MattHaliski.com Is Done. Finally.

It’s been a long time coming and I’m pleased to announce that MattHaliski.com has finally gone live. MattHaliski.com is my portfolio website and now shows a decent amount of the work I’ve been up to for the last few years. I believe I have all the major kinks worked out of the code, but if you happen to stumble across any bugs please let me know.

About The Site

The idea for the site came about when I was checking out digg.com and saw that the Apple patent patrol had discoverd some newly filed patents on behalf of Apple. They appeared to be showing a 3D desktop environment and that really got my mind going.

MattHaliski.com

I started toying around the idea of a 3D site/desktop and how it might work. Little did I know that creating this site was becoming more and more like building an OS than a simple portfolio website. At this point the site is a pseudo 3D environment. I haven’t really started exploring the idea of depth. This site has a slew of features that aren’t ready for me to “turn on” quite yet. But, they should start to give the impression of a true 3D space.

Portfolio Site Advice

Okay, so I haven’t had a portfolio site up in at least a couple years. If you are in this boat, drop everything you are doing and get to work. I can’t possibly tell you how much I underestimated the building of this site. Gathering all the assets to display was, by itself, a complete nightmare. Here are some tips of mine regarding your portfolio.

• When you finish a project, grab all that you can, and archive it. Don’t throw it in a single folder that you’re going to have to sort through later. And please, please, please don’t tell yourself that you’ll come back to doing it, because you won’t.
• Keep your site up to date, especially if you’re a web designer. Prospective clients and employers are judging you on what’s up there. Showing off two year old work is not always desirable.
• Build your site so that it’s easy to update. It shouldn’t be a chore to throw up more work. If it is, chances are you won’t do it.
• Let the work speak for itself. It’s a hard balance to build a site that looks and functions well in it’s own right, but has the main purpose of displaying other work. Don’t overdo it.
• Be open to criticism. There is no one right way. I got a lot of feedback on mine and it is going to lead to some good improvements. I just had to have thick skin.

That’s about it, go check it out and let me know what you think. You all can feel free to offer up advice as well.