portfolio-html: a static portfolio template with a community use condition

No build step, and the whole site lives in a handful of files

portfolio-html is a static portfolio template built with plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. There is no framework, no bundler and no template language in the picture, which is the whole appeal for a developer who wants a portfolio up today rather than a toolchain to maintain.

The documented folder structure is small enough to hold in your head. Under src there is index.html, a css directory with style.css and utilities.css, an assets directory holding the favicon set, a profile-image folder and a logo folder, and a js directory with script.js. Alongside src sit the community files: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, LICENSE, README.md, REQUIREMENTS.md, package.json and .gitignore, plus a .github directory with issue templates and a pull request template.

At the top level of the repository there are also a public/ directory, a .gitpod.yml file and a .vscode/ directory, alongside the src directory the tree diagram describes. The presence of public/ alongside src/ is worth noting, since the README also says the root page of the project is located at /docs/index.html, which suggests the published site and the source tree are not laid out the same way. A .DS_Store file in the repository root is a small sign that the project has been edited on macOS without much repository hygiene.

The primary language recorded for the project is HTML, and the topics list includes landing-page and template, which matches what the code actually is.

Customisation happens in four named places in index.html

The README walks through the edits needed to make the template yours, and each one points at a specific piece of markup rather than at a configuration file.

The logo is an h1 with the id logo, wrapping an anchor and an image pointing at ./assets/logo.png:

<!-- Logo -->
<h1 id="logo">
    <a href="#"><img src="./assets/logo.png" alt="Your Logo"></a>
</h1>

You can replace the asset or point the src at your own file, and the documentation notes the file should keep the name logo.png if you replace the image itself.

Navigation is a ul with the class nav-menu, holding li elements with nav-link anchors:

<ul class="nav-menu">
   <li><a class="nav-link" href="#">PROJECTS</a></li>
   <li><a class="nav-link" href="#">CONTACT</a></li>
   <li><a class="nav-link" href="#">BlOG</a></li>
</ul>

The last entry in the full template carries the classes btn and btn-primary to pick up the highlighted yellow button style. The instructions are to replace the # symbol with your real link and to delete any nav-link you do not use.

The profile image is a single img element with the class profile-image and a src pointing at ./assets/profile-image.png:

<img class="profile-image" src="./assets/profile-image.png" alt="" />

The recommendation here is worth repeating because it is the kind of detail templates usually miss: copy your GitHub profile image link into the src so the picture updates itself whenever you change it on GitHub.

The fourth edit, the name in the welcome message, is the point where the README is cut off, so the exact line to change is not given in the text available. That gap is worth knowing before you start, since you will be reading the markup directly for that one string.

Alongside the markup edits there is a Metatags.md file in the repository root explaining metatags and how to generate them for SEO, and the README points at an article on improving SEO ranking. The template also uses semantic HTML5 elements such as article, header and footer, which the README links to an article about.

A design credit line gives the sources of the visual work: CommunityPro for the design, a Dribbble shot titled Portfolio Landing Page, Franklin U.O. Ohaegbulam, and the Open Peeps illustration by Pablo Stanley. A Gitpod button is provided for opening the project in a cloud workspace.

The community condition sits in tension with the MIT licence

The licensing situation is the first thing a careful reader should resolve, and the two documents do not obviously say the same thing.

The licence recorded for the repository is MIT, and there is a LICENSE file at the root. The README, however, says the template is free to use if you are a member of the community or a contributor to the project, and that anyone else should read the requirements file if they plan to use the template for their portfolio. The link points at REQUIREMENTS.md in the repository root, which is listed among the top level entries.

That is a genuine ambiguity, and it is not something to resolve by assumption. An MIT identifier on the repository metadata and a community membership condition in the usage note are two different statements about what you may do with the code. The README does not include the contents of REQUIREMENTS.md, so the conditions attached to non-member use are not visible from the README alone. If you are not a community member and not a contributor, read that file before you build anything on this template, and if the two documents conflict, the requirements file and the licence file are the ones that matter rather than the summary line in the README.

The project also links a support link for the maintainers and encourages people to contribute, star the project or sponsor it. Contribution is not just welcomed but somewhat structured: the README asks that pull requests comply with the guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md, and that you raise an issue before making changes unless the change is minimal, such as a typo fix. The repository carries issue labels for good first issue, help wanted, bug and enhancement, which are a sign of an active triage practice rather than a formality.

Deployment runs through Netlify, and the release history has stalled

The project publishes itself on Netlify. A deploy status badge points at the Netlify deploys page for the site, and the homepage for the repository is the live site at cpro-portfolio-html.netlify.app. For a static template with no build step, that is the whole deployment story: the files are served, and there is no compilation step to configure.

The package.json file in the root of the tree is worth a mention because it suggests the project is not strictly build-free in practice. What it contains is not stated in the documentation available, so it is not possible to say what scripts it defines. Its presence does mean that running a package manager command in the project directory may do something, and a reader who assumes the project is JavaScript-free at the tooling level should look there first.

The release history is the other signal. The most recent tags are v1.1.0 from 2022-03-09 and v1.0, marked as v1.0-beta, from 2022-01-16. The last push to the repository was on 2026-08-22, so the working tree is being touched, but the tagged releases stop in 2022. There is no new version tag to point a dependency at, which for a template you copy rather than install matters less than it would for a package, but it does mean the live site and the newest tag may differ.

For a template, the practical question is not which version to pin but whether the code you copied is the code the live demo shows. The last push date and the 2022 tag date are the two facts to weigh when deciding how closely to track the upstream repository.

What a plain HTML template does and does not give you

The honest comparison with a static site generator comes down to what changes after day one. A template built from plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript gives you a page that loads without a build, a stylesheet pair split into style.css and utilities.css, and a single script file. It also gives you the constraints of that choice. There is no component system, no content pipeline, no routing layer, and no build step to minify or bundle anything, because there is nothing to build.

For a portfolio that is mostly one page of sections with a project list and a contact link, that simplicity is the feature. The four documented edit points exist precisely because the number of places you need to touch is small enough to describe in a README.

What you take on is everything the template does not handle. Search engine metadata is documented in a separate Metatags.md file, so it is on you to fill it in rather than being generated from a front matter block. Accessibility and SEO rest on the semantic tags the author already used, which you have to preserve as you edit. And the assets folder holds a specific favicon set, android-chrome-192x192 and android-chrome-512x512 alongside apple-touch-icon, favicon-16x16, favicon-32x32, favicon.ico and site.webmanifest, so if you change the branding you need to regenerate that set rather than leaving the old one behind.

If you later need multiple pages, a blog, a build pipeline or content managed outside the repository, this template is a starting sketch rather than a foundation, and the migration path is to rewrite the structure rather than to extend it.

Editorial conclusion

portfolio-html suits a developer who wants a portfolio site today with no build step and no framework, and who is willing to edit a handful of documented HTML lines. It does not suit you if the community membership condition in the README applies to your situation, because the licence identifier says MIT while the usage note points non-members to REQUIREMENTS.md, and those two documents need to agree before you rely on it. Before you publish, read REQUIREMENTS.md in the repository root, confirm the Netlify deployment at cpro-portfolio-html.netlify.app still matches the code you copied, and note that the last push was on 2026-08-22 while the newest tag is v1.1.0 from 2022-03-09.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. CommunityPro/portfolio-html on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases