For professors and scientists, a personal website is a big project that’s well worth your time. It’s the best way to manage your online presence long-term. Your personal academic website can include a portfolio of pages that showcase your
- teaching
- research
- publications
- speaking engagements
- service
Since 2018, I’ve been helping professors have a stronger online presence with personal academic websites. When we make the things you care about, what you value most as an academic, more accessible online? You have opportunity to help more people with the hard work you already do. And, you deserve to have a space for yourself online if a personal faculty website is something you want for yourself.
7 steps for how to make your personal academic website
- Create your content
- Pick a domain name and site title
- Choose a website host
- It’s time to set-up your personal website
- Preview your site
- It’s time to take your website live
- Share your website
- Want professional help with your website?
You can make your own personal academic website. You’ve got this. When you do, your website will help people explore your research, teaching, and the things you care about. I’m excited for you! And this guide is here to help.
P.S. Bookmark this page so you can come back to it.
7 steps to take your website from start to launch
A website can take a really long time, or very little time. While the more extensive website has potential to meet more of your goals (or share the resources you care about), there are many kinds of effective websites academics make that enhance their digital footprint. I host the Best Personal Academic Websites Contest along with my friends, Brittany Trinh, and Ian Li. There are many ways to make your website a reality.
You can make a free personal academic website with Owlstown, an option for hosting your personal academic website, in about 15 minutes. But, most academics are open to investing a bit more time for the website that better meets their hopes and needs.
What about you? How much time are you open to spending on your personal academic website to get it live? Do you have resources to support you? For instance, professional development or research funding through your university or grant maker?
For some of my professor clients, their personal academic website ends up being a long journey. Your website may take days. It may take months. It may be something you’ve wanted for years and are finally in a space to start taking action. Wherever you’re at in your website journey as a professor, researcher, grad student, postdoc, staff, or independent scholar, is okay.
Professors often come to me when they need a stronger online presence. Their reasons are unique and varied. Your website can be a hub that invites people to engage with your research and teaching in meaningful ways. But the people you hope to reach, the fields (and locations) they’re in, and how you hope to engage them on your website? Those are unique to you.
Some professors reach out to me for an academic website that
- brings it all together for professors who “wear many hats” or feel like it may not be possible to “bring my identities together”
- highlights their new book while helping past publications better reach new readers
- invites aligned partnerships or relationships (i.e. with researchers around the world, community organizations, corporate partners, funders, and the people your research helps most)
- creates a legacy for their work for a retired professor
- celebrates their new position and prepares for their future for professors who transition to a new role
- shares their research so people can engage in meaningful ways
- helps them have a stronger online presence that supports a new goal or achievement
- redesigns the website they made themselves years ago that “doesn’t feel like me anymore”
Do you have a website? Enter the 2025 Best Personal Academic Websites Contest.
When you’re intentional about creating space for your online presence as an academic, you can help more people
For many of the professors I work with, a stronger online presence helps them move from the spark of “I can have a website” to “I deserve this space.” We deserve this space. You deserve to have space online for your academic life if that’s something you want for yourself.
Not only do you deserve that space, you can create that space for yourself. You don’t need to work with me to have a stronger online presence. One day, a PhD student scheduled a time to meet with me about designing her website for her. She didn’t need to wait to meet with me, “Have you heard about Owlstown? It’s a free academic website builder from my friend, Dr. Ian Li.” I emailed to share that she didn’t need my support. There was an easy solution for her personal academic website. That Owlstown is a solution I trust for most professors.
I have resources to help you on my website on The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel. Here are personal academic website resources for you. I hope this guide in particular helps you move forward efficiently to make your personal academic website a reality. Following it will help you get your academic personal website from start to launch smoothly.
1. Create content for your personal academic website (thinking about what goes on each page)
The best way to start making your personal academic website is by planning the structure of your website. If you don’t have an idea about what you want to share, you’ll get stuck.
Let’s decide what to include on your professor website.
Planning your personal academic website
The structure and organization of your academic personal website determines the written, visual, and video content you’ll want to create. If you plan on sharing a lot of information, you can have more pages on your website.
Your website might include things like
- About page with your academic bio and headshot
- Link to CV
- Research page
- Current project
- Research outcomes
- Teaching page
- Course descriptions
- Syllabi
- Teaching Statement/Philosophy
- Publications page
- Abstracts or descriptions
- Publication links
- Speaking Engagements page
- Contact page
- Links to your social media profiles
- Blog
Here are 35 page ideas for your personal academic website to inspire you.
If you want a simpler website, a smaller structure is recommended:
- About page with your academic bio and headshot
- Link to your CV
- Links to your social media profiles
The simplest website structure is just 1-page. But it isn’t right for everyone. This tends to work well for graduate student websites. And professors who want the easiest website to maintain.
The more you want to share, the more pages your site will need.
Get inspired with the winning websites from the 2023 Best Personal Academic Websites Contest.
If you’re unsure about what to include on your personal website, let’s talk. I help professors think through who they help and the real people who will visit their personal or lab websites with my Website Strategy service. I’m here to help you too if you want support.
Gather written content for your website
Once you’ve decided on a structure and what you want to include, write down all the written content you want to share on your website. If it’s text and you want it on your website, write it down.
Make a list of the pages you need to write content for. A sample for a simple 3-page personal website might include
- About Page
- Academic bio: 150-350 words (Want a done-for-you academic bio?)
- Research interests
- Research Page
- List of current project(s)
- Longer description of current research topics
- Important outcomes or other research highlights
- Publications Page
- Publication details (not in standard citation format), preferably with an abstract or description
Write the content for each page in a document to complete this step. You might decide to hire help from a website designer or developer. It’s helpful to have a document with your written content ready to share with them.
If you can get support with this project, I encourage it! If you know what you want on your website, I’ve got an amazing website development partner who can handle the technical side of launching your website. We can also work together 1-on-1 on your website strategy. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want professional support on your website project.
Edit your content for the web
Most professors don’t write for the web automatically. Academics like you may use
- complicated or dense sentences
- jargon / specialized terms
- long paragraphs
- no headings (or few headings)
Each of these can be found in academic writing, but you should avoid them when writing for your professor website.
I’m going to share with you best practices for writing for your personal website. One of my past clients, Emmanuel Balogun, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Skidmore College. I helped him strategize the copy and design for his personal website. We worked together on his bio too.
During a meeting working together on his website, I told Dr. Balogun about the power of compact language. Lists can be tiring for readers. I shared 2 tips with him inspired by Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In. She says we rely too heavily on conjunctions (and, but, or). Too many dyads can be overwhelming.
Break The Cycle of List-Addiction (Or, Just Say No To Flabby Logic)
List Addiction, Cont’d: The Dyad
It’s important when talking about your research to communicate with clear, concise language. Share your expertise with confidence and conviction in what you know, but add a layer of personability. Make it relatable and easy to understand for your audience.
In North America, 45% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Short and sweet is better here, especially when about 1 in every 2 visitors to our website will be from their phone.
Emmanuel took the advice to heart. He started using these writing tips not just sharing about himself, but in the college classroom and his own academic writing.
Take the document you’ve drafted and each time, read through to edit with these changes
- Can you simplify this sentence? For instance, if I make this sentence into 2 sentences, will it be easier for people to understand?
- Is this word jargon? Is it a specialized term people in my field know but other people may not? Is it a term people in my specialization know, but other people may not? That word or term needs a short definition.
- How many sentences is this paragraph? Can I break it into shorter paragraphs to make it easier to read on a mobile phone?
- What heading will help someone find what they’re looking for on this particular page? For instance, if I have longer description of my research, what headings can I add to make this easier for someone skimming this page?
Photography and headshots
What images do you want to include on your website? At a minimum I recommend these
- cover photo (also called a splash image, header photo, etc.)
- a photo of you
If you like taking photos, you may have one already that photos that work for your website.
Many people choose stock images for their cover photo. On my personal website, I have photos I took at the San Francisco Botanic Gardens.
For your headshot, you don’t need to go out and do a professional photo shoot. If you have photos from your work then that’s an option. Selfies are a good option for your headshot too. You just want your photo to be friendly, like of your smiling face. Here are 3 ways to get new photos for your personal website.
Are photos required? No, but it really does help. If you’re uncomfortable with photos, consider making an avatar instead. Whichever photos choose, you need to have the rights or license to share those photos online.
Do you want your academic or scientist website to be super engaging? Try adding video too!
If you got to the end of this step and you’re like, can you please just do the set-up for me? Yes. Let’s talk about working together on set up of your academic website.
2. Pick a domain name and site title
Once you’ve gathered/written all your content, you want to pick a domain name. Do this before choosing a host because it’s literally going to be the 1st thing most of them ask you to do when you sign-up.
Your domain name is your main website URL, or web address. For instance, the full URL to this page is https://theacademicdesigner.com/2020/how-to-make-an-academic-website
So the domain name for the website is theacademicdesigner.com.
Your site title is what your website is called, in my case, The Academic Designer, which is the name of my company.
For a personal website, my top recommendation for choosing your website domain and title is to use your full name. My personal website is jennifervanalstyne.com (site name: Jennifer van Alstyne).
Using your full name will help your page rank in Google and other search engines. Afterall, the keyword most people will use to find your website when searching, is your name.
When I started my business, I helped my father-in-law, Robert L. Pincus, design a personal website. He had been an art critic at the San Diego Union Tribune for 25+ years and has done many freelance essays for art exhibition catalogs and gallery openings.
When creating the website, I came across another art critic named Robert Pincus-Witten. He coined the term, “Post-minimalism,” wrote criticism for Artforum, and curated shows at a well-known gallery in New York City. They didn’t know each other, but if searching for a Robert Pincus art critic, both of them come up interchangeably in search results.
I asked him about it, and he told me a funny story about Andy Warhol. Early in his career when he was teaching an art history/theory class at USC, he told a colleague about using The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol in his class. They were excited he was teaching the book, and offered to get a copy signed when they would see him in New York. He refused at first because he thought it was Robert Pincus-Witten who he didn’t like (the man wrote bad review(s) of his work back in the 60s). After my dad’s colleague explained it was a different Robert Pincus, he agreed to sign it. When my dad got it back though, it was still signed to Robert Pincus-Witten.
Shared names are everywhere, and it’s important to distinguish ourselves clearly in a crowded landscape of experts and researchers. Another of my clients has the same first name, middle initial, and last name as another researcher in the same field. They were even in the same cohort at graduate school.
An easy way to check if your domain name is in use is by typing it into your internet navigation search bar. If it’s taken a website will show up, and you may need to add a middle initial or keyword (e.g. JenniferSVanAlstyne.com or JenniferVanAlstynePoet.com).
3. Choose a website host
Which website host is best for you will depend on your time, budget and technical skills.
I wrote a full guide to choosing the best website host for your personal website for professors.
4. It’s time to set-up your personal website
It’s time to set up your website. This is an exciting day, because when you have the content written already, your website can come together quickly.
Start by choosing a theme for your website
Most website hosts have themes or looks to choose from for the design of your website. When choosing a theme for your website look for these 3 things. You want a website that is
- mobile responsive, which means your website adapts from desktop to mobile screens well
- a clean design with a top menu and social media menu
- accessibility-ready, which means the theme has built-in features to help people with disabilities explore your website (Accessibility-ready may be an option depending on your website host)
Once you’ve chosen a theme for your website, you can usually choose things like font and color. For font, choose a sans serif font for your body font. A sans serif font means that you want letters without the little feet. So, no Times New Roman for your body font. You can use a serif font (with the little feet) for your headings font though.
In terms of colors on your website, you want something with a high contrast for easy readability. Dark text on a light background is preferred for accessibility.
Place your content
Once you’ve selected a theme, you’re ready to place your content. Depending on how big your website is, you’ll want to know how to do these things
- add a page
- place text
- insert a URL link
- upload a photo
- make a header
You may also need to know how to add and edit these site-level items
- a menu
- social media links
- a contact form (Update for 2024: I no longer recommend using contact forms, as they don’t always work across devices/countries)
Titles, tags, and other metadata
When you upload photos and other media to your website, you need to add in information like the title of the photo. There are also other options to add information about your media like Alt Text, a written description of your photo. Providing Alt Text for your photos helps more people understand the photo you’re sharing. Especially people who use screen readers to interact with your website. Alt Text also helps Google’s website crawlers better understand your website, so that it shows up in relevant search results.
When you upload photos or other media to your website, it’s important to check that the metadata and Alt Text are descriptive.
Write descriptive Alt Text for all of the images on your website.
For my splash image of succulents the metadata includes
- title of the photo (Succulents)
- name of the photo (succulents.jpg)
- description of the photo (‘Website header photo of many green echeveria succulents’)
Here are great tips for writing Alt Text from Accessible Social.
5. Preview your site
After you’ve placed the writing and photos on your website, preview your website. Check your website for
- spelling
- formatting
- readability
Preview your website on different screen types if you have the option
- desktop
- tablet
- mobile
Try your website on different browsers
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Microsoft Edge
- Safari
Ask your friends and family to read over your personal website for you. We often miss our own simple errors. You may learn if something is confusing. For instance, if your family notices a bit of jargon, a term they don’t understand about your research, how would you explain it to them in a phrase or sentence?
You may also learn that something is hard to find. You’d be surprised how many personal websites I’ve come across where it’s difficult to find the name of the person who it’s about. Seriously. I even wrote an article about it for The Social Academic.
6. Is it time to take your website live?
If you sell anything on your website including consulting or editing services, you may be required by law to have a Privacy Policy and a Terms and Conditions page. Look to your country’s regulations about this. You will also need a Privacy Policy and Terms page if you are using Google Analytics or other tracking pixels or tools on your website. Do not take your website live until you have those things.
If that is not the case for you, or if you’ve added those policies…
It’s time to take your website live!
Go ahead and Publish your website.
And don’t be afraid to publish it!
Remember the rule, “Done is better than perfect.” The #1 place where I see clients or academics get stuck and have anxiety about is hitting that “Publish” button. A lot of people are hesitant about the what ifs, the judgment people may have from sharing about ourselves online, publicly.
At this stage, you may be thinking about hitting pause and waiting till everything is perfect. Please, thoroughly double-check your website to make sure there are no glaring errors. Don’t let it go a couple weeks, a month, two months though without publishing all that hard work you did to set up your website. Let’s see it out in the world!
There’s no such thing as a perfect website. There are always small changes or updates we can make to improve the website. The ability to adapt and make it better, more specific over time is a good thing.
It’s important to acknowledge the work that you’ve already done. We have to give people an opportunity to see our work by taking our website live. Sure, there may be mistakes that you find and have to correct. That’s ok! The great thing about websites is we can always go back and make corrections. We can learn. We can keep improving. You’ve got this.
Congratulations! You have a personal academic website ready to be shared with the world.
7. Share your website
Once your website is live, you need to share it with people.
In the next few weeks, Google will crawl your website (unless you tell it not to, but don’t do that). Then your website will start showing up when people Google your name. But Google and search engines shouldn’t be the only way people find your website.
- Announce your website on social media. Invite people to check it out.
- Update your social media profiles to include your website address.
- Add your new website address to your email signature.
- Share your website as a way for people to keep in touch with you after a talk or presentation.
- Update your bio to include your website.
And, please share your website with me! Send me a direct message on social media, I’d love to congratulate you on your website personally.
Good luck with your website project!
Well that’s the whole process, step-by-step. Good luck setting up your personal website. Be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back and check the steps.
Please share this guide to making your personal academic website with your friends and colleagues. Ask your university library or faculty development office to share it as a resource. This guide has helped professors and grad students around the world make their website a reality. I hope it helps you too. You’ve got this! Make 2024 your year to launch your personal academic website. You’ll be happy you did.
I’m wishing you the best of luck with your personal academic website. Watch the replay of my Setting Up Your Personal Academic Website live event where me, Brittany Trinh, and Dr. Ian Li answer the most frequently asked questions about websites for you.
The Best Personal Academic Websites Contest is now open. Enter to win an award for your website!
Explore the past award winning websites.
How we can work together on your website
Feel like you don’t want to do this alone? That’s totally okay. You’re like most of my website clients who just don’t have the time or can’t prioritize doing it themselves. You’re an academic! Of course you can build the skills to build your own website. But you don’t have to do it alone. Here’s a bit about how I’ve worked with professors on their online presence.
My most loved website service, your Strategic Website Plan, typically takes ~6 months. It’s perfect for professor websites when you need to make an impact for the people you want to connect with online. It’s a good fit for more extensive websites. The people who find it especially helpful have been mid career and senior career professors. It includes my done for you bio writing service, a full draft of your new (or redesigned) personal academic website, and a written report to help you keep it updated over time. The website you need long-term is fully designed for you based on 5 in-depth interviews.
Are you a Principal Investigator? Explore website services for research labs.
When a bigger website isn’t aligned for your goals, or you just need something now, there are website design services customized to meet your needs too. Some professors choose the Website VIP Day service, a day where 100% of my focus is creating a website for you in just 1 day. Academics love that their website project “doesn’t drag out” and they get a big transformation in a way that feels fast, supportive and “like I couldn’t have done this on my own. When you have greater design needs, I team up with my friend, website designer Brittany Trinh, and my husband, Matthew Pincus a writer/storyteller. Together we can get even more done for your website in just 1 day. I’ve been helping professors with their website projects since 2018. The personalization we can do in a Team VIP Day still surprises me, haha.
Websites with me are capacity building. When we do it together, you get to “a website ready to take live” with ease. Most of my professor clients feel comfortable taking their site live at our Review and training Meeting. And, you’ll feel confident to make simple changes and updates so you can manage your website on your own. Read what people say about working with me.
My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. I’ve been helping professors make your personal website since 2018. I’m here to help you too. If you want your personal academic website done for you in 2025, let’s meet on Zoom. I promise to help you in the right direction even when it isn’t working with me. Schedule a no pressure Zoom call to chat about working together on your website project.
Let’s chat about your personal website and online presence on a no pressure Zoom call. I’m happy to help you in the right direction, even if it isn’t working with me.
