How to Build a Professional Academic Website

This page is a compilation of resources you may find useful when developing your professional website.

1. Getting started

Campus web services provide website development assistance and hosting, but these services are not free. The Department of Mathematics recommends the use of Google Sites, which are both convenient to use and free of charge through our Google Apps for Education Account. Instructions are available from Google Sites help pages.

2. UA logo and brand

The UA website for branding is at https://brand.arizona.edu. In particular, the site has information on the university color palette, including RGB/CMYK/Hex values for UA's red and blue, as well as secondary colors.

You will see that the use of the UA "Block A" logo and other registered items is highly restricted and "is regulated by the Arizona licensing program." You should therefore be mindful of these restrictions when building your website.

3. Contents

Your professional academic website should at least contain the following.

• Your name, position, and contact information

• A description of your research interests and a current CV

• A page describing your teaching experience, with links to your course websites and/or to your teaching portfolio

• A list of your publications with links - be mindful of publishers' copyright restrictions

• If appropriate, a page on your service activities

Including a photo and a short bio is a good idea. For those of you on the job market, links to your up-to-date teaching and research statements are often useful. Finally, you should consider registering for an ORCID digital identifier and placing the appropriate link on your website.

4. Useful tips and online advice

• It is essential to keep your website current. Consider updating its contents at least once per semester and after each academic milestone (publishing an article, receiving funding, teaching a new course, etc).

• Tips for Creating Inclusive Content, by Kyle Mittan, University Communications

• Website accessibility information, from UA's IT Accessibility group.

• Personal Academic Webpages: How-To's and Tips for a Better Site, by Rochelle Terman (and 2015 update)

• How to build a website that highlights your research, achievements and personality, by Elsevier Biggerbrains

• Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how, by Alex Bond

• Building a personal academic website – Part 1, by Maeve Lander

• Impact Challenge Day 6: Create an academic website, by Impactstory

5. Useful resources

• Badges and icons (for DOI, ArXiv icons, etc)

• Publons (to get credit for reviewing articles in academic journals)

• GitHub (code repository)

• Google Analytics (to track visits to your website)

6. When you have published your site

Please send a link to the postdoc program coordinator. Also submit a ticket to our IT staff and ask them to add a link on the department website directory that points to your new website.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Tracy Stepien for providing many of the resources listed above.