Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2012 - 48

Director/writer/lighting designer Ronald Grimshaw uses deviantART for his website.
His résumé is offered as a downloadable PDF, and his image galleries are conveniently
displayed with thumbnails that scroll across the bottom of the screen.

own website; the other is the same software hosted on WordPress's servers. You get the former at WordPress.org and the latter at WordPress.com.
WordPress software has a user interface called the dashboard where you
create your content and design how it looks and functions. Hundreds of
stock themes (page designs) for WordPress are available, many of which
are free. Tripwire Magazine published a list of seventy paid themes that
are designed specifically for online portfolios (http://bit.ly/TDT-tripwire).
WordPress also allows you to add plug-ins to your site to help increase
functionality. The web technology blog Enfew has of their top ten portfolio
plug-ins (http://bit.ly/TDT-plugins). An example of a wordpress.org website can be found at my site, toddproffitt.com.
WordPress.com, the commercial service which both provides the
WordPress interface and hosts your website, is very popular. A free website allows you up to 3 GB of storage, but many people take advantage of
paid plans that include more features. Because hosting is included, there
is a much smaller learning curve than with WordPress.org; however, fewer
themes are available to choose from, and you can only use themes provided
by WordPress.com. Photos and videos can easily be uploaded to the site or
embedded from services like YouTube. A nice example of a WordPress.com
online portfolio is Jessica M. Bertollo's site, jbertollo.wordpress.com.
Squarespace, another content management service, is popular with
both new and advanced users. The templates for the site are good looking
and easy to customize. Unlike many of the other services, it's hard to tell
a Squarespace site just by looking at it. Squarespace is also known for its
good customer service, including lots of free video tutorials to help learn
the service. It has two pricing schemes: for eight dollars a month you
get twenty web pages and two gigabytes of storage; for sixteen dollars a
month you can have unlimited storage and pages. There are a few disadvantages: Squarespace costs somewhat more than other services, and the
free trial lasts only two weeks before you need to decide to pay or move
on. Lighting designer Colin Chauche uses Squarespace for his website,
www.colinchauche.com.
deviantART is one of the easiest services for creating your online
portfolio. If you know absolutely nothing about coding or you feel intimidated by this process, deviantART may be the right content management
system for you. Up to 100 images are free, with more storage and services available, costing from $4.95 to $29.95 a month. deviantART uses
a standard template that includes cover page, bio page, and production
galleries. It's inexpensive and easy to use, but there are trade-offs, primarily the fact that all deviantART sites tend to look similar. Even with the
paid options, there aren't very many ways to customize your website. Ron
Grimshaw's deviantART portfolio is at rongrimshaw.daportfolio.com.
WiX is another popular website service. The free service includes
up to 500 MB of storage. WiX starts with templates that have a fresh and
modern look. The interface has a built-in function to help create galleries
of photographs. WiX templates can be Adobe Flash-based, which enables
great animations and transitions but is only available on some mobile devices. The other choice is to build the templates in HTML 5, which is
more universal and can be seen on devices like the iPad or iPhone. As
with many of the other free services, you can update to a professional WiX

theatre design

& technology

2012

account to get more storage and services from $4.08 to $16.17 a month.
The disadvantages is that WiX can be intimidating to newer users, and the
company brands each site with its name and sometimes puts small ads at
the bottom of pages on your site. These annoyances can be disabled when
you upgrade to a professional account. An example of a designer using
WiX is Poppy Armitage at poppyarmitage.wix.com/theatre-designer#!.
Some people find it fun and rewarding to create their own customized online portfolios. Some don't, and there are solutions for you too.
Two services commonly used by designers and photographers that do
most of the work for you are Foliosnap and Qfolio.
Foliosnap charges a basic fee of $18.99 a month, which includes
three galleries for your work. You can upgrade to more galleries and services for $58.99. Qfolio takes a slightly different approach on pricing.
They charge for each service provided, and there is a minimum $100
setup charge. Some of the services offered by Qfolio include scanning
photos for you and printing out a hard portfolio to match your site. Both
of these services look great and are relatively easy to use. Costume designer
Carol Blanchard uses Foliosnap for her site, www.cjbdesigns.org.
These services are only a few of the ones available on the web. I
compiled many more in my research for the Digital Presence workshop at
the USITT conference. This chart is available at http://bit.ly/usitt2012.
Creating an online portfolio takes work, both to get it up and running and to keep it current. Pick carefully which method is best for you.
Research the websites of other designers in your field. Click around their
sites and write down the things you like and the things you don't like.
Once you've decided on what's best for you, try to find someone who is

http://www.WordPress.org http://www.WordPress.com http://www.bit.ly/TDT-tripwire http://www.bit.ly/TDT-plugins http://www.wordpress.org http://www.toddproffitt.com http://www.WordPress.com http://www.WordPress.org http://www.WordPress.com http://www.WordPress.com http://jbertollo.wordpress.com http://poppyarmitage.wix.com/theatre-designer# http://www.colinchauche.com http://rongrimshaw.daportfolio.com http://www.cjbdesigns.org http://www.bit.ly/usitt2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2012