How to build a developer portfolio website: what to include, what to cut, free hosting, and the three-second test recruiters actually apply

What should a developer portfolio website include?

A home page that states what you build in one sentence and links everywhere else. Three to five project write-ups, each with the problem, the decision you made, a demo or screenshot, and what you would do differently. An about section that is two paragraphs, not a biography. A contact method that is one click away. Talks or writing if you have them. Nothing else. The whole site should answer what do you build, is it real, and how do I reach you, inside ten seconds of landing.

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My own site exists for exactly this, and it is the page every organiser and recruiter opens before a call [9]. My longer notes on the README format that feeds project pages, and on which projects to include, are on the portfolio [7][8].

A portfolio site is not a museum of everything you have touched. It is three doors, each opening onto something real. Pranjul Rathour

How do I write a project page that gets read?

Problem in one sentence: who had it and what it cost them. The decision you are proud of, in three sentences, including the trade-off. A demo video or three screenshots, never a wall of code. What you would do differently now, which shows growth more than any feature list. A link to the repository and, if it exists, a live demo. Skip the tech stack badge wall at the top; put it at the bottom if at all. A reader should understand the project without opening the code.

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Which projects should I put on my portfolio?

Three to five, chosen for range and depth, not for count. One that solved a real problem for a real person. One that shows a technical decision you can defend for twenty minutes. One that is live and usable right now. Cut anything that is a tutorial clone, a copy of a template, or unfinished. A portfolio with three strong projects reads as more capable than one with twelve thin ones, because reviewers judge by the best page they see, not the total.

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What should I leave off my portfolio?

Certificates, unless a project sits behind them. A skills matrix with progress bars, which nobody trusts. Every course you have completed. Tutorial clones with no changes of your own. A blog if you are not going to keep writing, better a single pinned post than an abandoned feed. Stock photography. A dense biography above the fold. The test is simple: does this page help someone decide to talk to you in the next thirty seconds; if not, cut it.

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Where should I host a portfolio for free?

GitHub Pages for a fully static site, free forever on a public repository, with a custom domain supported [2]. Netlify and Vercel's free tiers for a site with a build step, also generous and free for personal use [3]. Cloudflare Pages as another free, fast option [4]. A .dev, .me or .in domain costs a small yearly fee if you want one; the hosting itself should never cost anything for a personal portfolio. Avoid managed website builders with monthly fees; a static site is simpler, faster and free.

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How fast and accessible should it be?

Fast enough that it loads before the recruiter's attention moves on: a static site with optimised images and no heavy frameworks for a simple portfolio easily hits good Core Web Vitals scores [1]. Accessible enough that a screen reader can navigate it: real headings, alt text on images, sufficient colour contrast, keyboard-navigable links [5]. Neither takes more than an afternoon to get right, and both are things a recruiter or organiser will notice without naming, as a site that either feels solid or feels broken.

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How do I keep it updated without it becoming a chore?

Update it the moment something changes: a project ships, a talk happens, a link breaks. Do not schedule quarterly overhauls, which is how portfolios go a year stale. Keep the write-up template from this page in a notes file so a new project page takes twenty minutes, not a weekend. Delete a project the moment you would not want it asked about; an outdated portfolio actively works against you, so removing is as valid an edit as adding.

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What mistakes do developer portfolios make?

A home page with no clear statement of what you build. A skills wall that reads like a résumé keyword dump. Ten projects, all thin. Broken links to deleted repositories or dead demos. No way to contact you without hunting. A design so custom it is confusing to navigate. Copy-pasted README text with no framing for a human reader. Every one of these is fixed by the ten-second test: would a stranger know what to do next.

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Developer portfolio interview questions

"Walk me through a project on your site" is the most common opener once a recruiter has read it, so every project page should survive twenty minutes of follow-up questions. Prepare the decision, the trade-off, the failure and the fix for each of your three to five projects before the interview, not during it. The portfolio's job is to earn this question; your job is to answer it well.

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Where should I start?

Pick your best three projects, write the problem-decision-demo-lesson page for the first one tonight, and deploy on GitHub Pages or Netlify this week. For a session on building a technical portfolio that gets you interviews, email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com or use pranjulrathour.scult.in/invite.

Pranjul Rathour

GenAI Engineer · Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

GenAI engineer and AI product builder with 2+ years shipping production-grade AI systems: RAG pipelines, fine-tuned LLMs, hybrid retrieval and multi-modal apps across vision, speech and OCR, architected end to end from ingestion to deployment. Leads engineering for SCULT INDIA's 14-member team, founded the 500+ member TechVerse Enclave community and has mentored 200+ students. Three hackathon first prizes: Changethon 2025 (IIT Roorkee), Product Genesis at Vividhotsava 2025 (CSJMU Kanpur) and BYTEBATTLE (MeetKats).

Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges. Email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.

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