Hi my name is Hanson Sofan.
I’ve graduated from my university and currently looking for a job.
I’m planning to make my portfolio website public for a purpose of self branding and increasing my chance of being hired for the job. I’ve made the portfolio site since college by using wix. However as I check the pricing for unlimited, it costs 150 USD which equals Rp 2,158,720.50 which is very expensive. Is there any cheaper way to get the domain for wix? Should I use other website builder like wordpress? or Should I stay with my wixsite url? I would like to read your opinions.
I don’t know a way to get a free domain name, but they are pretty reasonable. For example, you can get hansonsofan.com for $12 a year to get your branded URL. You could have that forward wherever you want.
I know practically nothing about Wix since I’ve always built my own sites. I don’t know what limitations are placed on their free option, but I’m assuming a custom domain name isn’t part of their for-free package.
Buying the domain doesn’t cost much. It’s hosting the site that costs more money. As @Steve_O suggested, you could buy the domain separately for a few dollars from most any registrar, like GoDaddy, then redirect that domain to the appropriate place on Wix. In other words, when anyone typed your domain name into their browser, it would redirect to the free Wix address.
Doing it this way is easily doable, but it will totally mess up whatever search engine listings you might be hoping for. Search engines largely ignore domain redirects and index only domains tied directly to a website itself.
Unfortunately, I know of no way to do it right while also doing it for nearly free.
But I would suggest you not go this route since a D-Name is so inexpensive(around the cost of 2 McDonalds Value Meals)…and then there’s hosting cost of course.
If you know nothing about building a website, you don’t have the funds to pay a professional, and you need to get a portfolio up to help you make some(funds), I highly encourage you to start out with a drag and drop site. As a former web dev, it pains me to say that😆. But in reality, and under the circumstances, I feel this is your best alternative(other than a social media site like LinkedIn).
Yes, you can use a free template in Wordpress, but you still need hosting, plus there’s code like PHP that can become corrupt, backups, security, plugin updates and maintenance as well.
In all honesty, if you provide a URL to your LinkedIn on a digital resume or CV, you can link all your images to it from a Dropbox or other.
I’m going to highly suggest you do NOT put your portfolio on Instagram.
Instagram posts cannot be viewed unless the viewer also has an account. You might think that isn’t a problem, but it can be. In fact, Instagram and a few other social sites are blocked at work if you are running through our wired server (wifi is open though if you know the password.)
LinkedIn is another one, where only limited information can be viewed by someone without an account and often does not include the capability of a public portfolio.
Wix used to be flash based and we used to have a heck of a time viewing portfolios on there too. Haven’t had need to look lately but I bet since flash is discontinued, they’ve since fixed that and maybe cleaned up their code as well.
(yes, I have access to LinkedIn and Instatwit at work through someone in the marketing dept. should the need arise. It doesn’t all that often.)
@PrintDriver
I suggested LinkedIn as a free alternative the OP might be able to utilize instead of a Site build. Also, every professional I’ve personally interviewed with has a LinkedIn. In fact, many search you on the platform as part of their potential employee search.
I’m a professional that doesn’t have a linked-in. And several other professionals I work with don’t either.
I don’t have InstaTwit and have not been able to free-view anything on that platform since around last April-ish, not even on different computers. If you go there without having your app active, you will get a log in screen. The only things I can see are direct links. But only that one linked page. No forward or back arrows.
Since Adobe owns Behance, and since a designer presumably has Adobe CC, a Behance portfolio is free.
Adobe also has Adobe Portfolio.
If this is for freelancing though, I wouldn’t go for anything less than an owned domain even if it costs money. That’s what overhead is for. Listen to Just B on that. Not me.
I’d like to think we’re not the only ones.
And I was wrong.
Leverage all avenues available, but don’t put all eggs in one basket. A multi-platform approach is probably a better bet.
I’ve just tried using behance. It was free, even though the features are decent but it still can be a good way to make portfolio. How ever I have a question. There is some of my videos that contain copyrighted music so it’s not safe to be uploaded to youtube. is it safe to upload to my behance portfolio?
If you can’t track down usage rights, you shouldn’t post the video.
While it would have been good to check first, go to the musician’s website and see if they have a statement about music usage in videos. If not, you can try contacting them (don’t expect an answer right away, unless maybe it’s a smaller band. If it’s well known and a famous song you are probably SOL. The cost would be way high. But I do know of some small indie bands that allow their music in Youtube videos that monetize that somehow in return for the use. Few and far between.
