Creating a Professional Website

Need a professional website but don’t know where to start? We suggest considering the following areas in order to design your own site.

Website Builders

  • Free website builders are tempting but often include annoying ads.
    • Google Sites is usable and perhaps the least obnoxious if you must use a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) web editor.
  • GitHub allows you to host your site for free without ads. You can use GitHub pages to launch a website (username.github.io)
    • Use this guide to get started with no coding experience.

Templates

With just a tad of coding knowledge, you can find some pretty fancy templates to design your website.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap uses a combination of HTML and CSS. Here are some fun, free themes.

HTML5

HTML5 uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We found our theme for the Digital Studio’s website here.

Content

Deciding what content to include is probably the most important part. If you’re an undergraduate on the job market, your choices will likely be different than a graduate student looking for an academic job.

Writing Samples

Almost every potential employer looking to hire an English, Professional and Technical Writing, Creative Writing, or Rhetoric and Writing major will likely be interested in reading a sample of your work. This could include:

  • A scholarly paper or report that you wrote in one of your classes
  • A manuscript or creative work that you are trying to publish (creative writers, use your own judgment here)
  • An image or other visual content you designed
  • Hyperlinks to publications
  • PDFs of published work from scholarly journals

Teaching-related documents

  • Teaching Statement or Philosophy
  • Links to syllabi of courses you have taught

Short Videos

A video that demonstrates skills you would need in the workplace is appropriate to embed on your website. Have you given a public talk? Did you record a video for a class project? Students with internships can make narrative videos including an overview of your responsibilities (just make sure you obtain permission from your employer if you include footage of the worksite).