A portfolio section helps you to display everything you want on your WordPress website. It could be anything like products or services you are providing, photos that inspire your employees, your achievements, and various other things you want to showcase.
Portfolios will make your website more visually appealing, and, making it easier for you to embed your photos on various social media platforms.
Furthermore, it may be useful in creating leads. If you are a creative professional such as a web designer, artist, painter, then a perfectly designed portfolio is essential to attract visitors and expand your business.
Here, in this article, we will demonstrate how to add a portfolio section on the WordPress website. Before that, We would like to explain some benefits of having a Portfolio section on your website.
Let’s get started!
What are the Benefits For Creating a Portfolio Section on Your Website?
- The portfolio section enhances the online visibility of your website. Moreover, a beautifully created portfolio brings the best work in a visual format.
- Developing an online portfolio section is a great way to showcase your services and attract potential clients. Embedding your social media accounts on your portfolio is also an amazing idea to connect with users and grow your social media network.
- Personal branding is an essential way to showcase yourself as an expert and stand out from your competitors. The online portfolios section helps you to show your past experience with personal branding.
Useful Read: 10 Common Portfolio Mistakes & How To Fix Them
There are several Portfolio WordPress plugins available in the global market, but we will only focus on the best Portfolio Designer plugin to easily build a portfolio section on your WordPress website.
Why Use Portfolio Designer WordPress Plugin?
The Portfolio Designer is a mobile-friendly WordPress plugin for developing unique and fully responsive galleries on your website. Using this plugin, you can develop a new custom post type with the image, audio, and video thumbnails. Apart from this, it is really easy to develop an eye-catching portfolio layout and combine them into your WordPress website using several options.
Most importantly, no coding skills are required to use this plugin. You can get everything with just one single plugin.
How to Install and Use Portfolio Designer WordPress Plugin?
For installing a WordPress plugin on your website, you need to login to your WordPress admin area.
Then, click on the left side “Plugins” menu.
After that click on the “Add New” Button.
Again at the top, you can view the “Upload Plugin” button, just click on that.
Now, it’s time to upload a zip file that you download from the Portfolio Designer WordPress plugin page.
Once your installation is completed, you can click on “Activate Plugin” as you see in the below screenshot.
Another way to install this plugin using FTP
Follow the below steps:
1. Download the Portfolio Designer WordPress plugin zip file.
2. Extract the Zip file. It will create a “Portfolio Designer” folder with all plugin files and folders in it. Most importantly, remember the extracted folder path.
3. Using your FTP program, upload the non-zipped plugin folder in the “/wp-content/plugins/” folder on your server.
4. Go to Dashboard >> Plugins >> Installed Plugins and find Portfolio Designer from the plugin list.
5. Finally, click on Activate to activate Portfolio Designer Lite.
Now, you will see the PortFolio Designer option on the left-hand side of the admin panel. Follow the below steps to use the Portfolio Designer plugin on your WordPress website.
Step 1: You have to create a new Page
(1) You have to create a web page using the “Pages” section in the admin panel. For instance, you can give the page title as “Our Portfolio”.
(2) After that, click on the “Update” or “Publish” button that appears on the right-hand side.
Note: If you want to check the frontend view then, right on the Permalink URL and open it in the new tab of the browser.
Step 2: Built New Portfolio Layout
(1) Go to Dashboard >> Portfolio Designer >> Add Layout (You will redirect to a page as shown in the below screenshot).
(2) Insert a Portfolio Name according to your requirements.
(3) Select post type for Portfolio layouts like Page, Post, and many more.
(4) Choose Portfolio on a page such as Masonry layout 4 columns, 3 columns, 2 columns, and many other options.
(5) Press the “Save Changes” button to save your portfolio layout settings.
Step 3: Use created portfolio layouts within page content
(1) Go to Dashboard >> Pages
(2) Open the page in which you want to display portfolio layouts.
Step 4: Click on the:
“Portfolio designer shortcode” it will pop up the “Insert Portfolio Designer Shortcode” box as shown in the below screenshot.
Step 5: Select the layout:
Select the layout name from the list that you want to showcase on the web page and click on the “Insert shortcode” button.
Now you will see that your selected Portfolio layout’s Shortcode is inserted in the page content.
For more detailed information you can visit the Documentation of an amazing Portfolio Designer WordPress plugin.
The Portfolio Designer WordPress Plugin supports 4 amazing layout styles.
1. Grid Layout
As you can see in the below screenshot, a grid layout is made up of vertical and horizontal lines and is associated with every type of visual media. The structure is there to shape your images into proportions that are appealing to the eye.
2. Masonry Layout
Generally, the Masonry layout optimizes the use of space in the web pages by decreasing any unrequired gaps. Moreover, all the different sizes and styles of images are showcased.
3. Slider Layout
Slider layout includes formatting, positioning, as well as placeholder boxes for all of the images or information that display on a slider. The Placeholder boxes are the containers in layouts that hold data like text, photos, tables, charts, videos, sounds, and many more. Moreover, it always appears amazing on your website.
4. Justify Layout
The Portfolio Designer plugin contains built-in multiple justify layouts with different hover effects for your website. The layout keeps images noticeable and looks outstanding on your website.
All the layouts are eye-catching, so you can use it according to your requirements.
Features That Helps You To Grow Your Business:
1. Infinite Layouts
Firstly, the plugin supports unlimited layouts styles like Grid, Masonry, Single Slide, Slider layouts, WooCommerce, and many more. In this plugin, you can create an unlimited portfolio page, gallery section on any page, or full website page with the portfolio layouts.
2. Unique and Powerful Effects
The plugin provides 50+ mouse hover effects for any website. All the effects are developed based on CSS(cascading stylesheet). It works nicely with all the browsers.
3. Unlimited Design and Color Options
In this plugin, you can choose any colors according to your needs. And, make an attractive portfolio on your website. The plugin will automatically capture your active theme colors and styles. So, you did not need to worry about selecting the default color.
4. Video, Audio, And Gallery Support
The plugin supports YouTube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion videos to showcase in the popup. Moreover, you can display a gallery of custom post types with the click of an image as well.
5. Unlimited Custom Post Type
There is no limitation to build custom post types and display them with creativity. You can develop your custom post types such as portfolios, services, testimonials, projects, galleries, and many more.
6. No Expert Required
There is no need for an expert because this is a user-friendly WordPress plugin. WordPress users can also use it on the tip of their fingers.
7. Image Special Effects
The plugin supports 8 unique image effects such as Blur, Sepia, Invert, Saturate, Grayscale, Contrast, Brightness, mouse hover effects. All effects are created based on CSS.
8. Pagination Type
The plugin provides 3 types of pagination like Standard, Load more, and Autoload.
9. Inbuild Fancybox
The Fancybox helps you to showcase your images on a large scale.
10. SEO Friendly
The plugin is built with search engine optimization in the mind to ensure better ranking on the various search engines.
11. Google Font Support
More than 800 Google Web fonts are available. Still, if a user does not get any appropriate fonts then, users can assign the needed font-family with backend selection. And, you can also change it anytime instead of the default one.
12. Manage Animation
You can also control the animation speed with the hover effect on your website.
13. Easily Access Admin Panel
It provides a user-friendly admin panel side to manage all the things smoothly.
14. One-Click Demo Installation
The plugin provides one-click install quick setup functionality. It will add new custom post types with images, build sample portfolio layouts, and will open a display link in the new tab.
15. Cross-Browser Compatible
The plugin provides cross-browser compatibility with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and many more.
Other Important Details of Portfolio designer WordPress Plugin.
- Price – $39
- Rating – 4.56 out of 5 Stars
- Compatible Browser – IE10, IE11, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, Edge
- PHP Version – 5.6 or higher
In Conclusion
We hope this article helps you to build a portfolio section on your WordPress website.
A portfolio helps you to promote your brand in an eye-catching way. Most important thing is that you need to optimize your portfolio pages for the search engines. It will help you get more organic traffic on your website.
Important Reading: How To Speed Up Your Gallery On WordPress [Proven Tips]