Article by Jerry Low
Geek dad, SEO data junkie, investor, and founder of Web Hosting Secret Revealed. Jerry has been building Internet assets and making money online since 2004. He loves mindless doodling and trying new food.
New sites added to the collections, old images replaced with the better .gif images to showcase site designs, site descriptions removed (I’ll let the image do the talking), and new tutorial added to help users who want a personal website fro themselves.
Quick navi: See examples of personal websites / Learn how to create yours
They say that stranger’s soul is incomprehensible, but we can’t entirely agree with the statement.
Most often we just don’t want to notice the obvious, pretending that it’s too personal matter or something of the kind.
In fact, a human soul is not as dark as it seems. It is always ready and even willing to reveal its secrets to the confidant. As a rule, web community members having their own websites are open for communication, socialization and other things like that. Besides, personal websites serve as a kind of virtual CVs for their owners. Most often, if you are as sharp as a needle, seeing a person’s website, you’ll easily tell even more about site owner than he/she wanted to say.
Hand-picked and main design elements recorded for your viewing pleasure! Enjoy.
Moving on, we will look at the essential steps of creating your very own personal websites.
There are basically 3 major steps to start any kind of websites –
On Internet, your domain is your identity. It’s how people find you and the name others pass along. So apparently, you need a good domain name – something unique, catchy, and meaningful.
Next, you will need a web hosting provider.
When we talk about web host, we basically refer it to the company that lease out computer servers and networks to host your website. There are four types of web hosting services – shared, VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting. While all these hosting will act as the storage center for your website; they differ in amount of storage capacity, control, speed, reliability, functions and features, as well as technical knowledge requirement.
If you are new, shared hosting should be the best type of web host to start with.
Once you have the website domain and hosting ready, the next step is to design the website itself.
There are many considerations in web designs but as a beginner my advice is to take baby step.
Try output something and get it onto the web. The fine-tuning and modification can come later after you have learned your skills. One easy way to design a website is to use a WYSIWYG web editor like Adobe Dreamweaver CC. Such editors work just like a normal word processor and allow you to design your site visually without handling too much technical details.
If HTML and CSS are not your thing, or you simply want a simple personal website for your interview, then perhaps a drag-and-drop website builder is the better choice.
Most web hosting companies provide a drag-and-drop site builder for free. If you don’t care much about the outlook or UX of the site, you can create a functioning personal website in half and hour using those free tools.
Alternatively, you can skip the web design process by using a paid all-in-one website builder like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace.
The best thing about these paid tools are made for non-techies. They are usually easy to use and come with hundreds of pre-designed templates. You can simply pick a pre-design theme and apply to your website in just a few clicks.
I recommend Wix for its user-friendly dashboard and flexibility. The tool is suitable for both newbies and experienced webmasters who wish to further tweak their site designs. Here are some personal websites built and hosted at Wix.
I can’t really teach you what kind of content to be added to your personal website but to help you on brainstorming – ask these questions to yourself –
Did you like my collection of personal websites? Which one seemed the most creative to you? What do you think is the most important in personal sites?
Please share this post and your opinion on Twitter (tag me at @WebHostingJerry). I hope this compilation will help you to create your own personal website according to all modern tendencies.