How do you figure out your portfolio site structure before building it?

Start with the visitor journey, not the page layout. What do you want a potential client or hiring manager to understand about your work after a quick look? Pick that message first, then choose the projects and sections that support it.

Sketch a few possible routes through the content before designing the pages. That should make it easier to see whether a long scroll or a set of project links actually serves the story you want to tell.

I'd put your strongest project up front and give it a proper case study. The offline Moodle deployment sounds like a possible candidate if it shows the kind of work you want more of. Explain the problem, what you built and the outcome, then keep the other projects more compact.

You don't have to choose between one endless page and a full dashboard. A featured project with links to the rest gives people a clear starting point without making them read everything in order.

Make the key information easy to find quickly. Someone checking your work may not spend long exploring, so don't bury the best example beneath a long introduction or a wall of tool logos.

Write down the purpose and rough theme first, then use a planning tool or an AI assistant to bounce around possible structures without asking it to generate code. Treat its suggestions as sketches to question, not a finished site plan. Leave yourself time to decide what belongs and what can be cut.