Not all the WordPress portfolio themes you see available are actually what you might think. Many of them utilize a slider style widget in order to randomly display a WordPress post’s featured image. While this may work for many people, it’s not really ideal for WordPress portfolio themes.

In this article, I am going to share with you why the Photocrati WordPress theme makes a great choice for those searching for WordPress portfolio themes.

I will detail each of the following areas:

• Portfolio Management
• Portfolio Display
• Album Management
• Album Display
• eCommerce
• Blog and more

WordPress Portfolio Themes For You

So let’s get to it, shall we? Essentially, WordPress portfolio themes should have a portfolio management system, so I will start there.

Portfolio Management

In a perfect world, every WordPress portfolio theme will make it extremely simple for every user. Making portfolio management easy means designing an interface to handle the task. The Photocrati theme has a very distinct button visible while creating a new post or page. When clicked, it brings up a modal window where the user has the ability to upload graphics, add a title and description to the gallery and then insert into the post/page body.

This is what the portfolio management window looks like:

Here, not only can you upload your images, or import them from NextGEN Gallery, but also organize and edit meta data or eCommerce options.

Portfolio Display

Now this is where the fun really starts. If you look at the same screenshot above, you will see the section called Gallery Type. This is where you can choose between a few different portfolio display styles.

• Slideshow
• Blog Style (vertical list)
• Filmstrip (galleria style)
• Thumbnail grid (with Lightbox modal enlargements)
• eCommerce grid

In addition to the styles, a user can pick between different aspect ratios to flow more with different designs. Here are examples of the portfolio displays.

To see each of these style in action visit the Photocrati demos section.

Album Management

Moving on to albums now. These are similar to portfolio management system, except portfolios/galleries are made included within an album. Think about the album being your overall portfolio and the galleries being individual components of your portfolio.

For example:

Looking at the bubbles above, albums would be in yellow and galleries in green. Make sense?

Looking at the Photocrati album management window above, you can see that you can name the album to your liking. There is then an option for the album display type. Following that you have the ability to pick which galleries are to be included in the album.

What this does, is make the gallery thumbnails within the album, link directly to the post/page that has the gallery included. It does this automatically.

Album Display

Like the galleries section, the Photocrati theme provides two styles of displaying albums.

• Album List
• Album Grid

This is what the album grid style looks like:

To see albums in action, be sure to check out the Photocrati showcase of customer websites.

eCommerce

Next up is eCommerce. Not all creatives need to sell their work, but even still this feature is built-in to the Photocrati theme. The eCommerce system is based on PayPal, which is a trusted processing company. There are currently pricing/product fields to use, but a more detailed eCommerce system is in the roadmap.

To see the eCommerce system in action, visit any of the Photocrati demos.

Blog & More

Having essential portfolio functionality built into a WordPress portfolio theme is extremely important, but more is needed. Having a well designed blog, compatibility with WordPress SEO plugins, flexible settings easy for all creative, etc.  I also want to note that while there are a lot of options within each modal window, there is also an entire backend settings panel for galleries, albums and eCommerce.  The Photocrati theme meets the criteria and is definitely a great choice for your WordPress portfolio.

Now I want to hear from you. What do you look for in a portfolio theme?

Thanks for reading,

Scott

The format and styling of your book will depend greatly on who you’re marketing to as well as your own personal style. A wedding book is not going to be anything like a commercial book which won’t necessarily look like a pj book. In general here are a few nuggets of wisdom I’ve been able to scrounge in my research.

1. Size Between 8×10 and 11×14. Any smaller and they can’t get a good idea of your work. Any larger and it’s just too big to work with. Remember your target audience and where they are going to be viewing it. Imagine trying to lift, lug and flip through a book that’s 13×17 (which opens to 26×17) inside a cubicle.

2. Number of images This will depend greatly on your genre and type of work you do. Generally, between 40-75 images is a good range. Again, depending on the type of work you do, this will vary. Also, 35 blow-their-socks-off images are far better than 35 “blow-their-socks-off” images and 25 “meh” images.

3. Layout Digital printing and inkjet printers have made interesting layouts possible for portfolios. We’re no longer limited to one image per page. If you want to do that, fine, but don’t feel restricted. Think multiple images per page, two page spreads, and negative space. Note: Use a professional graphic designer!!

4. Printing Simply put, the best you can find. You may be able to print top-notch images on your inkjet printer, if so, great. But don’t skimp here. Many of the online photo book producers use 133- or 150-line halftone printing. That’s fine for a magazine, but this is your baby. Do it right. If the printing is off, the only thing your viewer will remember is “Something was wrong with that book.”

5. Sleeves are evil Really evil, like Dick Cheney (or Nancy Pelosi) evil. They glare, they get creased and scratched and they smell funny. They get in the way of your images.

6. Interchangeability is good If possible, use a system that allows for interchangeable pages (aside from sleeves). Show your book enough times and one of the pages will get messed up. Someone will spill coffee on it; or it will get penned, or creased. It would sure be nice to be able to pull one or two bad pages rather than replacing the entire book.

7. How many? Probably two or three. Again, depending on your market and the type of work you do, you will need at least one to keep handy at all times, and probably one or more to send out. If you have an agent, sales rep or marketing help, you’ll need more copies.

8. Customize Put your name on and in the book. It seems like a no-brainer,   but you’d be surprised at how many times art buyers see a great book and then have to hunt for whose work it is. On my old drop portfolio I even put my FedEx number on the back. (Of course, it still took forever to come back!)

There are several great companies that produce materials and books for photographers’ portfolios. Some links below…

Lost Luggage

Case Envy

Moab Paper

Brewer Cantelmo

House of Portfolios

Asuka Book

Blurb

Pina Zangaro

This list is by no means comprehensive, if you know of more please leave comments. Thanks!

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