Guides / How to build

How to Build a Portfolio Website That Gets You Work

How to build a portfolio website as a designer, developer or photographer: what to show, how to write case studies, images, SEO, costs and an AI prompt.

Mythex Team · 2026-09-29 · 6 min read

To build a portfolio website that gets you work, choose your four to eight best projects for the audience you want to reach, present each one as a short story — the problem, what you did, the result — and make it easy to contact you from every page. Keep it fast, especially if it is image-heavy, and put it on a domain with your name. The tool matters less than the selection and the writing.

Start with who is looking

A portfolio is a sales page where your work is the product. Before choosing a layout, decide who you want to hire you and what they need to see:

If you serve two very different audiences — say, product design roles and freelance illustration — consider separate sections or even separate sites, so neither audience has to dig.

What to include

The work

Pick fewer, better projects. Remove anything you would not want to be hired to do again. Put your strongest, most relevant piece first; many visitors never scroll past the first row.

For designers and developers, the best projects become case studies. A useful structure:

1. The problem — one or two sentences on the situation and who it affected.
2. Your role — what you did, and what others did. Be precise; overclaiming is easy to spot in an interview.
3. The process — a few key decisions, with sketches, wireframes or code excerpts.
4. The result — what shipped, and any outcome you can honestly state. If you cannot share numbers, describe the change qualitatively.

For photographers and illustrators, the images do most of the work. Group them into clear sets (weddings, product, editorial), keep captions short, and let the grid breathe.

About and contact

The about section should say who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and where you are based or whether you work remotely. A real photo helps. The contact route should be obvious from every page: a short form, an email address, or a link to book a call. If you take bookings, say how.

Optional pages

• Services and rates — useful for freelancers if you want to filter out poor-fit enquiries.
• CV or résumé — useful for job seekers; a downloadable PDF plus an on-page version is common.
• Writing or notes — worth it only if you will keep it updated. An abandoned blog from years ago hurts more than no blog.
• Testimonials — only real ones, with permission.

Decisions and trade-offs

Static site or app? Most portfolios are simple, content-led sites and do not need a database. Add one only when there is a reason: a contact form that saves enquiries, a gallery you update often through an admin page, or client proofing where people choose photos.

Where images live. Large images are the main cause of slow portfolios. Resize and compress before uploading, serve modern formats, and load images lazily as the visitor scrolls. For a big or frequently changing gallery, store images in proper file storage rather than bundling them into the site's code.

How you will update it. Be honest about this. If you add work every month, you want an easy way to do it — a simple admin page, a CMS, or a builder you are comfortable editing. If you update twice a year, editing the site directly is fine.

Search visibility. If you want people to find you by searching your name plus your craft and city, the page needs real text, proper headings, unique page titles and descriptions, and descriptive alt text on images. See SEO for AI-built websites.

A first prompt for an AI builder

A good prompt names the audience, the pages, the work and the style:

Build a portfolio website for Lena Park, a product designer looking for senior in-house roles at SaaS companies. Pages: Home with a short intro and a grid of 5 case studies; a case study page template with sections for problem, my role, process (with image gallery) and outcome; About with photo, short bio and CV download; Contact with a simple form (name, email, message) that saves to a database and shows a thank-you message. Style: calm and minimal, lots of white space, one accent colour, large readable type. Works well on phones. Use clearly marked placeholder projects I can replace one by one.

Then replace placeholders one project at a time, rather than pasting all your content in a single message. It is easier to check, and the AI gets each page right.

For more prompting patterns, see how to write prompts for AI app builders.

Build steps

1. Choose the audience and the projects before touching any tool.
2. Write the copy for each case study in a document first: problem, role, process, result.
3. Prepare images — crop, resize and compress them. Name files sensibly.
4. Generate or pick a starting layout. Browsing portfolio templates is a quick way to see what style suits your work.
5. Build the home page and one case study first, get them right, then repeat the pattern.
6. Add about and contact. Test the contact form end to end.
7. Check on a phone. Portfolios often break on small screens: cramped grids, huge images, tiny captions.
8. Add SEO basics and a share image, so links look good when you send them.
9. Publish and connect your domain. See how to connect a custom domain.
10. Ask two people from your target audience to look at it for thirty seconds and tell you what you do. If they cannot, fix the home page.

Common mistakes

• Showing everything. Weak projects dilute strong ones. Curate.
• Pictures without context. For design and development work, a screenshot without the problem and your role tells a hiring manager very little.
• Slow, heavy pages. Uncompressed full-resolution images make the site feel broken on mobile data.
• Clever navigation. Unusual menus and scroll effects can be fun, but not if visitors cannot find your work or your email.
• Hidden contact details. Put a contact link in the header and footer of every page.
• Using client work you do not have permission to show. Check contracts and NDAs; anonymise or describe the project if needed.
• Never updating it. Dated work and a "latest project" from years ago send the wrong signal.

Costs

The running costs of a personal portfolio are usually small: a domain name renewed yearly, and hosting. Image-heavy sites cost a little more if you store and serve many large files. Website builders often charge a monthly subscription that includes hosting; building your own can be cheaper but means you maintain it. Check current prices on each provider's site, as they change.

When a ready-made product is the better choice

Portfolio platforms and website builders with portfolio themes are a good fit if you want a polished result quickly, prefer a visual editor, and do not need anything custom. Photographers who sell prints or deliver client galleries may be better served by a dedicated photography platform that already handles proofing and print sales. Build your own when you want a distinctive design, need a feature the platforms do not offer, want to show code or interactive work directly, or simply want to own the site outright.

Building it with Mythex

Mythex can build a portfolio from a description like the prompt above. You see it in a live preview with a phone-size frame, refine layout and copy in chat, and publish to yourname.mythex.ai. If you want a contact form that saves enquiries, Mythex adds a database to the project; for image galleries, it can use the project's file storage so pictures are not stuffed into the code. On Pro you can buy a domain in Mythex or connect one you already own, and export the code or sync it to GitHub if you want to host it elsewhere later.

The docs cover this in the portfolio use case and explain file storage. You can also start from the AI portfolio website builder or a specific style such as the developer portfolio or photography portfolio templates.