Edit: thank you for all information, it is really helpful 💖 I will check out pixelfed (.art) and go from there, maybe later setting up something “at home” ! Thanks again !!!
Hello !
I just got asked for a link to my paintings, and well I don’t have an art portfolio online and after trying some free ones out, I haven’t found anything nice (ease if useno nag-ware) so I thought of Devianart where lits of good pixel artists hanged around some ten years ago …
But I have heard Devianart is no longer recommended or the goto place for your portfolio, is that so (or not ofc!) and if, do you have any recommendations for a free online portfolio? Say 30-40 paintings tops.
I’m thinking about setting up something myself so self hosting (FOSS) recommendations are greatly appreciated too!
Cheers!
I highly recommend using Pixelfed. It looks really nice, is easy to use, is FOSS, decentralised and federated, and is a really positive space. It’s designed as a sort of Instagram replacement but whereas Instagram is used as a ‘social media’ advertising platform, Pixelfed is all art and photography. I actually find it to be one of the only genuinely enjoyable and uplifting parts of the internet at the moment and have discovered loads of art through it that I love and am inspired by. Have a look at some user profiles on a few instances to find one that looks like how you want to present your portfolio before signing up to one, as there may some variety between instances.
If you don’t mind doing a bit more work, it’s also not too difficult to set up a wordpress website on a cheap VPS using YUNOhost.
For ease and goodness I think Pixelfed is unbeatable though :)
PixelFed is also part of the FediVerse and uses ActivityPub, meaning people using Mastodon clients can follow PixelFed accounts.
You can run it yourself, but if you’re not able to for whatever reason, there are a ton of established servers.
Yes. It’s worth noting though that as a Pixelfed user you will only see posts with images. In fact a lot of my favourite art that I see is coming from mastodon.art, which is (as the name suggests) a Mastodon instance!
Do you recommend a particular instance?
I only have experience with pixelfed.social which is my home instance. I think you’ll be fine with any general purpose instance though. They should all federate well, so your home feed will be made up of accounts and hashtags that you follow which can come from anywhere on the fediverse, not just your own instance. It’s well worth exploring and getting a nice feed for yourself based on people and styles/mediums/subjects that you like. It’s also good to comment on others work and keep the encouraging/supportive vibe happening :)
Pretty sure you shouldn’t use WordPress - it’s an aging platform with serious security vulnerabilities. 😬
It’s not open source, but Tumblr is a decent option if you want something fairly easy to setup. Additionally, it can look very professional with a good theme..
As others have already mentioned, Pixelfed is probably your best option for a FOSS solution to your problem.
There’s sheezy.art and inkblot.art which are the ones I use, and Cara.app which I’m not familiar with but seems more professional (like artstation) than the former two. None of these are FOSS though.
Inkblot Art is a buggy, authoritarian mess that prevents people from seeing anything if not logged in. That’s the last thing I’d recommend.
These images are troubling
What about them is troubling?
They depict children, and lots of people online think that automatically has to mean something nefarious.
If you want to self host with FOSS, you could try something with good ol’ Wordpress. It also carries the bonus of apparently being able to federate (I never got this working ☹️)
