Personal websites are great for professors, avoid these 3 mistakes

For many academics, the idea of a personal website is a nice one – for someone else. Someone with the time and skills. A surprising number of academic websites are outdated. Many are unmanaged.

Some are not updated, lose their domain or get malware.

Why is that? Why are academics putting hours of work into something that helps communicate their work, and then abandoning it?

This post is about how 3 common mistakes people make when building their website should play into your thinking before you start.

I’m Jennifer van Alstyne of The Academic Designer LLC. I help people like you communicate how and what you do online. Welcome to my blog, The Social Academic where I share advice on managing your online presence, and sharing your work effectively in places like social media.

A personal academic website is empowering. It has great benefits. It can present your work in ways the public and your personal connections can understand. Your website can help people

• understand your work
• get to know you
• get in touch

Most professors aren’t trained in how to create a website. They don’t realize how much work goes into it. The lack of training and time often results in the loss of the benefits. Benefits like engaging the public, media, and larger academic community.

Often professors don’t realize the associated costs before starting.

Because academics don’t get the awesome payoff, many allow their websites to fail.

Subscribe to The Social Academic blog.

3 skills you need to build your website

Let’s talk about 3 of the skills you need to build a website.

1. Website development and coding
2. Website content creation
3. Sharing your personal website effectively

Have you taken professional development training on how to make a personal website? Most professors and scientists haven’t. Bring me in to train your group!

1. Website development and coding

If you are building your site, you need web development skills. If you are using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, you don’t need quite as many of those skills. A website host is where your website is housed. My top recommendation for professors is WordPress.com.

You can hire someone to set up the backend of a website for you. I recommend this for anyone deciding to self-host their website.

2. Content for your website is a big project

You need to write about your work in ways people can understand. And, what information do you want to include? Content needs to be prepared before your can design your website. Photos and headshots need to be selected. This is a time-consuming process people don’t always plan for.

Writing for the web is a lot different than academic writing. Online readers like shorter sentences with more paragraphs. This too takes time. Once the content is gathered, it needs to be laid out in ways a new visitor can navigate and understand. It needs to be properly mapped for Google for people unfamiliar with you to find it.

3. Sharing your personal website is a step some people forget

Once your website is complete, it needs to be shared. People need to visit it for you to get the benefits. Many people who start websites don’t share them with their audience. I’ve even heard people ask if they should have a unaesthetic website as not to appear to care too much.

Because academics tend to be wary of “self-promotion,” many academic websites don’t get visited often. An unshared website is missing out on the impact they can make like

• Reaching new audiences
• Getting students who actually want your course
• Updating your friends and colleagues what you’re up to
• Being approachable to funders and the media

Takes more time to create and maintain your website than you think

Time is the biggest issue when it comes to personal academic websites. Don’t take on a website project if you aren’t ready to invest time in yourself. This is a project for you. Learning the skills above takes time. Implementing them takes more.

There are videos that will show you how to create a website in a short amount of time. But, how many of those websites still exist and are updated a few years out? Sadly, not as many as you’d think.

No one is going to promote you right now. And no one is going to promote you without their own agenda except you. Academic work, research, teaching deserves to be seen and understood.

The biggest impact of a personal academic website is that by sharing some of who you are and what you do, people can understand you more. You’ve given them opportunity to get to know you a bit.

Once a website is launched, if people don’t see the impact right away, they tend to stop updating it. If they stop sharing their site, those benefits don’t magically appear later.

Time is needed after your website is launched to update the site (backend security, CMS and plugin updates), and your site’s content.

Want a website, but don’t want to spend a lot of time? I’m here to help. I’d love to talk with you about your website project.

Funds you need to get started and maintain your website

The last reason personal academic websites are unmanaged or abandoned, is funds. Websites don’t have to cost money. For a $0 or low cost website, you do the 

• development
• writing
• design
• graphic
• layout
• and sharing of your website

How much does a personal website cost? There are annual fees associated with having a website. Those fees depend on how much work you are prepared to do yourself. The costs associated with the host of your website and domain name are typically $60-300/year.

Subscribe to The Social Academic blog.

Want help from Jennifer?

A website can feel like a lot of work. Don’t get overwhelmed. When you’re ready to create your personal website, check out my post with step-by-step instructions. If this all sounds like too much, I’d love to help!

Don’t hesitate to reach out about your website project. My email is Jennifer@TheAcademicDesigner.com

Guides and Advice Articles Personal Website How To's