There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on how to build websites. But in reality, it all boils down to three things:

1. HTML: Where you tag the content of your website. ( paragraphs, titles )

2. CSS: Where you define style of your website. (font colors, etc.)

3. Javascript: Where you define the functionality of your website. (i.e. what should happen when a button is clicked?)

For me that was the aha! moment. Everything else was just noise. Yes there is a learning curve, but it isn't all that bad if you ignore the noise.

I would recommend against all of the "Learn everything you need" type courses. and just focus on these three courses:

* https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html

* https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-css

* https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript

That is how I started.

I mean, if you really want the easy way out, just pay Squarespace or another WSIWYG website builder. That's what a lot of my artist and photographer friends use.

That's what I was going to suggest. If you're a non-coder who needs a portfolio site, you already have a body of work ready to show. Put that up on a Squarespace site with a nice template instead of wasting time going through HTML/CSS video courses to create one from scratch.

If you're genuinely interested in building from the ground up, definitely go ahead. But if that's not really your goal, you will almost certainly be disappointed with your first site. HTML/CSS courses don't cover design (typography, element spacing, color palettes), so you'll look at your site, you'll know it's ugly but you won't know why. And you won't want to put it online, thereby wasting even more time.

Don't do that. Let your work speak for you, and don't feel embarrassed about using a template. Your audience cares about the quality of your content only, they will be completely oblivious to what is happening behind the scenes.

> As a non-coder it feels like the learning curve for building a website portfolio is super high - even though I am told by coders that it is not.

It is not high if you don't try to reinvent the wheel. Fortunately, you can build upon generous people's work. Using frameworks is fine unless you end up using things you don't need. There is still a learning curve, of course, because you need to learn where to look for answers. But building a portfolio site is indeed not that complicated.

Non-coder here, I started with WordPress, spent a lot of time learning how to code my own theme. Then I ditched it, learned the basics about how Git works, set up a static site using Jekyll, styled it with Tachyons. Then I added a gallery functionality and a few custom tweaks, just looking things up as I went. My site is now way simpler to maintain and faster. What took hours to look up and fix now seems easy.

Putting your portfolio site together yourself is time well spent.

Perhaps just start. Not on coding, but on content. Coding facilitates, but a lot of people have already spent a lot of time coding things already. My own 'portfolio' is a wiki, looks neither pretty nor ugly, at least to me, with a heck of a lot of text, about things that interest me. Wiki because of a realisation that chronological order didn't seem to make sense to a body of work that can be added to constantly.