I have made some major overhauls to my website over the past month to a point where I can deem things acceptable. The latest updates include finding a portfolio implementation I like and getting an initial start on my story, where I have a start on the academics section but am still trying to figure out what to write and how to word parts of it. I have a solid section for my athletics to give a comprehensive overview. I’m not really sure if I need to give any more details like injuries, additional mini-stories, etc.
The plugin I came across which give me the best look and feel for what I am going for is the Aeolus Portfolio WP Plugin. This wasn’t as simple as install and configure. The latest version, as of this writing, is 1.8 which once installed and activated did not work properly with my theme. The issue I was having is that all the content would become ‘minified’ and illegible due to the plugin altering the display of the theme. My best guess is that this is due to the Bootstrap update for the plugin.
In order to get around this I removed the plugin I installed through the WordPress Add Plugin feature and grabbed version 1.7 of the Aeolus Creative Portfolio plugin, unzipped the file and uploaded the folder to my WordPress installation plugins directory. I was then able to go to the Plugins section on the dashboard within WordPress and activate version 1.7 of the plugin. This did not cause any negative effects with my theme so I continued on and configured my Portfolio page to display all portfolio items with pagination similar to a parallax effect since it gives the short description for items. I’m not sure at the moment how well this is going to work long term as it doesn’t appear to show categories; however, you can filter by category so I may be able to do one of the following once there are a lot of items:
- Add multiple portfolio short codes to one page filtered by category and then add a top navigation manually with anchor tags / headings to the various sections
- Add individual pages for each portfolio category as subpages of Portfolio and the root page would be either like the first bullet point or links with explanations to the sub pages
Now I just have to build up my portfolio. This all started with a portfolio being a requirement for a job interview I had while finishing up my Masters. This is why the only portfolio items so far are for my academic projects. Presently I have no work projects I am allowed to divulge (or for that matter have access to anymore) from past or present positions.
In the case of personal projects the portfolio items will appear upon completion of the first major version (1.0) and will be updated with any major features that get added as well as link to the corresponding category containing all posts pertaining to the project.