I am trying to redesign my personal site. I think I should have an about page and contact page (no really; I mean it :)) at the very least. And then I want a section where I can write articles etc on topics that I learn every day.
But, I can’t figure what else I should do it on their. I am mainly a PHP developer with (not so great but slowly expanding) front end experience like graphics etc.
Other than that, I am stumped. What is normal for personal site? I am not sure what I should have on homepage.
Can someone please help? And any examples will be greatly appreciated.
On your personal site you put anything you want to share with the rest of the web. You want to be contacted? Put your contact info. If not, don’t put it. You want to tell people a bit about yourself? Make an about page. If not, don’t.
There are no rules. Your site is yours.
It’s different if your site has a certain purpose, like a portfolio site. Then you should think about what you want to achieve with your site, and what is needed to best reach that goal.
You have a good plan. Real original content is important on the net. Sites tend to grow over time. As we go through live ideas come to us for thing we can do to enhance our site.
I keep a notebook with ideas for my blogs. (Don’t look at them. Work tends to get in the way of blogging. ) Anyways, when I come up with a good idea, I write it down in my notebook. I list ideas by creation date and if the idea is a current topic (like the newest iPhone) I put an expiration date on it so I’m not writing about ‘old news’ down the road.
A personal site is exactly like what Guido described. You can put anything in it that you think someone else might like to read… or anything that you don’t mind if it gets read!
Though it may be a personal site, think about where you want it to go for you. Do you want to advance your own PHP skills through writing about them? Do you want to help others advance theirs? Do you mostly just want to share with friends and family?
Making decisions like that will help give you vision for the site and the rest will fall into place.
Why not add video? It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t even have to be on camera. It could be a voice over or just a camtasia shot of sites you’ve checked out work you’ve done.
For personal site, bring all contact information to your homepage like your name, address, email, country, etc. I suggest you should use WP theme because you always share your experience to your personal site, i think. Make it like a personal weblog then it will become friendly.
To what purpose? The function of a home page is to:
Introduce your visitors to your site.
Make them feel welcome.
Show them where to find details on specific information they may be looking for.
The only difference is that a blog may use the home page for its most currently submitted blog post.
Why use your home page as your contact page when you can direct visitors, through a single click to a secure form? More importantly, why open the doors to spammers, email address grabbers, and those who would sell your contact information to someone else’s mailing list? Sorry, but this is the worst advice I have ever heard.
Thanks all. This gives me insight on how to think. And I like that “write ideas in notebook” idea. Thanks!!
As for my site, I want to showcase my PHP skills (and maybe more as I slowly expand like Ruby, Perl etc). But I also want to give personal information about me.
So I think I might go with an About and Contact page, with a profile page of past work and then a section on things that I learned (articles, tutorials etc.)
Now that is final, can you please help me with homepage? if you look at current page then it just has articles that I wrote (not an author so not great writing and haven’t updated content recently ). But I want to change that. Maybe “badges” that point to different pages like an excerpt for About, one for profile and so on.
Do you think that’s good idea or should I leave it as it currently is and just build on content?
Thanks
PS: Sorry for late reply.For some reason, my notification email ended up on spam (I think as I never saw it) and I thought there were no replies to this post.
Since you seem to have found the answers you need in this thread, I have closed it. If you have further questions that you need answers to outside of those that would be answered in a critique/review, please post them in a new thread.
) Anyways, when I come up with a good idea, I write it down in my notebook. I list ideas by creation date and if the idea is a current topic (like the newest iPhone) I put an expiration date on it so I’m not writing about ‘old news’ down the road.