ProFolio is a professional ready to go portfolio that is perfectly suitable for both a personal portfolio or a more professionally oriented portfolio. Essentially anyone that wants an easy yet customizable way to display their graphical presentations such as photographs, digital art, web designs, etc would most likely be content with this software.
Currently ProFolio is free, but the developers behind the software have been saying for as long as I’ve been aware of ProFolio that at some point in the somewhat near future they will be charging for further downloads. So, I wouldn’t drag my feet too long before I gave this one a try.
Information from the official about page
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“ProFolio was created by Zach Krasner, a young web developer and digital artist, in 2009. He studied many portfolio websites and realized that while there were many skilled artists and designers out there, not all of them could create a website to display their work. With this in mind, Krasner went to work creating a portfolio that could be used by everyone to show off their creative pieces either personally or professionally. ProFolio lets the visual artists share their work in a beautifully designed, clear and efficent way that is easy to use and manage.”
“Every artist is unique and different, so why not show that in your ProFolio? Fortunately, ProFolio is easy to customize with simple CSS. View the Customize page to learn how to make ProFolio your own! If you like the professional default look of your ProFolio, you can get started right away updating your About and Contact pages of your ProFolio, which provide a little more uniqueness to it all.”
One of the nicest thing about ProFolio is it can expand as much as you’d like for it to. That is, you can extract this software directly to your web server, fill in the MySQL database information in the configuration file, and start integrating images of your work into the software almost immediately. However, if you’re like me and feel the need to completely take everything apart to rebuild it again, or maybe if you’re just looking to alter a thing or two when it comes to the design or development, ProFolio is extremely easy to edit. I opened up the style sheet and index.php files in notepad and within a hour or so I had something I wouldn’t be embarassed to show to anyone, detailing some of my better work that I’ve done over the years while freelancing. I’m not saying that the software looks badly upon default installation, so don’t get me wrong. All I’m saying is I found it very much easy to alter in any way that I wanted.
Yes, I do realize everyone is not like me and might not feel comfortable just diving into the software on their own and changing everything they see. Luckily, ProFolio provides many tutorials on changing key aspects of the portfolio. You can view these by going to the ProFolio Customization Page. Every tutorial is broken down in the easiest to comprehend ways possible to give the end user a fundamental understanding of exactly what to do and why they are doing it in the first place.
Within a hour or so of downloading the software, I had a fully functional portfolio online as can be seen below.. Oh, and I apologize in advance for the ultra ultra lightness of the image, as some of you may not be able to even see the links in the image. I have an incredibly sensitive monitor when it comes to color orientation and when I was trying out the software, I had no idea I’d be writing about it; So, the design was more for me than anyone else at the time..
Live demos of the software can be found below..
Want to see more? Try giving the official gallery of ProFolio portfolios a visit.
Visit the official ProFolio website to download your copy.
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