Portfolios on WordPress.com
Our new (free!) Portfolio tools and themes put your creativity front and center.
Creating a beautiful portfolio just got much easier: we’re delighted to introduce you to the new Portfolio Content Type.
Portfolio Content Type
Once enabled on your site, your dashboard gains a brand new “Portfolio” section, where you’ll be able to manage all your portfolio projects in one place, separate from your posts and pages. You can categorize and tag your projects in a way that doesn’t overlap with your blog posts. Better yet, you won’t lose your projects and won’t need to reorganize your content everytime you switch themes. And best of all, the feature is free.
Starting a portfolio is as easy as checking an option in your dashboard. We’ve got a step by step guide with all the details for you.
But wait! Before you rush off to populate all of your portfolio projects and share them with the world, we have one more announcement that will really make your visual Portfolio shine… two new free portfolio themes!
Portfolio Themes
You can create portfolios using any current WordPress.com theme, but we’ve created two beautiful free themes that really take advantage the bonus bells and whistles of the new Portfolio tools. Painstakingly crafted by two of our own talented designers, Espied and Illustratr will take your portfolio to the next level.
Espied
Espied, designed by Takashi Irie, has a structured, gridded feel that cleanly and precisely displays your Portfolio across any device. Its subtle design details accent your projects instead of overwhelming your users, keeping your presentation clean and to the point — and letting your creative work be the star.
Illustratr
Thomas Guillot’s Illustratr theme allows your portfolio to cascade down screens in a fluid, minimal, and responsive manner. With its carefully selected typography, subtle pops of color, and full-bleed imagery — constrained by a customizable border — Illustratr supports your portfolio with power and style.
Your website should be a showcase for your work, not the other way around. We’re happy we can help your creativity shine!
WordPress.com News 
Maybe it’s just me but I’m missing a screenshot of how the portfolio content type actually looks like when you use it on other than the themes mentioned above? Is it something like having a page with a grid layout? (I’m using the Motif theme and just today set up a gallery page using the grid layout, so I wonder if it’s worth to redo it into a portfolio…)
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For themes that aren’t specifically made with the portfolio content type in mind (like Motif), projects will follow that theme’s archive look. There is also a portfolio shortcode that can be used to display your projects on static post or page.
Keep an eye out as we’ll be adding support to some of our older themes in the next few weeks.
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Oh, thank you, it’s clearer now (I missed out one of the support documents the first time). Anyway, it’s great that you’re working hard on improving WordPress all the time! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Stuff I find on the internet and commented:
My coworkers have been working hard to create a new Portfolios content type on WordPress.com. They’ve launched it today, along with two new gorgeous, free portfolio themes!
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This is awesome! Love this idea!
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This is some serious & brilliant stuff 🙂
Thanks a ton WordPress.
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Portfolio Content Type is a superb new feature. I`m sure it will be very well received because we get bloggers asking about themes styled in the portfolio format every day on the support forums. I like both the Espied and the Illustratr themes. They are stunning and hot of the presses, so to speak, so I will be recommending them and also recommending the portfolio shortcode to those whop don`t select portfolio themes. Guess what I`ll be playing with in my test blogs this weekend. 😉
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We’re glad you like the themes! Like always, let us know what you find on your test blogs 🙂
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Would you please define what YOU mean by the word portfolio.
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In this situation, we’re referring to an artist’s portfolio, where users can show a selection of their visual creations.
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This is great. So I could create a variety of photography portfolios that are themed, correct?
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Correct. With using project types and project tags, you can organize your projects and have different sets of projects.
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But how is it different than a regular post?
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They are similar but different in the following points.
* It lets you keep project separate from blog posts so that you can organize projects differently.
* They are excluded from the main timeline on the blog home page or on the posts page.
* They are more like pages which is timeless information so that they won’t be included in RSS.
* Themes like Espied and Illustratr display portfolio projects differently.
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So, the feature wouldn’t be appropriate for a selection of written works (short stories, novel chapters, poems) without associated visual creations?
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At the end of the day you can use this Portfolios however you want but these themes are designed to display a selection of image oriented projects.
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Thank you WordPress for making the portfolio option available for everyone. I have been waiting for an option like this for a while.
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“Better yet, you won’t lose your projects and won’t need to reorganize your content everytime you switch themes.”
Sa-weet! This alone is fan-freaking-tastic. Thanks for making Illustratr responsive, too. I’m gonna check it out! 😀
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This is absolutely great – so excited to use it. Bless you!
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Is it possible to have a tiled lay-out for just the portfolio pages?
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Illustratr and Espied only display projects in the grid layout. Posts and pages will be displayed in the traditional format.
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Is there a way to import your existing blog posts into your portfolio or would you just have to copy/paste it? Or am I overlooking something?
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I’m afraid there is no way to import your blog posts as projects.
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Very interesting! I will try it out this weekend.
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I’m completely in love with the Espied theme! A quick question: when we publish a new project, do our followers get an email – or is that only for new blog posts?
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I’m glad you like the theme. Your followers won’t get e-mail updates with portfolio projects. They are more similar to pages which is “timeless” information.
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I can’t wait to add this to my Blog! Absolutely perfect for students and creative professionals alike, thank you for this!
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Is the Portfolio only available to WordPress.com hosted sites, or to self-hosted sites as well? How about the two new themes?
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Portfolios and these two themes are at the moment only available in WordPress.com but Portfolios will be available with Jetpack soon and both themes will also be available for self-hosted users.
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Sweet, thank you for the reply, Takashi!
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Switching very soon to illustratr!!
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I’m still trying figure out the Porfolios concept especially when using the short code. Would love to see some real blog examples where bloggers have used it well.
I sense it’s a way of clustering/bundling related posts together but a common category/tag word is not sufficient?
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Portfolio shortcode is designed to display your projects in a normal post or pages. You can learn more about the short code here. https://wordpress.com/support/portfolios/portfolio-shortcode/
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I’m slightly confused. Does this mean that if you want to use the new portfolio feature – rather than making a new page titled portfolio and displaying work there – that you would have to ditch the theme you currently have on your blog and use one of these two for your entire blog site, or does it mean that you are able to keep your current theme and choose one of these two specifically for the portfolio page on your site?
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You don’t need to ditch your current theme!
As answered here: https://wordpress.com/blog/2014/04/11/portfolios-on-wordpress-com/#comment-201172, you can still display your projects in archives pages even your theme don’t have a portfolio page template like Espied or Illustratr.
How to find urls for archive pages is described here: https://wordpress.com/support/portfolios/#viewing-portfolio projects
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Thank you for good features!
I wrote portfolio type article.
Portfolio don’t support markdown editor and RSS ?
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Portfolio projects are more similar to pages which is timeless information so they won’t be included in RSS.
I’m afraid they don’t support Markdown at the moment but we will look into it for future.
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I have certain posts I want to keep separate from my blog. I do it now by assigning them a specific category and linking to the category feed. Using this would be a much better way to do what I want, but I don’t necessarily want to go back and recreate all those posts as portfolio projects. Is there a way to convert posts to portfolio projects?
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I’m afraid there is no way to convert your posts to portfolio projects.
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Is this available on the self-hosted WP as well?
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Not yet but it will be available with Jetpack soon for self-hosted users.
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Oh this is cool. Would love to use them sometime!
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This is fab 🙂 I’m now using it and have started setting up portfolio pages for different types of photography that I do! Thank you 🙂
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