Show HN: My first portfolio site - Full Stack Engineer | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first portfolio site - Full Stack Engineer

jakegaylor.com

44 pointsjhgaylor42 comments

I think it's a great start, but I think with a little more work you can do better.

The biggest thing is that the page is a wall of text, especially early on. I'm not sure what part is important, what I can skim, and what I only need to know if I'm really digging into it.

Give the reader some clues by using differences in font sizes, containers, etc. For example, take your first two paragraphs, distill them to one elevator pitch, and give it the .lead class to make it stand out.

Developer/Ops/Recent Past/Future sort of run together. Give them a little more visual separation.

On Projects, the image starts higher than the headline for that project. Since you're in bootstrap, consider using a panel with a heading, or something like that to help visually separate the projects and put the thumbnails in a place where they seem more related to the text next to them.

Overall, it's a very clean portfolio site, and I think you're very close to having something that really stands out. It makes me think of redoing mine, using some of the great product pages out there as inspiration.

Great work!

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to help me.

My thought was that this page would supplement my resume and that the person would like the "information overload". I should have spent more time making the pieces the reader is looking for obvious and will put some serious work into the typography to help do that.

I also want to put some love into the screenshots and maybe make it a gallery.

Thanks again for the kind words. :)

Can you get a better photo? A lot gets pre-judged on that, and the one you have posted at the top is both poorly lit and a little cool on the white balance. Even something as simple as waiting until an overcast day would significantly even out the lighting, and as long as you adjust for the cooler ambient light, you should end up with something better.

(I'm a professional photographer.)

Hey there. Thanks for reaching out. I definitely want to take a new photo, I've lost 50 lbs since that one! It is a little late tonight (sun is going down) but I'll jump on it tomorrow. I've only got my phone's camera. Any suggestions? Shoot from above, put the light behind me, etc?

I really appreciate the feedback :)

Here are some random tips I can think of off the top of my head:

- Shooting at a slight downward angle has a slendering effect. The opposite applies to shooting at an upward angle.

- Never face the camera straight on. You'll look larger than you really are.

- Wide angle lenses (such as the one on a camera phone) will create barrel distortion. This is most noticeable towards the edges of the frame, so if you have enough resolution to crop it you can end up effectively faking a longer focal length.

- The best lighting is in the shade. A camera cannot capture the range of contrast you can see, which means it's important to avoid huge variations in light and dark areas.

- Given a single light source for a headshot I will short light the subject. There's a diagram here that illustrates the basic concept: http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/short-lighting-photograph...

- Avoid distracting backgrounds. Wide angle lenses cannot achieve as much depth of field blurring as telephoto lenses can. This means that what could be an otherwise pleasing blur of colors with a long lens can be incredibly distracting from the central subject with a short lens.

- Don't be afraid of some light editing. If your phone is an iPhone, I like Snapseed: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapseed/id439438619?mt=8. My base adjustments applied to almost every image include a slight boost to contrast, vibrancy, and a very subtle vignette.

Awesome! Thanks. This is way more than I was hoping for. I'll be lookin` clean in my next pic!

It's a photo for a professional context, so put a little more effort in to it - get a haircut first, wear a smart shirt, and if you've lost 50lbs, then yes, you should get it re-shot for sure. The photo you have on your LinkedIn is approximately 50 times better, but could still be improved on.

Thanks. That linkedIn photo is way old, I forgot to update it when I did all the others. Hmmm, I guess I have to re-update all of it now! :D

I'd suggest a nice smart photo in front of a plain white wall. Something smart casual like a plain shirt would do well I'd say.

Selfie amatuer here: you want the light in front of you, camera a few degrees above your face.

Nice work Jake!

I think you should keep the project summaries on the homepage. If you do make a big change I might move the Developer and Ops summaries below your projects. Give me a quick intro to who you are then let me see your work.

Also could use a little more separation and hierarchy in the project sections. Quick web tools mockup: http://i.imgur.com/Ucp6ZLG.png

Thanks for your feedback. I will look at how to more cleanly delineate the projects. I also feel that is a weak part of the site. I will consider rearranging the sections to get to the projects more quickly.

Hi Jake, I wish you the best of luck. My only suggestion would be to proof read it again. I found a few obvious mistakes. e.g. " I learned to do a lot of non technical things things as well"

Just to add to that, this sentence needs reworking: " I have a ton of experience developing web applications, but I have worked with a variety of platforms and technologies to build software and have deployed software to the web, Mac OS X, and Linux."

The word "but" does not sit well there. There is no "but" :)

Also probably reword 'I have a ton' - it's a little too informal I think.

Awesome! The page has been updated. I appreciate the feedback. :)

Thanks! I've made a couple of quick fixes but will definitely do some editing on all of it soon. :)

I suggest hiring a web designer to take a look at it. It looks good - but since we're not designer professionals it's possible to get a better design. Imagine a designer taking a 20-hour programming course to build a buggy and semi-functional program to demonstrate his design skills, it wouldn't look too impressive. Just my 2 cents.

Design is the skill set I want to pick up next, so this is a great chance to learn it. I will though reach out to some designers I respect for advice. Thanks for the feedback and the analogy, it hit the spot. :)

If you are a dev, do dev. Full stack is already a "jack of all trades" label, piling design on top of that is probably a bit much given that the methodologies are quite different from engineering. It might also hurt your CV as you advance, where specialization is expected more than generalization.

That being said, a lot of devs seem to do OK with some basic design work, but it drives my wife (a designer who works in a dev shop) a bit crazy given the quality differences between a dev dabbling in design vs. what fully specialized designers can accomplish.

Now, an ability to work with designers as a dev is a great skill, especially if you do a lot of front end work.

Impressive work.

I can only see your github and email link icons on the desktop version, on mobile I see them all but they are too small.

A few links are broken (tldr.io and statbat wiki link and Tracers project link)

No favicon.

I always find things easier to skim if line lengths are shorter and text is slightly bigger but that is nitpicking (http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability).

A trade off to the projects is trying to condense them down to a single line each that can be part of the inital text blocks. I.e Statbot - A multi region realtime XMPP app with 14k+ users built in a week

Thanks for the feedback! I hadn't even thought about a Favicon. I'll look into that.

I will definitely check into the line lengths as well. Web design isn't my strong suit, but this is a chance to fix that!

I like the idea of giving each project a "headline". :)

The broken links should now be fixed.

Thanks again for taking the time to give me feedback.

Maybe "Full-stack" or "Full Stack"... I don't think "Fullstack" has entered the English language yet.

Wow! I think this is pretty good. Congrats.

The only suggestions I would make is to maybe just put some project/skill highlights on the front page and make the long list of projects a separate page. I also think the project list is more readable in a single column (on my monitor it broke into two columns which was a little difficult to follow).

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the feedback. I was trying to alternate the screenshot and text of the projects to break the monotony. I'll go look into that more.

I was afraid that by putting the projects on a stand alone page I would lose the part people actually cared about. I'll also give that more thought.

Thank you for checking it out. :)

I definitely like that they are on the same page, as otherwise I might have been lazy and not followed the link.

I wasn't a fan of the presentation style of the various projects (as far as the alternating alignment), but that might just be me. :) I'm curious if some higher-level overview or listing of the projects might have helped me skip to the ones I cared about.

Overall, great presentation. It looks like you've built some pretty impressive stuff, and I like that you talk at several levels of detail about them (what they do, and what the tech stack was, etc).

Hey, thanks for letting me know what you thought about it. I think the layout could use some work (especially around the projects) and maybe a table of contents considering that list should continue to grow.

It makes me happy to know that someone else thinks my work is impressive and that I could give back by providing insights into the projects. If you want to know more about any of them, I'm happy to talk about them :D

Very nice. I used to teach computer programming at a community college and I told the students that a portfolio (site or github or whatever) was a must. Not many people seemed to listen though. This is just the kind of thing that sets people apart. I'm amazed how many resumes I get don't have any kind of portfolio link.

For a while I did not have a site. I stuck a blog up once, but that fell off as the startup picked up. Now that I have time again I wanted to make it really easy for people to understand me and my work.

Glad to hear it. This is the inspiration behind my latest project.

Someone interested would have to scroll a while to see your skills, which are in the footer. Otherwise, seems like you fixed the href mistake in your first paragraph since I looked at this earlier.

Looks goood so far - I just think you can seperate some stuff out into sub pages or something.

Eg:

"Home" page Projects/Portfolio Bio

etc.

I definitely want to consider splitting it apart. I might duplicate the content or at least make some scroll-to links.

I didn't want to blind anyone with a list of keywords so I shoved them to the bottom for people looking for them. I'll probably put the logos in the header background or something like that.

Thanks for the feedback. :)

This is a great start and you have certainly worked a lot of interesting projects, but you could really make it shine with a little more time spent on design.

It's on the list of things to do. Design is the skill set I want to pick up next, so this is a great chance to learn it. Thanks for the feedback. :)

Add more padding! Padding makes everything look better xD (I.e. around title, for the buttons, etc.)

Read on vertical rhythm

You don't have your <title> set :)

Nice work.

Great site, another typo:

"I jumped at the change to build it." -> "jumped at the chance"

Fixed. Thanks for catching that.

You did a CRUD on a LAMP? Eww!

Seriously though, nice work!

Thank you! :)

Typo "Entreprenuer"

Thanks! Fixed. :)

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