Adding side projects to the portfolio alongside client work

Every entry in the work section so far has been client work — a groomer, a care home, a skip hire firm. I just added FuelFinder to sit alongside them, tagged as a side project rather than client work, and it felt worth explaining why.

Client sites show I can take a brief, work within someone else’s constraints, and ship something that fits a business. Side projects like FuelFinder show something different: what I build when the only constraints are the ones I set myself, and how fast I move without a client sign-off in the loop. Both are useful signals, and neither one replaces the other.

Practically, that meant a small template change rather than pretending FuelFinder was client work: portfolio entries can now carry their own tag instead of everything defaulting to “Client work”. Small thing, but it keeps the portfolio honest about what each entry actually is.