Why I Built My Portfolio From Scratch Instead of Using a Template

2026-10-24 · Personal · Jangili Venkateswara Rao

My very first blog post! There are thousands of beautiful portfolio templates, and some look better than anything I could design on day one. I still built mine from scratch. Here is why, what it honestly cost me, and when a template is the smarter choice.

Hello, and welcome to my blog 👋. This is my very first post, so thank you for being one of the first people to read it.

For a long time, I learned from other people's blogs, videos and code. Writing my own felt like the right way to give something back. Here, I'll share what I learn as a web developer: real problems, simple fixes and lessons from everyday work. And what better place to start than the story of this website itself?

The Easy Option Was Right There

Search "developer portfolio template" and you get thousands of results. Dark mode, smooth animations, glowing cards, all ready in an afternoon. Honestly, some of them look better than anything I could have designed on day one 😅.

I still opened an empty folder and started from zero. This is why, and what that choice really cost me.

Templates Aren't the Enemy

Let me be fair first. Templates are great. A small business that needs a clean site by Friday should use one. But a developer's portfolio is different, because it is the one project where the website itself is the proof of your skill.

For a developer, the portfolio isn't a page about your work. It is your work.

JangiliBuilds

Reason 1: The Site Is the Proof

Anyone can write "Angular, Tailwind, .NET" in a skills list. When the site itself is built with those tools, the claim proves itself. A recruiter can open the page, resize the window, switch the theme and see the work for themselves.

Reason 2: I Wanted to Change Words, Not Code

Most templates mix the content into the code, so changing one line of text means digging through files. I wanted the opposite. Every word on this site lives in simple data files that I can update from Google Drive, even from my phone, without publishing the site again.

Reason 3: Every Detail Has a Reason

With a template, you get hundreds of decisions you didn't make. With your own site, you can explain every detail, and that is very useful in an interview:

  • Why does the 404 page show up instantly? Because a missing page should not make you wait to hear bad news.
  • Why do the animations stop for some visitors? Because the site respects the "reduce motion" setting on their device.
  • Why was the top section rebuilt so many times? Because it looked perfect on one screen and wrong at 150% display scale, which is what my own laptop uses.
  • Why one button style everywhere? So every button looks and works the same, and one fix fixes them all.

Reason 4: It Became My Playground

A template is finished the day you download it. My own site keeps teaching me. It is where I try new things safely before using them at work: SEO , semantic versioning , release checks, tests and even the blog you are reading right now.

Template vs Built by Hand

The honest comparison

What It Honestly Cost Me

It wasn't all fun. Some evenings went on one pixel of spacing. The top section went through version after version, and a colour I was sure about got thrown out the moment I saw it on screen. Things a template gives you for free, like a logo or a mobile menu, took me real effort.

But every one of those evenings taught me something I now use at work. I would make that trade again.

When You Should Use a Template

  • You need something online this week for a job application.
  • You are not a web developer (for example a designer or a writer). Your portfolio should show your skill, not your CSS.
  • You want to spend your energy on the projects inside the portfolio, not the frame around them.
  • You plan to build your own later. Starting with a template is perfectly fine 🙂.

If You Build Your Own, Start Small

  1. Launch with one page: who you are, three projects and how to contact you.
  2. Keep the content in data files from day one, so adding things later is easy.
  3. Make it work on a phone before you make it fancy.
  4. Add one thing at a time: a blog, dark mode, animations, SEO.
  5. Write about what you build. Every feature is a blog post waiting to happen.

What's Coming Next

This is just the start. In the next posts, I'll share how this site works behind the scenes, how I made it easy to find on Google, and the tools and habits that help me every day as a developer. If something here helped you, or you have a question, I'd love to hear from you.

A template gets you a website. Building your own gets you a website and a story to tell.

JangiliBuilds

Thanks for reading my first post. Happy building 🚀