How to get your portfolio website online using Wix

Wix is a website builder that anyone, with zero wits in web design, can use to build a professional-looking website in minutes. Wix is very popular considering of its flexibility and ease-of-use. In this section, we will go over creating a personal portfolio website using Wix.com.

Create an Account

Creating an worth on the Wix website builder is very straightforward. You can plane sign up with your Google or Facebook accounts.

Visit the homepage www.wix.com, and click on Get Started.

You will be redirected to the Sign Up page. Enter your email write and a new password, then click on the Sign up button.

The next step is a little survey to help Wix know well-nigh your needs so they can provide you with the weightier possible experience. You can segregate to wordplay the survey or skip it.

The survey is comprised of just three questions and will take less than 30 seconds to complete. Choose never washed-up this before, as this guide is meant for both the beginners and wide users.

Once you select the last option, you’ll be redirected to the next page where you’ll be given an option to segregate between using the Wix’s Artificial Intelligence Designer or the Wix website Editor to create your website.

Using Wix’s Artificial Intelligence Designer (ADI) to create a portfolio website

Click on “Start Now” to use the Wix ADI or “Choose a Template” to create your own stunning website using the Wix Website Editor. In this guide, we will be exploring both, starting with the Wix ADI option, which is the weightier option for non-web developers.

Choose the type of website you want to create; in this case, a portfolio website. Click next to segregate what features you want on the website.

We chose the “online store” here, because we will be displaying our work and visitors should be worldly-wise to contact and rent you. Note that you can segregate to skip this step and add features later. Without that, click on Next.

Choose a brand/business name, or use your own name. Whatever you segregate here will be used as your domain name. We used our trademark name, “bloopanimation” as an example. Click Next.

Since we are working on a new project, it is unsupportable we don’t have an existing website or Google places, so we’ll click on “Skip” to review and edit our info.

Fill up the fields provided; your email is once there. Add your logo, address, phone number, fax (if you have one), and social finance links.

On the next page, segregate a theme for your website (you can hands transpiration themes later). Select one and click continue.

If you uploaded a logo, you’ll have an option to create a verisimilitude palette from that logo. You can skip if you don’t have one, or click “Create Palette” to continue.

The next step is to segregate a homepage design.

Select any of the displayed designs or skip. You can still transpiration them later. Once you’ve selected a design, you’ll be taken to the Wix ADI Editor.

The Wix Editor has three main areas, which are identified in the image unelevated as; (1) Top Menu Zone (2) the Sidebar Area, and (3) the Main Page Area.

It’s important that we take a deep squint into each of these areas and how they function. 

Main Menu Area: The main menu zone comprises of the pursuit tabs:

• A) Active Page Selector: This is where you’ll select a page you want to towards on the main page zone for editing.
• B) Add: This is used to add a new page or a new page section.
• C) Design: This zone lets you transpiration themes, colors, fonts, animations, or page designs.
• D) Manage Store: This is used for setting up an online store. Since our interest is in creating a portfolio, we will skip this.
•  E) Undo/Redo buttons: Undo or redo an action.
• F) Help: Wangle the Wix help database.
• G) Site: This tab contains a list of sub-menus like “create a new site”, “my site”, “connect domain”, etc. Our only interest here is the “connect domain”; others are rather straightforward.
• H) Notification bell: All your notifications will towards here.
• I) Upgrade: To connect your domain, you will need to upgrade to a premium account. You can find all the upgrade plans here.
• J) Preview: The preview tab will enable you to preview your diamond surpassing publishing it.
• K) Publish: Once you’re washed-up designing the website and happy with what you saw in the preview, you can go superiority and hit the publish sawed-off to publish your portfolio website.

Sidebar Area: The sidebar zone is usually used to exhibit information that is not part of the main page. To begin, click on a section, and it will unshut for editing at the sidebar area. From there, you can transpiration media files like images, edit text, and other things.

Below is a capture of the header section as it appears on the sidebar area.

You can transpiration the section design, add/edit menu, add a membership to your website, and much increasingly from this area. To add any of those features to your website, just click on the trammels box next to it.

Let’s take a squint at some of them:

• Site Menu: Each page you add to your website appears here. You can edit pages, rearrange page order or delete pages.
• Member Login Bar: This full-length is for membership websites.
• Business Name: The merchantry name you chose older is saved here. However, you can still transpiration the name from here at any time. 
• Tagline: Set a tagline for the website.
• Logo: Add a logo or transpiration an existing one.
• Site Email: Edit or add a new email accounts.
• Phone Number: Edit or add a new phone number.
• Button: Enables you to add buttons such as the “Contact Us” or “Get in touch” buttons.
• Social accounts: Edit or add your social accounts.

The options whilom are included with the header section. Other sections have their respective features. Click on any other section, and the editing features will towards at the sidebar.

Main Page Area: This is the main viewing zone where you can see your design. The viewer is incredibly intuitive to use. Simply click on a section to edit, reorder/move, design, or delete it from your website.

You can have as many sections as you wish, but we recommend keeping it simple, with 5 or 6 sections. The header and footer sections cannot be moved/reordered but can be edited.

Body Sections: Unlike the header section, you can duplicate, move, delete the soul section. You can moreover edit and diamond it. The two arrows at the top-right are used to move a section up/down. While the “move to...” option in the drop-down at top-left is used to move a section to a particular area.

The Footer/Header Sections: Like I mentioned surpassing now, you can only edit and diamond the footer section.

So let's take a squint at our final result. For this example we deleted all pages, leaving only the homepage. Our homepage has six sections. 

• The header section
• Welcome section
• Pro gallery section (served as portfolio section)
• The quote section
• The contact section
• The footer section

Using Wix’s website Editor to create a portfolio website

Now that we've seen how the Wix's ADI works, lets take a squint at how to customize our portfolio website by using the Wix Editor. To use Wix website Editor, go to Wix and follow all the steps as stated previously. This time, select the “choose a template” option.

On the next page, you’ll see lots of trappy templates spanned into multiple pages. Scan through and make a choice.

Hover over the template you want to use and click on “view” to preview the template, or “edit” to start working with the template immediately.

Once you click the “edit” button, it will take you to the Wix website editor. The editor is quite simple and easy to use; let’s take a squint at a few of the features.

In the image unelevated we double clicked on the title to make editable, so you can hands type your website's title. You can transpiration the heading type, the font face, the font size, font color, and other text formatting options using the “text settings” box. The “text setting” box only appears when you want to edit a text.

You can edit the menu and pages, add a background, and add media to your website. You can click on elements in the canvas to edit them.

You can save or preview your website surpassing publishing it. When you're ready to publish, click on the “publish” sawed-off on the top-right. We recommend saving your work from time to time to stave losing your design.

If this is your first time toying with website diamond you may find it confusing. But Wix's editor is so simple to use, that without playing virtually with it for a bit you'll get the hang of it and finger well-appointed navigating it.

Here's our final result:

Connecting a custom domain to your Wix Site

You can connect a custom domain to your Wix site from variegated places on your site dashboard. To connect your domain, go to your worth at the top-right of the page. A pop-up will towards with a call-to-action “Get a Domain.”

You can moreover do this by visiting your profile drop-down or just click on “Get a domain” right there on your dashboard.

After that, you’ll be presented with an option to buy a new domain or connect a domain you once own.

To connect a domain you once own, you must upgrade to a Wix premium plan. Go superiority and upgrade your plan if you wish to connect your once purchased domain.

If you don’t have a domain and wish to buy a new one, then click on “buy a new domain.”

Type the new domain you want to buy and click the “search” sawed-off to trammels If the domain is available.

Click on “Get it.” You’ll either upgrade to a yearly plan that includes a 1-year self-ruling domain, or buy the domain and upgrade later.

Note: the domain will not be prescribed to your website until you upgrade.

Select a plan to move on to payment.

We recommend the yearly plan so you can get a self-ruling domain voucher and other unconfined features.

Enter your vellum details and submit your purchase.

Congratulations! your premium plan is up and you're all set to build your portfolio website!

How to get your portfolio website online using Bluehost web hosting

If you you plan to use WordPress (the most popular Content Management System) to diamond your portfolio website, then using Bluehost for hosting your site is the weightier option for beginners.

In this section we'll take you through the unshortened process of setting up a hosting worth on Bluehost, register a domain, install and vivify WordPress on it. 

Why Bluehost?

Bluehost is one of the most popular, reliable, and trusted hosting companies in the world. We've used Bluehost to host Bloop Volatility in its first few years (before switching to Kinsta, which is a increasingly heavy duty hosting service aimed at websites with heavy traffic and e-commerce needs) and it's been the quickest most affordable option for many others like us.

How to create an worth on Bluehost and install WordPress

1. Getting started

To create an worth on Bluehost, visit www.bluehost.com and click on the “Get Started Now” button.

2. Select a hosting plan

The purpose of your project determines the weightier hosting plan for you. If you are creating a portfolio website, you should probably go for the vital plan. 

The good thing well-nigh Bluehost is that when your website starts getting a lot of traffic, you can unchangingly upgrade to a higher plan without any effect on your website. Bearing that in mind, we will be signing up with the vital plan for our portfolio website.

With shared hosting, which is widely used and affordable, we can hands install and vivify our WordPress website. Unlike in Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, server management, and platform patches are handled by hosting providers of shared hosting. So, we don’t need to worry well-nigh all those.

Let’s squint at the Bluehost shared hosting plans and their features.

3. Register a domain name

At the whence of this guide, we went over choosing a domain name. Now that we have chosen a hosting plan, we can finally register that domain name.

Thankfully, Bluehost gives you a free domain for the first year when purchasing a hosting plan.

We have three options to segregate from.

1. Create a new domain
2. Use a domain you once own. If you segregate this option, you’ll have to point the domain nameservers to Bluehost hosting. Click here to learn increasingly well-nigh setting up nameservers.
3. Skip and create a domain name later.

For the purpose of this guide, we'll go with the first option.

4. Create your account

Once you click “Next” without providing your domain name, you’ll be taken to the next page where you’ll either create a new worth or login if you once have an worth with Bluehost.

Fill out the worth information and proceed to the next step. 

5. Segregate Package information and extras.

Choose your worth plan depending on your budget; you can go for 12 months or more. You’ll notice that the longer the plan is, the cheaper the monthly price will be.

Basic 12 Months Price - $5.95/month - $71.40/year

Basic 24 Months Price - $4.95/month - $118.80/year

Basic 36 Months Price - $3.95/month - $142.20/year

You can segregate any of the pursuit extra packages:

• Domain Privacy Protection: Financing $0.99 increasingly per month (billed annually at $11.88/year). Domain privacy will protect your personal information (e.g., your name, email, country, and address) from the public view. This is recommended only if you want your domain information anonymous.
• SiteLock Security: Financing $1.99 per month (billed annually at $23.88/year). This add-on verifies your email address, physical address, and phone number. This full-length is needed if you intend to prove your points to your customers.
• CodeGuard Basic: Financing $2.99 per month (billed to the end of hosting term). This provides uneaten security by letting you replacement your website regularly. 
• Bluehost SEO Tools Start: Financing an spare $1.99 per month (billed annually at $23.88/year). Bluehost's SEO tool that can help your website's rankings on search engines.
• 1 Office 365 Mailbox: Comes self-ruling for the first 30 days. It is an email platform powered by Microsoft.

I recommend subtracting the Domain Privacy package. The rest are a bit of an overkill for portfolio websites in my opinion.

Next we'll add our payment information and submit. If you don’t want to pay with a credit card, you can click on “more payment options” to pay with PayPal.

Once you’ve entered all information correctly and clicked “submit", you’ll receive a confirmation email and a congratulatory message. You have signed up to Bluehost successfully! Click the “Create Account” sawed-off to continue.

Bluehost usually creates a site for you automatically without registration. However, you can delete this site by going to "Manage Site," click on "Settings," then scroll lanugo to the marrow of the page and delete it.

6. WordPress installation using Bluehost’s “One-click Installation” button

After signing up on Bluehost, the next thing to do is to install and vivify WordPress. With Bluehost’s “One-click Installation” for WordPress, you can seamlessly install WordPress in one click and in no time.

a) Log into your Bluehost account. From your dashboard, click on “My Sites”, and then on “Create Site.”

b) Enter a name and site tagline for your new WordPress site and click on “Next”.

c) If you registered a domain, from the dropdown arrow, segregate a domain you want to use for your portfolio website. Be sure to uncheck the boxes for the plugins you don’t need. 

Write lanugo your WordPress Username and Password, and click on the “login to WordPress” link to continue.

Now that we are washed-up with the WordPress installation, we need to get a template to diamond the very squint of the website. We'll imbricate that extensively in step 3.

How to get your portfolio website online using Kinsta

Kinsta is a premium Wordpress hosting service. It is the fastest, safest one we've found, and has superb consumer service. I simply can't recommend them enough.

They aren't cheap, with the cheapest plan starting at $30/month, but they are increasingly than worth it.

All plans come with a free Wordpress migration, which ways Kinsta will transfer your unshortened website for you from your previous hosting service, and set it all up for you.

Their plans moreover come with a free CDN, will-less daily backups, 24/7 spanking-new support, and a free SSL certificate. Most hosting services tuition for these type of add-ons.

After picking a plan, simply go through the checkout process, and the kind people at Kinsta will guide you through the rest of the process.

Once your Wordpress website is set up, the rest of the process of designing your website is the same as any other hosting service, and we will imbricate that in step 3.