Take a look at the much-neglected LaurenRaeOrsini.com today, and you’ll find it completely transformed. It’s been reskinned with a brand new custom theme, Writer’s Blocks, built from the ground up by my friend and designer, Sean Connolly.

I love WordPress to death but one thing it’s lacking is a variety of portfolio themes for writers. You can find tons of portfolio themes if you’re a visual artist or graphic designer, but if you want to show off words instead of pictures, you’re out of luck. I knew that if I wanted a theme that did what I needed, I’d need something custom, something that added to and altered WordPress’s out-of-the-box functionality. Sean helped me do that, and I’m encouraging him to make Writer’s Blocks Theme available to the public soon.

Some of the features of my new portfolio site:

• No posts, and therefore no comment spam. Sean added a new content type, Clips, which I can edit visually from the WordPress Dashboard.
• A 3×3 grid of my portfolio clips referenced by either title, quotation, or photo. I love the variety this adds to the main page.
• Responsive design. Try dragging the corner of the site and shrinking it. Whether you’re on a big screen, small screen, tablet or phone, it looks good!

I invested a lot of thought, time, and money into making my portfolio something I could be proud of. I think my reporting clips make or break my ability to get new reporting jobs, so I wanted them to be accessible, readable, and well-organized.

Do you have a portfolio site to showcase your work? Link it in the comments!