As a creative job seekers, one of the first steps in creating your online portfolio is selecting the perfect theme. your portfolio website need to be professional and attractive enough to show off your work and get you noticed by employers. Today, I’m going to give you recommendations for 5 best WordPress themes for portfolio and will help you stand out.
We not only paid attention to user-friendly themes, but also collected products for every niche.
1. What are the benefits of a portfolio theme?
Unlike all-in-one solutions, special portfolio themes offer the opportunity to present your own works in a specially created environment.
This website function is an important prerequisite for artists and freelancers who primarily use completed orders to acquire customers – including photographers, painters or designers, but also architects or fashion tailors.
The technical background of a portfolio theme is simple.
The entries in the portfolio are not created using the two standard formats “Post” or “Page”, but are generated with an independent format using Custom Post Type.
This approach not only has the advantage that you can organize large portfolios much better if they are managed separately from the blog or the subpages of your website, but also that you can generate individual rules and designs for portfolio entries.
Means: The detail view and the overview page of your portfolio looks completely different than a blog post or a page.
In addition, these themes usually contain additional functions to improve usability for your visitors. These include, for example, a filter that can be used to search through the portfolio in a very targeted manner.
2. The Best WordPress Themes for Portfolio website
There are a number of excellent representatives who basically deserve to be included in this list. In order to ensure an overview, however, we have decided to limit the number of representatives to 13.
2.1 Divi
- Price: $89.00 per year
- Number of demo layouts: 29
- Usability: medium
Divi is sort of a jack of all trades when it comes to building a website. Even if I’m not a fan of superlatives, you have to admit that I couldn’t imagine a project that can’t be implemented with Divi.
Even if Divi is not a special portfolio theme, extensive portfolio management has been included in the backend.
This means: You can add entries using your own post type and also define your own layouts for them in the page builder.
You don’t have to be a professional to get along with Divi, because the theme has one of the most advanced and innovative live builders on the market, which also enables beginners to create professional websites.
Would you like a taste? There is a demo of the Divi Live Builder that you can use to take a look at the theme.
Of course, Divi is also equipped with hundreds of templates. 29 portfolio templates alone are waiting for you in the backend.
Who is Divi the best solution for?
Divi has its own gigantic range of functions, with which simple but also comprehensive projects can be implemented.
This feature set can actually be overkill if you just want to launch a small website.
However, if you don’t yet know which path your project should take, then Divi is definitely the right choice if you want to create a great site on your own without having to enter a line of code.
Divi Theme PROS
- Gigantic range of functions
- Advanced WYSIWYG editor
- Numerous templates (29 portfolio templates)
- One-time payment possible
- Very competent support, huge community
- Page builder
- Extensible with themes, templates and blocks
Divi Theme CONS
- Loading time could be better
- The range of functions can be a little intimidating for beginners
2.2 Neve
- Price: Freemium
- Number of demo layouts: 52
- Ease of use: easy
I have talked about Neve in many other post on Vahidsediqi.com. The reason lies in the flexibility and wide range of uses of the theme.
Similar to Divi, Neve was not created as a special portfolio theme, but it does have all the necessary functions. A custom post type is automatically created in the backend during installation and you can use the page builder to create your own designs for your portfolio entries.
With the help of various portfolio grids, overview pages can then be created, which your visitors can even adapt to their own needs using filters. This ensures a high degree of usability.
Neve comes in a free and a paid version, with the free Neve theme only allowing access to a portfolio template in conjunction with Elementor. So the premium version is a requirement if you want to use Neve.
Who is Neve best for?
Neve is a great solution for beginners and one of the best portfolio themes out there, without being limited to this site type.
This means your site can easily grow and change without having to change anything in the basic setup.
Thanks to the compatibility with page builders like Elementor, you are guaranteed to get along with this theme even as an inexperienced user.
Neve Theme PROS
- Free version available
- Extensive portfolio function
- Clear backend
- Compatible with page builders like Elementor
- Very good support
- Wide range of uses
Neve Theme CONS
- I couldn’t find any cons
2.3 Blocksy
- Price: Freemium
- More then 10 ready made templates
- Ease of use: easy
- Lightning Fast
- Advanced header and footer builder in free version
- Blog layouts
Blocksy is a modern yet simple WordPress theme making it perfect for almost any type of website. It comes with 10 built in demos that you can use to create a stunning website and has some spacial demos for portfolio for free Each demo has more than one page layout which you can mix and match to suit your design needs.
Who is Blocksy best for?
If you are a freelancer or creative collaborator, Blocksy may be the right theme for you.
Thanks to the very clear backend, it is aimed at both beginners and advanced users.
Blocksy Theme CONS
- Free demos to import in one click
- Advanced header and footer options
- Multiple blog layout
- Single post design
- Super fast and SEO optimized code
- Elementor and other page builder supported
Blocksy Theme CONS
- I could not find any cons
2.4 Vadana
- Price: Freemium (Pro from $59.00/year)
- Number of demo layouts: 1
- Usability: medium
Vadana is a beautiful wordpress theme, perfect for a portfolio website. It has a cool 3D look, nice scrolling animation in the portfolio items and smooth parallax effect on the page. For those who are not aware of parallax effect – it’s created by adding two or more layers of background and moving them at different pace when scrolling down. You can use this theme for showcasing your work, project and pretty much anything but it is strong especially if you work with web design, coding, illustrations and photography.
The portfolio can be displayed in various formats, including a slider layout.
Even provided for building a mailing list: Vadana allows you to add different forms where visitors can sign up for your newsletter. Also, the theme is 100% compatible with WooCommerce, so having an online store won’t be a problem either.
Read my article about best wordpress plugins 2022
Who is Vadana best for?
Vadana is aimed at freelancers and speakers. The colors are very feminine, so that primarily female users feel that they are being addressed.
Vadana Theme PROS
- freemium
- Free version already well equipped
- Integrated marketing functions
- Social media extras like Instagram Feed
- good support
- Premium version with cheap lifetime offer
- 900 Google fonts integrated
Vadana Theme CONS
- Features not comparable to other themes on this list
2.5 Perfect Portfolio
- Price: free
- Number of demo layouts: none
- Usability: medium
With Perfect Portfolio free portfolio wordpress theme, you can easily create and showcase your work in the utmost professional manner. If you are a freelancer, web designer, agency owner or simply want to show off your achievements and case studies, this theme will help you with your goal. You can showcase your portfolio using customized layout and look of the portfolio section. The theme comes with blog layout, specially designed for experts such as developers and designers to show-off their knowledge through blog articles that attract website traffic to increase awareness.
Who is Perfect Portfolio Theme best for?
Perfect Portfolio is the ideal solution if you don’t want to spend money on a theme and don’t have high demands on your website. The minimalistic design and the fast loading time are the two biggest advantages of this theme.
Perfect Portfolio Theme PROS
For free
Very minimalistic design
Excellent loading time
support available
Portfolio Filter
Integrated off-canvas menu
Perfect Portfolio Theme CONS
- No demo pages available
- Less functionality
3. Portfolio Plugin or Theme?
There are basically two ways to add a portfolio to your website:
- You can use one of the themes we listed
- You can use a plugin to add portfolio functionality to your website
While the theme is a kind of all-in-one solution, with a portfolio plugin you logically rely on two building blocks: a theme and a self-sufficient plugin.
The advantage of this compound solution is its flexibility. If you need to make changes to the setup of your website, especially to the portfolio, you can do this quickly and easily, for example by replacing the plugin.
The disadvantage lies in the interaction of both solutions. This is because there are automatically more seams that can cause problems under certain circumstances. And since it is often unclear with such problems whether they are caused by the plugin or the theme, you may have to contact two different people (who, in the worst case, pass the buck on to each other).
As a rule of thumb, our advice is…
If you are planning to create an extensive website that will also contain a portfolio (among many other areas), then using a plugin makes sense.
Do not choose a portfolio theme here, but a complete solution.
On the other hand, if you only want to create an online portfolio, then using a portfolio theme is definitely a better choice.
