You may have noticed the live demo site for Preferential showcases a portfolio that looks great when you want to display projects that you have done, whether for a client, or for yourself. The portfolio is not built into the theme for a very good reason…if you ever change to a new theme, you can keep your portfolio because it’s not part of the theme. In this case, the porfolio is part of the Jetpack plugin. To show you what the portfolio looks like, or at least what I did for the live demo site, you can see it here:
The first thing you need is Jetpack, so if this is not installed, you need to install it so that we can activate one of the modules in it called “Custom Content Type“.
Create Your First Portfolio Project and Portfolio Items
- Go to Jetpack >> Settings >> then activate the Custom Content Type module
- After activation, a “Portfolio” menu group gets added to your Admin menu group which contains:
- All Projects
- Add New
- Project Types
- Project Tags
- Click on the Project Types and create a category. For example, in the live demo site, I made one called “Black & White”.
- On the Portfolio menu group, you can click on Add New to begin adding projects (posts) to showcase an item.
- Fill out your portfolio item name, details of your project, and add a Featured Image (this will show a thumbnail)
- Click Publish or Update
Using the Portfolio Shortcode
The portfolio shortcode gives you the most flexibility in how you want your portfolio to show in your site. It also lets you use a standard page! Documentation for the portfolio shortcode can be found here:
We would recommend keeping it fairly simply for a clean layout. This is the shortcode We used for the live demo site:
[portfolio display_types=false display_tags=false columns=3 showposts=9]
Featured Images for the Portfolio
We would recommend you use larger images for your portfolio featured images, so that when someone clicks through to see more about your project, they will get a nice featured image at the top of the page like this:
When you create your featured image, make sure you maintain the same size, orientation, and aspect ration for each portfolio featured image you use so that when you go to your portfolio, your layout is even by rows and columns and everything looks perfect in consistent size. The images I used for the live demo site were 800×533, although you can use what works best for your own portfolio. As for other photos, galleries, or even slideshows within your content, you can be a bit more flexible.
Screencast – Portfolio
Please note that the process is same for as for the Pure & Simple theme so we’ve included video which we’ve made for Pure & Simple theme.