A studio site that is never out of date

Who this is for

Small design, development and creative studios whose work is mostly for clients. The studio site is usually the last thing anyone has time for, so it shows the work from two years ago. makerhandle is one page you update by adding a project, not a website you redesign.

It is a page for one studio with one login, not a team workspace or a tool for managing client pages. If your studio mainly runs products of its own, the product studio page is closer, and game studios have their own page.

Case studies, not thumbnails

Each client project opens its own project page: what the client needed, what your studio did (the role field), the timeline, the stack or tools as tags, up to twelve images with captions, a video walkthrough and the results as highlights. That is the shape of a good case study, and how to write one walks through it.

Show only what the client allows. A project under NDA can be described without the client's name, or hidden: it stays in your editor and off the page.

A layout that looks like a studio

The Studio template keeps your name, avatar and contact links in a column beside the work on large screens. Magazine sets the studio name as a masthead with your best project as the cover story, and Showcase leads every card with a large image. On Pro, the theme builder takes your brand colors, and the page can live on your own domain with SSL handled.

Getting enquiries

Put a contact form on the page (Pro): messages land in your inbox and in the editor, and your address is never shown. Or show an email, a booking link or both as links at the top.

Stats show which case studies get opened and which sites sent the visitor, without cookies, so you can see whether that conference talk or directory listing brought anyone. See analytics.

Price, against a site builder

Free covers five projects and three templates. Pro is $20 a year for unlimited projects, all nine templates, a custom domain, the contact form and the theme builder. A site builder can do more, such as a blog and many pages, and usually costs more each month. See portfolio website builders compared and pricing.