Portfolios lie, ask about the maintenance

The launch-day photo

Every portfolio, mine included, shows sites at their best possible moment: launch day, freshly built, perfectly populated, photographed in ideal light. What no portfolio shows is the same site six months later, after real content, real edits, and real neglect have had their way with it. And that later version is the one that tells you whether the work was actually any good. Anyone can make a thing beautiful for a day. The question is what it looks like once life happens to it.

Portfolios show the wedding photos. If you want the truth, ask about the marriage.

The questions that reveal real quality

When someone shows me a beautiful piece of work, the interesting questions are never about the launch. They’re about everything after, because that’s where craft either holds or collapses. The answers separate people who make things that photograph well from people who make things that last.

• How does this look now, a year on, with the client’s real content in it?
• Can the client update it themselves, or do they call you for every change?
• What broke after launch, and how hard was it to fix?

Anyone can build a site that looks good on launch day. The craft is in the one that still looks good after a year of real use.

Built to last, not to photograph

This is the thread through so much of how I think about the work: a CMS built for the editor so the site stays good as it changes, a stack chosen for whoever maintains it, a site treated as a living product rather than a printed brochure. Durability isn’t glamorous and it never makes the portfolio shot, but it’s the difference between work that impresses and work that serves.

What this means for choosing a partner

When you hire someone to build, don’t just look at the launch-day portfolio. Ask how their past work aged, whether clients can run it themselves, and what happened six months on. The honest builders will have good answers, because they built for that from the start. That focus on what happens after launch is exactly how I try to work. If that’s what you want from a build, I would love to talk.