Building a Portfolio in WordPress: June 2015 meetup

We talked about Building a Portfolio in WordPress at our June 18, 2015 meetup. Below are the notes.

What are clients looking for in your portfolio?

Presented by Andrea Napierkows­ki

• Clients want to see themselves in your portfolio
• Less is more: don’t overwhelm people
• Make it easy to find the info they’re looking for (your portfolio, your phone number, etc.)
• Be uniquely you
• Use colors carefully; for example, blue and greens are generally more calming than reds, oranges, and yellows, which can be alarming
• Be funny, and joke as appropriate to your clients

Using the CMB2 plugin for custom fields

Presented by Topher DeRosia

• CMB2
  • metabox, custom fields, and forms library
  • doesn’t create CPTs
  • much simpler than hand-coding
  • faster than Advanced Custom Fields due to fewer queries
  • use this to create your portfolio from scratch, rather than using a plugin or theme. Good middle ground between hand coding and using a heavy plugin.
  • Custom Meta and Settings with CMB2 – WPSessions.com
• GenerateWP: answer questions to generate code for CPTs (among other things)
• Posts 2 Posts to connect CPTs
• Easy Content Types: plugin to create CPTs

Using CPTs and Advanced Custom Fields

Presented by Chad Warner

• example portfolio
  • custom Genesis theme
  • portfolio archive: http://optimwise.com/portfolio/
  • portfolio single example: http://optimwise.com/portfolio/e3-compliance/
• CPTs
  • Custom Post Type UI plugin
• Advanced Custom Fields
  • Advanced Custom Fields plugin
• template files
  • archive-portfolio.php: portfolio archive (http://optimwise.com/portfolio/)
  • single-portfolio.php: portfolio singles (e.g., http://optimwise.com/portfolio/e3-compliance/)
  • functions.php
    • Add new image size
    • Change the number of portfolio items to be displayed
    • Customize Portfolio post info and post meta
    • Add support for portfolio post type to Genesis archive settings