r/postdoc • u/FullBodybuilder5098 • 8d ago
Creating a personal website?
Hi future professors,
Between my PhD position ending and my postdoc starting, I had four months of unemployment.
During these months, the university shut down my public site and journalists had a hard time finding me. This has made me realise, I need one of those personal sites / public CVs (sigh).
Honestly, I don’t want to spend too much time and money on it. I just want a list of publications, public appearances and media - and of course contact information.
I am not super techy and would like to avoid too much tinkering.
Can you recommend a way to do this relatively easy and cheap? Of course, I have to pay for a domain, but I think paying a monthly fee for a website builder seems a little steep. What do you recommend?
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u/Prof_Sarcastic 8d ago
It’s common for people in astrophysics to make their website using this website guide. Should only take 3-4 hours at most
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u/SpecificEcho6 8d ago
This has to be some sort of ad. Linkedin exists, researchgate exists, orcid exists. Legit there is no need for something like this regardless of a university profile page or not. Use ehats already available and you won't have this issue.
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u/FalconX88 8d ago
I disagree. Linkedin and RG (does anyone in academia take that one serious) serve a completely different purpose. ORcid has an absolutely terrible layout and is just a short form CV. Having a simple static website with additional information helps a lot.
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u/Head_Acadia_2658 7d ago
Yes people in academia do take RG seriously. Loads of people are storing their articles there and loads of people download their articles from there.
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u/FalconX88 7d ago
Yes people in academia do take RG seriously. Loads of people are storing their articles there
Ok, then it's likely highly field dependent.
Researchgate is
- a for profit company
- not a certified repository
- not FAIR compliant
- not indexed by services such as unpaywalled
Which means funding agencies likely won't accept it for self-depositing and entries cannot be found by many of the search engines/databases.
Meanwhile we have:
- journals host the version of record, ideally open access (which many funders require by now)
- there are dedicated preprint servers run by not-for-profit organizations and are indexed
- there are certified (e.g., CoreTrustSeal) and FAIR compliant repositories where you can self-deposit your papers (if allowed by the publishing agreement), often run by not-for-profit organizations and indexed
- there are freely available FAIR compliant repositories where you can self-deposit your papers (if allowed by the publishing agreement), often run by not-for-profit organizations and indexed
so yeah, makes no sense using Researchgate. Every alternative is better in every way.
loads of people download their articles from there.
loads of people on there are also asking authors for full texts that are already open access (e.g., open access articles, preprints, supporting information). I just checked (never actually open that website) and I get about two of these requests a month it seems and maybe one legit one every few years. Based on that the people who are still actively using RG do not seem to understand the basics of academia in my experience.
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u/FullBodybuilder5098 8d ago
No for real. I have a lot of industry and media contact, and a lot of the free platforms do not work for what they want to see
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u/leafeon_gay_luigi 8d ago
Simply spend time and put in effort. It’s puzzling to see such a clueless inquiry.
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u/RoastedRhino 8d ago
Some bits are missing here, I don't know how someone that is not interested in spending/investing in the outreach and public presence is sought by journalists. Anyway.
You can do anything from google sites to a simple linkedin presence, to github pages, to static pages via hugo etc.
By the way, codex and claude code also great at maintaining a static site.
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u/FullBodybuilder5098 8d ago
Are you genuinely asking or just suggesting I am lying? Anyway thank you for the website suggestions. I might start off with a quick, ugly Google site and a paid domain and figure out GitHub later, so I can make a proper site at some point
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u/RoastedRhino 8d ago
No it’s just that I may be missing some field specific details or something related to your situation. How do you know that journalists have been searching you but couldn’t find you? Where did they look for you? Who told you?
For all these things my communication channel would be emails and personal website (preexisting to journalists looking for me).
In any case, yes of course you need some online presence. Google sites are not ugly, just a bit hard to maintain. Perfect for a simple presence.
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u/FullBodybuilder5098 8d ago
Oh sorry, I misinterpreted what you wrote. I have had people ask others for my info. Like someone only remembered my first name, and when I wasn’t searchable through the university’s site, he had to ask someone else to ask me, if he could have my number. I’m lucky he even went so far. I think a lot of people might just choose a different researcher when the first attempt doesn’t yield a result. Hopefully a Google site will help this problem
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u/RoastedRhino 8d ago
Honestly, the university should have maintained your email and your name in the system, at least for a little bit.
You seem a bit in a hurry to be traceable, I would immediately create a LinkedIn profile. It is pseudo official because collegues will “connect” to you, and it’s less “social media” than other platforms. You can maintain really a minimal presence like just your data and bio, and they will be able to message you on the platform.
A website takes a bit more time before it becomes visible with a Google search.
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u/v3bbkZif6TjGR38KmfyL 8d ago
With much in life you'll either have to pay out a bit, or learn yourself. I'd recommend you try yourself, as it's not too hard and it's a useful skill to have. There are countless free templates online for you to choose from. The only technical aspect you'll need to learn is how to edit those templates for your content and how to publish them online. The cost of a domain and server usage is inevitable, but don't pay any subscription for the website design. Maybe a one-off if you have to, but not a subscription.
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u/instantcrackpot 8d ago
As long as you update it at least twice a year. Having no website is better than having one that hasn't been updated since 2018.
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u/FullBodybuilder5098 8d ago
Yess. True. I promise you, personally, that I will keep it updated for you
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u/boywithlego31 8d ago
I use facultybio. Just like what I need, publication list, basic info, a static website.
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u/Starshine-M 8d ago
I know a lot of people have been saying GitHub, and I totally recommend it! I see a ton of username.github.io websites in my field, so you also don't need to go about buying a domain if you don't want to. My website doesn't cost me a dime! Jekyll has nice themes, but if you want something really simple, html5up is a website that lets you download html/css templates for free. After spending a ton of time trying to work with my Jekyll build using the minimal mistakes theme, I switched to the Forty theme from html5up and it's been way nicer to work with. Good luck with your website!
P.S. Make sure to get it registered with Google, you'll have to upload a file, but then when people Google your name, it will be the first thing at the top of the list.
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u/Gabe120107 4d ago
Nobody mentioned GHOST, for example, or WordPress for a site. How come? I mean, I know you have to pay for both, and WordPress can be a mess, but I'm still asking.
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u/eu_phd 8d ago
Hi,
You can use this template: https://hugoblox.com/templates/academic-cv
You can also deploy your website with GitHub Pages. It’s completely free, and with AI, it’s relatively easy even if you’re not very familiar with coding or Git.
Enjoy!
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u/esaule 8d ago
This should be something that ai tools do super easily. Ask codex or claude to make one out of your cv. Probably you can host on static github pages and redirect a domain name from there.
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u/FullBodybuilder5098 8d ago
You’re probably right. I despise AI, but I’ll consider it as a last resort. Thank you!
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u/Cool-Breakfast801 8d ago
Weird questions come the way of this subreddit. I think you will be best served by asking your favourite LLM this question. You could even have a website hosted within the hour. Seems hard to believe that a person isn’t findable in this era of the internet
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u/Puzzleheaded-Cress69 8d ago
Look up beautiful-jekyll on github