You may be the best illustrator, photographer or blogger on the scene, but if you do not have a quality portfolio to showoff your work items, you may be loosing out on some serious exposure to potential clients.

Not everyone knows how to code to the latest HTML5 / CSS3 standards and there is no problem with that. Why would a budding illustrator or print designer bother to learn in depth coding when they are mega busy working on client project work and running their business.

The problem is, without being fairly knowledgeable in coding or implementing a CMS you loose the ability to maintain a decent working portfolio. The solution to the problem is rather simple…

Use WordPress To Power Your Portfolio

The beauty of using a WordPress theme to power your portfolio and showoff your work is that you do not need to be a code whizz, or even a WordPress whizz to setup your online portfolio. WordPress is super easy to install and a very time efficient way to manage your portfolio items.

WordPress Theme Selection

There are many WordPress themes available to use as your portfolio front-end, in this post I am focusing on new WordPress portfolio themes that have recently been released.

The themes I have included are responsive, meaning your site layout will be optimised and will alter for different devices like iPhones and iPads, this is a great way to be sure your portfolio and work always looks great no matter what device you view your website on.

Pocillo

A visually stunning, super clean WordPress theme, perfect for displaying your work and writing.

Hardy

Hardy is a fully responsive minimalistic portfolio theme. It’s specifically designed to put your best work front and center by displaying your projects in big customizable sections on the home page.

Galão

A beautiful design, combined with gorgeous typography creates a visually stunning way to showoff your work.

Ink

Ink is a simple, clean, and elegant portfolio theme that adapts to any screen resolution. Set full screen background images to easily give each project, post, or page its own personality.

Breve

Breve is a super clean & minimal responsive WordPress theme, perfect for showcasing your best work.

Origin

Origin is a stunning grid-based theme that tells a story through imagery. The theme creates a truly engaging experience by saturating the screen with your beautiful photos. The theme is also responsive, meaning it will look and work great on mobile devices as well. If you are an artist looking to showcase your latest work, or if you are a blogger looking to give your visitors a fun new way to browse your latest posts, then Origin is great choice for you!

Flexible

Flexible is a sleek and minimal portfolio theme packed full of some awesome features. The theme puts your work first, keeping the design elements to a minimum while still maintaining a definitive modern style. With its filterable, ajax-powered multi-media gallery, Flexible is perhaps our most feature-rich gallery theme yet.

Radioos

Radioos WordPress theme is a classic and simple portfolio theme, perfectly made to showcase amazing projects you did.

Exhibit

Exhibit’s clean design elements and a strict grid gives the theme an organized layout that is easy to read and awesome to look at. Exhibit is fully responsive theme that can display your video, images, audio, galleries, asides, links, quotes and standard posts.

Journal

Journal is a very clean WordPress theme created with small business, portfolio and personal sites in mind. The theme features a homepage slider, tagline, services and recent portfolio items (optional). The theme is fully responsive so it will fit all your screen sizes – desktops, iPads, iPhones – they can all be used to access and view your site.

Minimodo

Extremely functional and essential is designed with extreme cleanliness and order to highlight your projects. Ideal for designers, photographers, fashion designers … who want to set up their portfolio giving maximum exposure to their images and their work.

WP Singular

WP Singular is a clean and simple single page portfolio theme for WordPress. WP Singular is geared towards designers, creatives, illustrators, photographers, agencies and much more with its ultra flexible layout.

Verb

Verb is a blocky, portfolio-style theme with an empahsis on typography and attention to detail. Show off your latest photos and videos in all their glory with the responsive portfolio grid.

Pipes

Pipes is a super-duper, customizable, responsive WordPress theme for your portfolio. Take the theme customizer for a whirl and see what you can create!

Chamfer

We are excited to present “Chamfer” – our new responsive wordpress theme. This is the best creative solution for your portfolio. The template contains the latest trendy fonts, rich colors, and massive elements.

Everest

Everest theme is a super clean, incredibly flexible, and fully responsive WordPress theme. Built with HTML5 and CSS3 and with a super easy to use, yet insanely powerful admin panel that enables you to quickly alter all colors and images for text including links, set page / header and footer backgrounds and menu colors.

Agency

Agency theme is clean, minimal, and responsive WordPress theme meant for design agencies. Agency is a corporate theme that allows design agencies to easily showcase their design portfolio, display their products and service offerings, provide social proof through customer testimonials, and display the hard working people on their team.

deLayed

deLayed is a minimal responsive blog theme that puts a clear focus on what matters most… your content. As deLayed is based on FrameShift you have a powerful backbone to tailor things to your needs.

Elite

Elite theme is super clean, incredibly flexible, and fully responsive,. Built on HTML5 and CSS3 with a super easy to use, yet insanely powerful admin panel that enables you to quickly alter all colors for text including links, social icons, set page / header and footer backgrounds and menu colors.

Skoll

Skoll is a reliable and elegant WordPress theme for small agencies and creatives. Design relatively adapts on visitors screens, organise and focus them on your selected works. Your work is just to be ready for conversation.

WordPress Portfolio Theme Buying Tips

When you are browsing possible themes to use to for your portfolio, it is important not to get caught up in marketing jargon and endless pointless features. There are many factors to keep in mind when browsing for a potential theme, here are five tips that I think are key to making the right decision when buying a WordPress theme.

1) Your Content

Your portfolio is meant to showcase your work, this means the theme should not be overly designed with crazy jQuery effects and poor content flow. The theme design should take second spot and only serve to compliment your work by providing large quality visuals and project information.

2) Responsive Design

It is highly likely that many of your users will be viewing your portfolio on a tablet or mobile device. A responsive WordPress portfolio theme will ensure your site adapts properly to each of these devices or screensizes. A responsive portfolio theme means your work will always be presented correctly and look great on all screens, mobile or desktop.

3) Support / Documentation

If you are not overly confident using WordPress, or if you are not a full time coding genius be sure to check your theme comes with good documentation and an active support forum. Support Forums for premium themes are a great place to browse for tips, modifications and if you require it – theme help!

4) Portfolio Options

If you wish to use multiple different types of media in your portfolio you should be sure the theme supports its use. For example, you may wish to post self hosted videos or audio files or if your a photographer you may wish to display different types of image galleries or layouts. In most cases the theme demo should provide you with a detailed view of what can and cannot be achieved with that particular portfolio theme.

5) Your Information & Contact Details

Should you wish to use your site to generate new client interest, it is pretty important that the theme can support page formats that would allow for you to display information about yourself. Some themes come with built in contact forms and others support external plugins, depending on how you wish to generate new leads you should research how best to implement a contact solution for your portfolio.