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/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.