In this WordPress Video Tutorial for beginners, learn step by step how to make a portfolio in WordPress. This can be done using the WordPress Gallery or we can use a variety of Plugins. In this video, however, we will be using the gallery that’s built into WordPress.

[box]Video Title: How to make a Portfolio Page in WordPress
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmhDOyKU3BY
Accompanying Course: Beginner’s Guide to WordPress – Web Design Course[/box]

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Transcript: 

There are many different ways that we can actually go about doing this, there’s a built in gallery function in WordPress but there’s also various plug-ins. In my opinion, if you’re actually trying to create a portfolio, unless just an image-based portfolio, the gallery that’s built into WordPress isn’t going to be enough. And so that’s why for me, what I like is either the Portfolio Plug-in or the WordPress Picture Portfolio Plug-in. And the one that we’re going to actually use it the second one; the WordPress Picture Portfolio Plug-in and I will actually show you how to use it.

So the portfolio that we are actually going to be creating is this one right here, and so it’s very basic right now but you can imagine how could be eventually. And so, what I like about this plug-in is specifically, it has this filtering function. So say you have different categories, whatever type of portfolio you were creating if you wanted to separate them in any way, then you can easily do that and then in addition to that, what the interesting functionality is also it has a slideshow, you can play this slideshow of the pictures that you have in the background. That’s one thing that I do like about the plug-in, and it’s pretty cool.

But, what’s better is that I think, in my opinion, portfolios are designed to kind of showcase not just the pictures but also your work that you did. So if you have a particular project, you can show what it looks like in action or if they want to read more about that specific portfolio item, then they can do that as well. And so that’s what I think, that’s why this plug-in specifically has an advantage over the other ones because in my opinion, portfolio is much more than just simply showcasing your pictures or showcasing a gallery, if that’s what you want then, definitely the WordPress built-in gallery function will work just fine.

But if you’re actually trying to create a portfolio that showcases your work, now this is when we would want to use this, the additional plug-in. So I’m just going to show you how to create this right now. The first thing that we are going to do is I guess what we’re going to have is just create a bunch of these different portfolio items just for sample purposes but in your case, you would actually be creating a real ones of your past works, some things like that.

So, I’m just going to show you one of these, so we have this portfolio item here, just look it’s labelled Portfolio three. I went ahead and kind of gave it some you know demo content, nothing much. I’ll show you what all these filters are in the future or I can show you right now, pretty much there’s the three different filters or you can add as many filters as you want, we have two right now, category one, category two and filters are just designed to that, when you pressed that button on the portfolio, right, they can go with that, in that order. Whatever filter it attached to, then it filtered in that manner, right. So we just pull whatever categories, or whatever you really want to put for the filter, just distinguish them, right?

The one thing that was confusing for me, that I just realized now is that they have this portfolio categories and in my opinion, it isn’t necessarily all that useful, you just probably keep the filters and the portfolio categories are exactly the same. So in my case, we should just left it as category one, category two and as filter category one and category two because that is the only thing that really makes sense. In my opinion they probably should have just left out the categories all together and just combine the filters.

But anyways, what we are going to do now is you can put an image or video URL that you want actually displayed in the light box gallery so we’re just going to put the same image in the feature image and this image right here. You can also put a video. You can also attach where you want, remember when it said view project? Right now, it’s going to our main website. So just whatever project you’re working on, for example if you design websites, right? Then this would be a portfolio for other website that you’ve worked done.

So, what do we did here just add the featured image and if we see it right here, that’s our featured image. So just make sure that it matches the same URL as you wish you want to put for this image or video URL. Unless, you’re putting a video then obviously it makes something different and that’s it. That’s all we are going to do. We’re going to update it and we are just going to repeat the process. So we are going to repeat the process until we have all three or how many of the portfolio items you have, just remember the filtering options and the categories. That’s the only thing that is really tricky; the rest will just work exactly the same as creating a new post, right? Also for that’s what it is.

Now, what we have to do is we have to actually figure out how we are going to add this portfolio onto a page. So we’re just going to add a new page or new post, it doesn’t really matter. Title it Portfolio or my portfolio, whatever you want it to be and it’s going to be a short code, right? And how do we actually get that short code? All we’re going to do is press that little orange button and we can either hide the filters or leave the filters in and just insert the short code. And so my only downside to this plug-in is that I think is that, if you have multiple portfolio categories, you can’t necessarily specify that, for example, if you want to create many different portfolios that aren’t just one big giant portfolio and there may be other reasons why you may want that, simply because you like the way the portfolio displays post, it’s not really meant for that. This really is meant for just a strict portfolio or gallery, just describing or showcasing the work that you have done.

All you do after this is once you inserted the short code remember that little orange button right there, just publish the post or publish the page and then you have this right here, right? So I think that’s it, I think that’s it, pretty much it’s a very nice portfolio plug-in in my opinion and it gets the job done especially what I like is this filtering option and it does it pretty quickly as well. So yeah, check it out, you can also play around with the other plug-ins as well, you can also play around with the word press gallery, built-in gallery, I guess you could say, and see which one you like best.