Putting together a good academic website?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a Grad student writes:

Do people have any thoughts/tips about putting together an academic website? I take it that it's a consensus good thing, but are there platforms/kinds of content/organization tips that people would recommend?

Good question! I discussed websites briefly in this post in our Job Market Boot Camp a few years back, but I'm not sure how good or helpful that advice was. I did my best with my own website just by looking around at other people's as examples--but I've seen websites that are far better than my own.

Anyway, what do you all think? What should a good website look like? Links to ones that you think are particularly good would be helpful, I think--and do feel free to self-nominate by linking to your site, if you think it would be helpful!

Comments

[Caleb W]

I think people need, in order of importance:
1) a direct way to download your pubs and CV (not just academia.edu or philpapers link)
2) a clear sense of what you work on and/or who you are
3) a place to access syllabi/teaching resources is a bonus

I just built this website a couple weeks ago with squarespace, which I like but was more expensive than I expected. It might have too much info about my research.

https://www.calebward.xyz/

Also, don't do it last minute before you apply to jobs. It takes weeks to show up in search engines.

[UK Postdoc]

There was a thread on this a few years ago, which might be helpful to the OP and others:

https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2020/01/elements-of-a-good-professional-website.html

[Craig]

Caleb W,

I'm curious why you prefer the direct link? I've gone with the philpapers link because I'd prefer to keep one place with everything. (I have also been sure to upload the penultimate drafts etc. so that the papers are all publicly accessible on philpapers.) Is there a benefit, other than saving a click, to direct downloads?

Also, I've really waffled on the syllabuses. I don't include them, but that is mostly because I have a probably irrational concern that future students will balk if a class gets more challenging, etc. combined with a concern about making public potentially controversial class readings. (I had colleagues tell me about right-wing organizations that hunted around for academics to harass, so I figure add one more step in their work at least.)

Maybe most importantly though: your work sounds awesome! The book project sounds really fascinating!

[Spencer I]

I strongly recommend looking at the websites of researchers in your field and copying those conventions for your own. This will give you a sense of what's done well by people in your field and give you an opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants, so to speak (at least with respect to web design). That said I think there are three virtues for web design that are important to hit:

1. The website is not only an academic profile, but also a profile of you. First impressions matter, and having a little humanity can go a long way to facilitating good impressions.

2. Your website is an opportunity to highlight your strengths & invite others with similar interests to engage with you. You can centralize teaching strengths, or post abstracts to your published work. Your photos can represent your engagement with academic events or personal life adventures. Be sure that the information you present right on the front page is the information you think is most important for people to see.

3. Ease of access and aesthetics matter. What fonts you use, where you place pictures or text, how you separate information across different pages - all of this makes your website easier or harder to use. The information you put on there will be important and a reflection of you. Make your webpage easy to navigate and easy on the eyes. This will help visitors to your page capture as much of the information as possible.

https://www.philosivy.com/

I use mine as a CV as well - it's just easier for me to keep track of than the actual document. And to +1 what Caleb said above, Google SEO is important and takes some time to get hits and put you on the front page of searches. Keep that in mind as you use keywords and share your website.

[Caleb W]

Craig,
thanks, that's really sweet! I think a specific link for each pub is good, rather than a link to your main profile elsewhere, but if each link goes to the pub's philpapers page that sounds fine. You could also have it link directly to the PDF in philarchive to have all the analytics in one place.

Re: teaching stuff, I honestly think most ppl will ignore it anyway, unless you're teaching something uncommon or esp. creative. So might be more trouble than it's worth.

[Daniel Weltman]

I can understand why people say it's good to satisfy all sorts of desiderata with a website (and if you look at my website you'll see ith as all sorts of stuff on it) but as far as I'm concerned I don't mind if someone's website is basically just a CV or a link to download a CV since 99% of the time that's what I want. I check someone's website when they've published something interesting and I want to see what else they've written, etc. So I'd say don't stress out if you can't figure out how to make a website that is anything more than a link to your CV. (You can do that pretty easily with Google Sites, Wix, Wordpress, etc.)

A PhilPeople page that is kept up to date can basically accomplish this, although I sort of prefer a website since I know the person has made the website themselves and thus has probably kept it up to date, whereas I have no way of knowing if a PhilPeople page is missing something.