Every so often it’s important to refresh a website, even one that is mostly static and is used as a storage space for a portfolio of work, like this site is. The general recommendation for a writer’s site is to include work samples, about 3-5 pieces.
That’s what’s on my main page, with examples for multiple publications to show the variety of media outlets I have written for. I also have a separate page with some of the other types of content I have created, including graphic design and video.
Just typing away… (source: Glenn Carstens Peters, Unsplash)The general idea is to make the content as easy to read as possible. Most of the pieces were originally blog posts, which I saved as PDFs so they would be readable anywhere at any time. Each of those PDFs is downloadable from a link on the main page, with a few words from the lede of the article to give an instant look at what’s in the full PDF. If an article or blog post is written well, it will have a strong introduction that grabs the reader in just the first line or two, so that is all that is shown here on the website.
I use WordPress and its Page Builder tool to create each of the pages on the site, to make the design process as straightforward as possible. The goal is always to reduce the amount of effort (even clicking a mouse or touchpad counts as effort) that a visitor needs to get information.
Simply putting all the blog posts right on the main page would eliminate some clicking, but the page would then be a huge wall of text (aside from the graphics included in some of the PDFs). That would make the site more difficult to read, however, so a balance between easy access and usability has to be found.
My specialty and experience is mostly in writing, though as a marketing professional I have also worked with graphic design, video, and audio. Of course, we all know how easy it is to scroll through social media and watch quick hits of video; that’s a good way to promote myself and my work, and is a potential next step.
At this point, though, I just want to make sure anyone looking for my work finds some of the very best with as little effort on their part as possible.