I’ve written here before briefly about some work I was doing to create a new website for myself and how I had thrown something together quickly to get a different site up as fast as possible. That probably definitely wasn’t a good way to approach a new site. To remedy my mistake, I decided that I was going to start from scratch on my site, and in the process, try to teach myself some new stuff. I’m not quite done yet, but for my friends who are working on building their own sites, I thought I’d share some discoveries I’ve made over the past couple weeks that will help me create a better site for the long run.

1. Indexhibit

My first adventure in trying to teach myself something new was experimenting with Indexhibit. Any of my designer friends who aren’t familiar with that should definitely look into it. Using Indexhibit, you can easily create a portfolio site with some very (and I mean VERY) basic understanding of PHP and how to set up a database, and then with a little CSS and Javascript, it’s pretty easy to customize it the way you would like. In fact, you probably don’t have to understand PHP at all, other than to just not be afraid to open up a PHP document and see how it works and know where to dump some code into the file.

The reason to use it? It’s very simple to update, especially if you want to be able to add new work quickly and not have to fuss with creating a bunch of new HTML pages. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but the work I’ve done with it so far has been very promising! With just a little bit of time looking through the forums on their website and looking at examples of other portfolios built with it (you can see examples on their website as well), it’s simple to figure out. I think the only drawback about it is that a lot of designers/artists use it, so you really need to spend some time customizing it to make your site stand out from all the other very similar portfolios. (Or better yet, just let your awesome work speak for itself!) But if you just need to get a portfolio site out there to send to employers, you can have it up and running very quickly. Awesome.

2. Movable Type

Working with Movable Type has inspired me to write this post! I am just so ecstatic right now because in a matter of minutes, I understand tremendously more about how Movable Type works than I ever did about WordPress. Maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that I know a lot more about working with blogs and such now that I’ve been trying to get WordPress to work for me for several months but regardless, I finally understand how to completely customize a blog the way I want to. Now I just need to do the work to put the design together, and soon enough, my blog will be moved from WordPress to Movable Type. Once I get it running, perhaps I could elaborate on how I made it work for me and offer some advice to anyone who is looking to do something similar to their site. But seriously, if I can figure it out, anyone can.

Hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks, you’ll notice a drastic change in my site and blog! More on my process for this very soon.