intro scene (of about 2 seconds) of a high detailed cathedral interior, so people already get a preview of my abiliyt of making websites, designing websites and being an artist.

Whatever you want to get a job in; that's what your portfolio website should scream.

[Squiggly_P]

http://squigglyperson.awardspace.com/index.html

I did all of it by hand with notepad++.  I just like coding stuff, so coding a website was a no-brainer for me.  Still working on it, tho.  This is just a basic layout and idea.
I did some sketching and some writing.  You have to plan at least eh basic layout and it's best to do that with a sketch rather than trying to come up with something decent as you code.  Lord knows I've tried that before.  The reason I've not updated it in a while is that I'm actually working on some PHP that will let me log in to a back-end and add new content, but that's a LOT more complex than it needs to be.  If you plan it properly and code it in a way that makes it easy to edit, and if your host provides FTP info (most do) then updating is pretty simple.  I could copy/paste some code on my 'doodles' page, change a couple filenames in the URL's and update it in just a matter of a minute.

You don't need to learn PHP or anything fancy like that.  Just some basic CSS and HTML code can make you a pretty nice portofio site.