I've recently come across the website Issuu that offers a great solution for hosting portfolios online. There are other websites which offer the same service such as the 'Bookshow' widget from Blurb but I personally was never entirely happy with the results.
With Issuu however the results are, I feel, fantastic. Your documents load quickly and while turning through the pages there is no delay whatsoever, the navigation is very clean and simple via the arrow keys enabling you to scroll forwards or backwards through the document and a handy zoom tool allows for taking a closer look at any details.
As I had recently put together a portfolio for printing with Blurb it was a simple task to create a PDF of this (after a few tweaks to include new work) and then upload it to the Issuu site. Once online it is very straightforward to send existing or prospective clients a link to the work or alternatively embed it within a site such as this.
Issuu offer both a free and 'Pro' account, I elected to go for the 'Pro' account as this gives the benefit of your documents being viewable on iPads and other mobile devices whilst also removing adverts from your page (a very clever piece of marketing).
Still, at only $19 per month it's still a very reasonable price to host up to 15GB of documents.
If you'd like to have a look at my portfolio hosted with the nice people at Issuu just click on the icon at the top of this post, enjoy!
NB, the embedded widget from Issuu will only show via Flash enabled devices so for the benefit of readers via iPhones and Pads a direct link to my portfolio with Issuu is available here
