When it comes to web development or design its really hard to judge based solely on a resume. Potential clients are always asking to see some of the previous projects you have worked on. Designers know this very well and right now there are lots of options for designers to showcase their work. This is a great list http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/10-solutions-to-easily-create-your-online-portfolio. I personally like krop.com and carbonmade.com.

But when it comes to developers, its a slightly different ball game. We are not designers by training and lots of the time, the design of the website might not be something we even came up with. The best way to showcase our talent is to demonstrate it with a live working application. But many a time, this is not possible due to a multitude of reasons. To help, we've come up with a list of the next best things you can do:

1. Show pictures. One of the most important things about the portfolio is the pictures. Most of the people that view these portfolios are going to be non-technical folks and all they are really going to be looking at are the pictures. Hell, even being a developer myself I rather look at the pictures. Make sure you snap some nice high-res images to showcase your work. We suggest 3 per project.
2. Provide a short writeup. Here its good to describe some of the more challenging parts of the project and detail your specific involvement if it was a team effort.
3. List down technical skills. List out some of the more common well known technical terms so that those more technically inclined have a good idea of what was involved. This could include stuff like APIs, Frameworks, Platforms, Programming Langauges and CMS used.
4. Tell us who the Client is. Although lots of the time this might be confidential, if you were able to show pictures. Means you probably would be able to state the client. This just gives your potential clients more confidence.
5. Tell us how much it cost. Potential clients almost always want a quote from you. By stating a rough range of each project, it gives them a good idea on how much you cost and if they can afford you.
   

All this takes time and effort but if we are going to be judged based on this we should really put in the effort. This helps make the decision to pick you a much easier one for the potential client.

At Jabfish, the two questions most asked about developers by marketers are:

1. Could we see some of their past work?
2. How much will it cost?
   

And since we could not find any online portfolio solutions just for developers, we decided to built our very own. Hopefully it makes creating that portfolio slightly easier. I've included some screenshots of how a profile with some portfolio projects filled in would look like.
Remember, most of the people viewing your profiles are not going to be technical. So make those pictures pop!