Freelancer Portfolio: Personalized or Glazed Eyes?

Hi peeps!

Here is my portfolio page

Quick Aside: This is my first topic post in the Forum, so please let me know if I didn’t follow any of the policies concerning posting on the forum :pray:

I struggle with web design, and consider myself more of a back-end programmer, but I’m working on the front-end certificate first in order to push myself out of my comfort zone and be more well-rounded (that’s the hope at least!).

With that said, I used a Bootstrap theme for my portfolio, and wanted to know if it looks customized enough or does it appear too cookie cutter?

A smaller question I have is what to do about that Copyright line in the footer. Do I just put my name there? Not really sure what the purpose of the Copyright is as the theme is under a free-to-use license as far as I know.

Any feedback/input is much appreciated. Thanks guys :sunflower:

Sorry for the belated reply, the project feedback section is not visited very often as it is not shown in the main section, so my best apologies for the several day wait. You are using the forums great!

Great Idea![quote=“ciacci1234, post:1, topic:78549”]
With that said, I used a Bootstrap theme for my portfolio, and wanted to know if it looks customized enough or does it appear too cookie cutter?
[/quote]

It looks like a free bootstrap template (Start Bootstrap, just saying I knew immediatly, because I have seen several portfolios that have the exact color scheme and star design…). Since you are trying to push yourself outside of comfort zone, I strongly suggest trying to write the code yourself instead of using a pre-built template, and the code reviewers probably will notice if you use a template or not :wink: (you should write your own code for the projects or give proper credit as needed).

But template notice aside, here are some design ideas. The aspect ratio of the portfolio items is off. No one wants to visit a website that looks like a banana. The rest looks pretty good. Again, I hate to repeat myself, but for a portfolio page especially, it is not good as a developer to say you used a theme. I like the way it looks, I suggest trying to build something similar all by yourself (you can use bootstrap of course obviously).

For copyright, since you did not make it, I am not sure I would put your name. But if you make your own version of it, feel free to do whatever you want.

Thanks for the response! Good point on the aspect ratio, I’ll go back and explore that. I think I will focus on the other front-end projects before returning to my portfolio, but I will take your suggestion to code the site by hand under serious consideration :thumbsup:

And since I have a credits section at the bottom of my site, I’m hoping that will be sufficient for the code reviewers of the FCC project.

Thanks again for your response! I appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback :smile:

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