Every designer is expected to provide a portfolio website when applying for a design role or project. True, this may call for ongoing workflows and design tasks, but this expectation actually works in your favor as a potential candidate. Can clients truly infer what they need to from a written resume? Will they get a real sense of your personality and design talent? A simple summary of a person’s education, prior work experience, etc. will rarely suffice.
One of the most dire challenges in creating and maintaining a stellar portfolio website is that it needs to be updated as you grow your client base. It’s essentially an ongoing task.
This is where a portfolio website template can make the world of a difference. These template kits allow you to create a single infrastructure for your entire portfolio. Once it’s in place, you can then modify the website and expand it over time as needed.
In this post, we will guide you through the necessary steps for building and maintaining your top-tier portfolio. By the way, your list of templates to choose from is what we call larger than life — the options are endless.
Creating a Portfolio Website With WordPress and Elementor
WordPress is the website-building software that fits web creators like a glove. It’s free, open-source, and can be used to create any website or blog. Once you download the WordPress software and install it on your web hosting, you can take advantage of the entire WordPress CMS platform. The flexibility of WordPress lets you choose from tens of thousands of WordPress templates, themes, and plugins.
Elementor’s visual website builder simplifies the WordPress website building process. WordPress no longer plays the role of an intimidating tool that’s out of your reach. Instead, using a visual site builder allows you to create your site quickly, efficiently, and comfortably. This simplified design process in no way limits the sophistication or professionalism of your portfolio website. You now have the best of both worlds: an easy-to-create website whose professional quality shows off your refined talent.
What You Need To Know About WordPress Hosting and Domains
What’s great about WordPress hosting is that it’s optimized specifically for WordPress performance, security needs, installation, and onboarding processes. There is a long list of WordPress hosts to choose from, and many considerations to consider. To make your lives easier, we recommend several hosting packages that are highly compatible with Elementor.
Next in line comes choosing your WordPress domain, which we cover in our guide to creating a WordPress site with Elementor, linked above.
Now that you’ve gotten your feet wet in the basics of WordPress website creation, let’s proceed to the practical steps you need to take to leverage a portfolio website template that will let your portfolio stand out.
How To Install WordPress and Elementor
Installing WordPress for the first time is a straightforward process that can be done in no time. Take note that there are a few steps to take before installing WordPress itself: downloading the WordPress package, choosing your WordPress hosting and uploading the package to your account, and creating and configuring your database. Once you reach the final stages of WordPress installation, you’re finally ready to install Elementor and create your portfolio website.
A WordPress theme is what controls the front-end design of your WordPress site. The WordPress platform requires every site to use a WordPress theme. Not having a theme installed means your website won’t work. This is exactly why every WordPress site comes with a default theme — making sure any new site that’s created can start off right away.
One of the most important things to keep in mind is that WordPress themes only change the appearance of your underlying content, and not the content itself. Keep this in mind with blog posts, for example. Changing your WordPress theme doesn’t change your blog post content in any way. Instead, the content itself may look different, but nothing more than that.
Installing Hello Theme
There are countless reasons why over 500,000 websites use Hello Theme as their WordPress website theme. It’s financially viable since it’s free forever, and it is succinctly clean, lightweight, and incredibly fast. Not to mention that it offers full compatibility with Elementor. The theme’s easy installation and activation processes save you a lot of time and money — an added bonus for any budding web creator pursuing new design gigs.
Using a Template Kit
That’s right, it gets even easier than using Hello Theme on its own. The next piece of the puzzle is the world of Elementor template kits. These are individual sets of templates needed for a complete WordPress website: Header, Footer, 404 page, Blog Archive, Single Post, Single Page, Popup, and more.
Elementor template kits vary by use-case. Our Template Library features websites of many niches, each kit catering to the needs of our user community. These include portfolio sites, digital agency sites, magazine sites, beauty salons, and so much more.
One of our most fine-tuned kits is for building an unforgettable portfolio website. Of course, your options for a portfolio website template extend far beyond the Elementor template library.
Elementor portfolio template kits are also offered by creative marketplaces, such as Envato and Themeforest. To sum it up, your search for an Elementor portfolio template will never leave you empty-handed.
And now, some of our favorite template kit examples for a breathtaking portfolio that will attract more clients.
20 Best Portfolio Website Templates
One of the greatest advantages of Elementor templates is that they maximize the potential of Elementor widgets, motion effects, and advanced styling options. The fastest option for launching your portfolio site, each kit can be downloaded in a matter of moments.
Let’s take a look at the portfolio template kits we love most, available inside Elementor or for purchase on Envato and Themeforest.
Elementor Portfolio Website Template Kits
Elementor template kits are sets of website templates that make up a complete website, including: Header, Footer, 404 page, Blog Archive, and Single blog, Popup, and more. While the options you can find for Elementor templates are endless, template kits stand in a league of their own.
Between site performance, design quality, versatility, compatibility with the Elementor editor, and more, your design workflow will be streamlined to perfection. Of all the Elementor template kits available to users, portfolio template kits are specifically built on the understanding that a killer portfolio is what lets your web creation skills shine.
1. Portfolio Website Template Kit
Elementor’s design portfolio website kit gives talented web designers a golden opportunity to put their best work and artistic achievements in the spotlight. This kit uses bold and bright complementary colors to convey the designer’s unique, profound presence and skillset. These color choices also leverage color psychology by using variations of red-orange, yellow and purple. These colors convey energy, confidence, creativity, ambition — which are exactly the qualities that web and designers look to embody in their portfolios.
2. Nature Photography Portfolio Template Kit
The Elementor nature photographer portfolio template kit is geared towards photographers and creatives alike with a unique sense of style and flair for dramatic imagery. The structure of this kit uses fixed positioning and a sticky scrolling effect for the content layout schemes. When your goal is to impress visitors with special effects, this template kit can guarantee your success.
3. Prokit: Personal Portfolio Template Kit
Prokit is a personal portfolio template kit with a modern, professional design scheme. What’s unique about this kit is that it’s a one-page website template kit, which means that all of its design elements are spread out through one web page. By using the animated headline and media carousel widgets, Prokit shows how web creators can engage and interact with visitors — even when confined to one page alone.
4. Propus: Web Designer Portfolio Template Kit
Propus is a web designer portfolio template kit used by designers and digital agencies looking for a modern, minimalist design portfolio. The kit uses subtle styling effects for its image boxes — lazy load and the “fade in” entrance animation. These discreet, yet effective interactions not only enable a dynamic setting for meeting the designer but can also increase the speed of your WordPress site for a better user experience.
5. Heru: Creative Template Kit
Heru is a template kit for creatives building their portfolio website with Elementor. The kit uses a monochromatic color scheme that sets a consistent, modern vibe for creatives looking for a clean and pristine style. The use of shape dividers that define each section of the pages makes the scrolling experience a fluid, linear journey that can accommodate a wide range of content-types.
6. Noemi: Portfolio Template Kit
Noemi is a portfolio kit that caters to creative professionals and agencies looking for a responsive, black and white website color scheme that complements detailed, colorful imagery. Details like counter widget and “Slide in” entrance animations add a sense of suspense and interaction to the words and numbers placed on every template page.
7. Quanzo: Creative Portfolio Template Kit
Quanzo is a unique kit of templates built for both online and offline portfolios. The kit was built with CVs, resumes, magazines, and personal blogs in mind, specifically for photographers, developers and designers. Quanzo also uses the WooCommerce widget to give the option for customers to order branded print products. Having this feature directly inside your portfolio site brings any creative the opportunity to widen the scope of his business offering and value.
8. Picasso: Photography Template Kit
Picasso is a photography template kit for Elementor users that attracts photographers looking to build their portfolio websites. The kit implemented a unique design choice for their color scheme and choice of imagery: photographs that are dominated by the website color palette. The use of dark backgrounds throughout the template shows how photographers can accentuate the sharpest details of every photography masterpiece.
9. FabPhoto: Photography & Portfolio Template Kit
FabPhoto is a photography and portfolio template kit built for photographers and creative professionals looking to present their best work. The kit is highly dynamic and interactive, as it uses sophisticated background overlays and a sleek pricing table for a pristine, professional ambiance.
10. FloatKit: Personal Resume Template Kit
The FloatKit personal resume template kit is a versatile kit that attracts developers, designers, and other professionals looking for a simple yet engaging portfolio site. The kit leverages the effects of entrance animations to lead an interactive browsing experience, making it easy to relate to and reach out to the business owner.
11. Portfoliode: Portfolio Template Kit
The Portfoliode personal portfolio template kit includes an elaborate collection of page templates, providing many options for how to organize your content. This elaborate structure gives professionals the freedom to choose what they want to emphasize most in their portfolio: client feedback, project details, what their client-facing workflow entails, and more.
12. Wasat: Creative Portfolio Template Kit
The Wasat template kit is built for freelancers or digital agencies looking for a minimalist design and an analogous color scheme that works well on any device. One notable feature (among many) that the Wasat kit offers is multiple layout options for specific category pages, such as your blog archive or portfolio archive. This wide variety lets you adapt the page layout for your content — be it images, bodies of text, or all of the above.
13. Helion Creative Portfolio Template Kit
Helion template kit is a portfolio kit that welcomes industries and disciplines of all types: creatives, copywriters, fashion professionals, tourist agencies, client-facing professionals, and more. Helion is the perfect find for web creators who are particularly committed to the SEO performance of their site, as the kit is optimized for search engines, lightweight, and extremely responsive for any layout.
14. Pixelate: Portfolio & Photography Template Kit
The Pixelate template kit is an elegant portfolio template for creatives and photographers looking for a black and white color scheme with a hinted flair of color. This use of cohesive branding is built with global theme style settings, applying a versatile look to many layout options and styles.
15. Farren: CV/Portfolio Template Kit
Farren is a portfolio template kit used by creative professionals looking for a straightforward, concise portfolio site that tells their personal story. The designer’s comprehensive projects are represented by impressive thumbnail images, surrounded by abundant white space for polished usability.
16. FrontOne: Creative Photography Template Kit
The FrontOne template kit was built with creative professionals in mind, with a particular focus on photographers. It includes features like parallax scrolling, unique page dividers, multiple gallery display, and an overall look and feel that complements detailed photographs and visual clarity.
17. FLO: Creative Portfolio & Resume Template Kit
FLO template kit is a set of creative portfolio and resume page templates that simplify and speed up the process of creating a personal portfolio site. The kit boasts a contemporary and clean design, with a vast number of layout options. There’s no coding required, and you’ll find helpful functionality elements like a full screen menu popup, as well as sidebar navigation.
18. Rinjani: Template Kit for Illustrator and Designer
The Rinjani template kit for illustrator and designer portfolios offers a simplistic, yet engaging interface for showcasing illustrations and visual graphics. The homepage gallery’s layout welcomes collections of graphics that follow the designer’s individual style, allowing for a consistent display of varied projects. Many unique details are built into the user experience, like outstanding single post templates and CSS Filter-based hover effects.
19. Svay: Personal Template Kit
SVAY is a portfolio site template kit used by designers and professionals looking to develop a personal portfolio site. This kit specializes in presenting your project case studies as a fundamental component of your portfolio. There are many page layouts to choose from, all of which facilitate highly impactful visual communication.
20. Rekam Kit: Videographer Template Kit
Rekam Kit gives videographers and motion graphics professionals an easy-to-use, customizable template kit that suits their video showcasing needs. Those that love crisp video backgrounds for their hero content, Elementor global colors and fonts, among other professional design techniques — will find what they’re looking for in the Rekam Kit.
Is Your Portfolio Ready To Roll?
There’s no doubt in mind: your quest for a template kit that meets your portfolio website needs will end in success. You now know just how important it is to make sure your portfolio website attests to your design talent. Reducing the time you spend on building your precious portfolio will let you reap the benefits that your hard work deserves. If saving time on portfolio-building increases its quality rather than compromising it, is there any real reason to pass up the opportunity?
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