guest post by: Josh Parks

Visit his website Compositing Pro  for many tips and tricks for success in the VFX industry.

Every VFX artist needs a portfolio, to ensure that recruiters have a way to find all the information about you. It can be extremely simple looking and take very little time to setup a professional looking site.

Before we start, let’s cover a few key website terms:

• Domain Name: This is the address that you type in to get to your website. They are typically ‘www.something.com’. For instance, my domain name is www.joshparks.co.uk If you want a domain name, you don’t buy it. Instead, you register it for a period of time. Generally by paying a yearly fee. If you don’t renew your domain name when the time period expires someone else can register it. For the purpose of this article, we don’t really need to worry about this as most hosting comes with a free domain name. As long as you keep paying for your hosting you will keep your domain.

• Hosting: Is what we call the physical place where your website is stored. Most websites are stored on a computer in a big warehouse along with thousands of other websites. All connected to the internet with a superfast internet connection. These computers are called servers, and you rent them through a host. I use Bluehost both this site and my portfolio, it costs only $3.95 a month.

• Portfolio Platform: This is what actually runs your website. Gone are the days when you had to program a website from scratch in HTML. Now you just install wordpress with a few clicks and your website is up and running.

• Theme: This is what your site actually looks and feels like. It is an add-on to your blogging platform that makes your website pretty and unique. There are hundreds of themes out there, including free and paid-for ones.

• Plugins: These are extra things you can install on top of the portfolio platform to make your website better. They are built by third-party developers and once again there are free and paid for ones.

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