I didn’t do much work to the overall layout, but I did change the menu a little. First off, I changed the names of the categories to “words,” “images,” and “sounds.” I’m still using what was originally the “categories” to organize my work, but I know that’s going to be problematic soon, especially for my photos. Most portfolio sites I’ve seen that contain photography are divided by project or type of photo. With my current set-up, dividing my work by project isn’t too much of an issue but if I want to throw in a photo or two under a a broader category (say “portraits” or “snapshots”) I’m going to need a more static layout. I still haven’t figured out how I want to organize that though.
In my menu, I also divided by “images” section by “photo” and “video” so users can choose which they’d rather view. I added some photos from past assignments and wrote a little intro for each, providing a link to another one of my clips (for example, an article) where appropriate. I used a plug-in called LightBox2 to display them. I’m still playing around with what size I want the images to be and whether or not I want to add captions; on the one hand, they provide context, but most photo portfolios I’ve looked at don’t use captions.
I also redid my “contact” section. Instead of the using the theme’s default contact settings (which had “email me” and my phone number in the drop-down menu), I created a page. I used a contact form plug-in so that users could easily reach me via e-mail and I tinkered with the settings so that the confirmation and error messages sounded a litte more human (for example, when someone sends me an e-mail it reads, “The message went through – thanks for reaching out!” instead of the generic “Message submitted successfully. Thanks.”). I also added my number, and social media information at the bottom.
Layout-wise, I got rid of the right-hand column. I couldn’t find anything to put inside that didn’t detract from the layout, so I removed it.
I also added a new clip.
