Portfolio Site for Rosettes and CSS

Honestly, Im almost never attached to the idea of using this blog to express personal opinion outside of code, layout methods, opinions on CMS tool, etc... Here is one of those rare occasions where Ill be a bit frank. Excuse me.

My portfolio could be ready soon, and Im pretty tongue tied. A portfolio is about showing your work to whomever comes across your site. Trust me, even the audience you are not sending your marketing tools towards could stumble upon your site. Thats why my portfolio project is at a standstill....I dont know what to say!

I am just a bit curious on how I might market myself properly on my professional graphic and web design portfolio site. Marketing is not one of my strengths to be honest. Talking about myself in a promotional way always seems strange when I try it. I never know what to say and, fear giving out too much information. When I have to talk about myself I usually babble and I am not a fan of "filler"/fluff content.

I'm using this Joomla Module and I seem to have room for:

  1. A basic "Hey, this is my portfolio" paragraph

  2. Short intro under the title of each Category.

  3. Footer Content that is throughout the portfolio's sections

  4. Category specific information paragraph

  5. Potential Header Content in each category (what is this for? Title?)

The link above shows how it all lays out and comes together. These fields are the fields that are provided in a CMS extension Im using on Joomla. They are all optional (I could leave them blank). Still I ask, what could I provide for these above areas?

Honestly, when I think about the audience I am attempting to reach/market my services to....I dont have any specific audience that Im looking to market to. Im game for anything. I want to cater to small business, big businesses, people who need a personal website, and any type of person.

For example, I will admit here that I have done some sites that have to do with "fetish" or are on the "adult" side. *blushes* If Ted Christian was to stumble upon my porfolio, how would I keep from alienating him? Should I seperate that kind of content out to keep it getting mixed in with with eveything else (most of my content is very general)? Is disclaimer of "This content does not necessarily reflect my views" necessary to assure a "squeaky clean" client that Im not some perv with code?

Or, am I just reading too far into this? Please comment below if you have a good idea or suggestion. I would love to hear from you guys out there.

Mary's Personal Summer of Code

Among a part time gig as a mascot down at the local ballpark, I am using this summer to start getting a bit back to me. Despite that I had my Drupal project get revoked (again!) I found myself a bit more indifferent to it. Other projects (some overdue) were awaiting me and I had enough of this. Besides, I did gain a contact who may be able to provide a hosting solution for Rosettes and CSS. My week long vacation looms at the end of this month so I can see using it as a time of "breaking character" and rebuilding anew upon a rested mindset.

Due to these things, personal projects are the order of the day when put up against doing work for other people. I wont lie and say that I have enough portfolio material, but I know that if I keep taking on everyone else's projects than none of my stuff gets done and this blog will continue to be stuck on Blogger vs actually having it on my own domain with portfolio.

Im finding out more quirks involved with Joomla modules, components or plugins. In K2, CAPCHA was enabled but without the reCAPCHA registration key set. Thats why stylesheets were being ignored. That still seems like a strange bug rather than human error to me but I guess K2 is that new. I mean, look at the lack of documentation in the backend's Documentation buttion within the K2 sub-sections. Seems the social bookmarking problem also righted itself.

Speaking of K2, 2.0 is officially out. I already was tweaking with the July release and found it to make me feel that much better about using Joomla as my portfolio's site. Stepping outside my comfort zone is important to me, and blogging with Joomla is that much easier with K2 around.

Joomla sure is a different animal. I have done at least one re-install/recovery due to human error. Lots of clunkyness to someone with my background of other programs that I have learned. Joomla must represent a different way of thinking that seems convuluted to other people. It seems that you have to use the Menu system to set what loads in the Front Page (if you dont want to use the standard "load newest article" method of creating the dynamic front page content.

So, all going very well. I have yet to work on a template but I figure Ill do that once I get time in my workweek to put some blog entres there and start on my portfolio. I imagine with Joomla's quirks, that Ill be surprised/confused again and again until I reach the peak of the experience.