Quick Tips: Tidy Up Your Portfolio Nav
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One of the main pointers we give our members is to always edit yourself. Do you need to show 1000 images of the same thing but at a different angle? Probably not. Is it a good idea to showcase every project you’ve ever worked on? Not really. But, as with most things in life, there are no absolutes (except that there are no absolutes). There are those of us out there with tons of material to share with the world and, by gum, we’re going to show it. There are some drawbacks to this strategy, however. The one we’re going to focus on here is the Curse of the Never Ending Scroll and how to mitigate that on Adobe Portfolio.
While we still advocate for “Less Is More” there are those of us out there who couldn’t agree less. Whether it’s the desire to show our range, our variety, or our work ethic, a long list of projects is sometimes just the price of doing business. While this isn’t so much a problem when you have cover images to show, sometimes a Navigation area can get unwieldy or just plain ugly.
When working with a vertical navigation in particular, if you’ve got a ton of work published, it’s a good habit to show your Galleries and Pages rather than a long list of projects. For new visitors to your site, the laundry list on your navigation can be dizzying and, in many cases, the Project Titles may not mean anything, especially to a visitor. We recommend grouping your projects into a few well-curated Galleries (or more depending on how you want to divide things up), giving your Projects an eye-catching Cover Image, and then turning off the Project Link in your Navigation, that way it’s only accessible by going into your Gallery. How do you do this? Thought you’d never ask!
First, click Manage Content on the left side of the Editor
Next, click the gear box next to your Project and click Hide In Navigation. Sadly you’ll need to repeat this for each project in each gallery. But it’s worth it, trust us! Also, if you haven’t already, this is the same menu you’d use to create new Galleries and also where you’d drag and drop Projects into those Galleries. Neat, huh?
Once you do this, only your Galleries and Pages should be visible as links in your Navigation.
Obviously this isn’t a rule for everyone’s Portfolio, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind as you build and design your site. If you haven’t already, check out www.myportfolio.com and start building your Adobe Portfolio today.
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