Now that you have uploaded your artwork samples, it’s a good moment to fine-tune the “form” of your art portfolio.
Plio’s convenient separation between content and appearance allows you to easily change the “look and feel” of your portfolio in a few clicks. This way your art portfolio can stay fresh by changing its aspect occasionally to respond to particular trends in your art or the milieu.
Stage 1: Customize your “Look-and-Feel”
Stage 2: Customize your Home Page
Stage 3: Customize the Portfolio Galleries
Stage 1: Customize your “Look-and-Feel”
Plio comes with a theme that has many possible variations. A variation is a visual scheme that is applied to this theme. It assigns a particular arrangement of colors, typefaces and visual effects to your Plio Art Portfolio. Variations are organized in families.
This stage lets you choose the right variation in complete consistency with your art.
- Go to Appearance > Variations in your dashboard to display the list of variations.
- Click on a thumbnail to see a preview. Note that the preview displays your previously uploaded content and you are also able to navigate. Close the preview by clicking the “x” on the top left corner of the preview box.
- Choose any of these variations.
- Below the Variations section, you’ll find the Options section. Here you can further customize by choosing options such as rounded corners.
- Save changes and go to your website to see the new “look”.
As easy as that, you can change your variation whenever you want!
Practical Tip:
The right design should be consistent with your art; for example, a dark background creates a different atmosphere than a light one. The best way to know what works better with your work is to see it.
Stage 2: Customize your Home Page
The home page is the greeting page of your portfolio, the first thing your visitors will see on your site. It sets the mood to approach your artwork.
We think the best greeting for a portfolio is to display a limited set of chosen visual samples. That’s why Plio comes with a default home page which content is an elegant large-size slideshow.
This stage lets you choose the visual samples to be displayed in the slideshow of your home page.
- Go to Pages and edit the “Home” page.
- Select the large image representing the slideshow in the visual editor and click the upper left button displayed on this image. You now see the settings of your slideshow, without any slides so far.
- Click the “Media Library” tab to display the full list of your visual samples.
- Click the “Show” link of each image you want to include in your home slideshow and click the newly displayed “Add to slideshow” link.
- Go back to the “Slideshow” tab and see the added slides.
- If you want to move or remove slides, use the displayed links and “Update the slideshow settings”.
- Go to the home page of your website to see your new greeting slideshow!
Stage 3: Customize the Portfolio Galleries
If you had additional textual content for your works, remember, there is the same large image representing the portfolio galleries Plio has added for you. These galleries may be customized as well. For example, if you prefer having larger thumbnails with the title displayed, select the option and update the gallery settings. You can do it individually for every work.
It’s almost done! Complete your portfolio content and: Get People to Know You and Love Your Art.
This article was the 6th step of the series: Get your Plio Portfolio Up-and-Running in 10 Simple Steps.