It’s about time to create my own website to show case my projects and import my CV to it, but the question is this:
Should I code the website myself? or just build it with WordPress?
Sometimes, who ever access a website they get curious of “this website is built with what??” so they check the sources of the site.
The question I have in mind, does the potential client or whoever visits the site care about what’s the site built with?
“oh, he built this with wordpress…maybe he isn’t that pro of a developer/designer”
or
“nice, he coded this with X framework”
Does it matter?
I mean, both have their own pros and cons, but I personally want to build it with WordPress just to finish things faster and get the site out there. And update it as the days pass by.
It all depends on what you want to really show off about yourself and the time you have. If you want to show off your skills as a full stack developer, I would build the site myself. If you want to show off more what you have done for others, you could go with WordPress or some other platform and talk about your other solutions.
If you were to show off you are a WordPress developer and know how to write plugins, makes sense to setup the WordPress site and then talk about additional plugins. If you are a system integration specialist, showcase some work you have done for others about integrating with Google or Facebook or something.
If you have no immediate need for the website and can take your time, building from scratch will certainly allow you to show off a plethora of skills from setting up your Apache config to how you write your own custom React components to handling forms etc.
If time is more of an issue, getting something up quick would tell you to use WordPress and getting content up in front of people. I have setup a WordPress site and then built my own plugins, show off some React work, talk about my integration experience, talk about architectural decisions I did for bigger clients and list all my skills in full stack development.
In short, play to your strengths and your timeline. I wouldn’t just setup a vanilla WordPress site and nothing else. If you go WP, then add stuff to it that shows you can work with the platform and can build stuff. Offer some download samples of your code from other projects and talk about how you made an impact for clients.
As a web designer I guess it depends on the type of work you are looking for.
So if you are expecting to be creating Wordpress sites for clients, then it would make sense to have a WP site yourself to demonstrate what you do. If you are in the business of hand-coding sites from scratch, then do that for yourself instead. The same applies for frameworks, if you intend on using them for clients, use them for yourself (or not).
That depends on who your clients are. People running non-web related businesses who want a web site may know nothing at all about code, frameworks, CMS, etc.
But if you may be looking to get hired by web companies out-sourcing, I’m sure they will want to look at your coding.
