How to make an academic website: a step-by-step guide (with a template)

Most academics know they should have a personal website. What stops them is not knowing where to start, and the time it takes to turn years of work into clear pages. Here’s a step-by-step process, with a template you can follow.

Step 1: Register a domain in your own name

Your domain is your permanent address online. Choose:

• yourname.com, or a close variant such as firstlastname.com or drlastname.com;
• the .com if it’s available, since it’s the one most people type.

Register it yourself, with your own account, so you always control it. It usually costs a small amount each year.

Step 2: Choose a platform you’ll actually update

The best platform is the one you, or whoever looks after your site, will keep up to date. There’s a fuller comparison in best website builders for academics.

Option	Good for	Watch out for
Wix or Squarespace	Non-technical users who want visual editing	Templates can look generic unless customised
WordPress	Flexibility and lots of plugins	Needs regular updates and security care
Static site tools (e.g. Hugo)	People comfortable with code	Harder for non-technical editing
A designer who builds and maintains it	Academics short on time	Costs more upfront; check who owns the site

Whichever you choose, make sure it supports your own domain, works well on phones and loads quickly.

Step 3: Plan your pages

Start with five core pages. You can add more later.

1. Home: who you are, what you work on, and where to go next.
2. Research: your questions, themes and selected publications.
3. Books or publications: a page for each book, if you have them.
4. Speaking or teaching: talks, topics and courses.
5. Contact: email, and who to contact for press or speaking.

A press page with bios and headshots is a useful sixth page if journalists contact you. There’s a full page-by-page checklist here.

Step 4: Use this academic website template

Fill in each page in this order (there’s a fuller version in the professor website template):

Home

• Name, title, institution
• One or two sentences on what you work on, in plain language
• Photo
• Book cover(s), if any
• Links to Research, Books, Speaking, Press
• “Recent” list: three to five dated items

Research

• Three or four short paragraphs: the question, why it matters, what you’ve found
• Two to four research themes
• Five to ten selected publications, one line each on why they matter
• Links to Google Scholar, ORCID and SSRN

Books (one page per book)

• Cover, title, subtitle, publisher, year
• 100–200 word summary
• Praise and awards
• Buy links to several retailers

Speaking / Teaching

• Talk topics or courses, with short descriptions
• Video or past events
• Enquiry form or contact route

Contact

• Email
• Press and speaking contacts, if different
• How quickly you reply

Step 5: Write the homepage summary first

The hardest and most important sentence on your website is the one that says what you do. Write it before anything else:

[Name] is [title] at [institution], where [he/she/they] studies [topic in plain language], and [why it matters].

If a journalist or event organiser can repeat it after one read, it works. For the longer version, see how to write an academic bio.

Step 6: Add the essentials that are easy to forget

• A good photo: recent, well lit, and the same one you use elsewhere.
• Your CV as a PDF download, with the highlights also on the page as text.
• Links to your faculty page, Google Scholar, ORCID and LinkedIn.
• Page titles and descriptions for each page, so they show well in Google.
• Dates on news and media items.

Step 7: Publish, then connect everything

1. Publish the site on your domain.
2. Ask your department to link to it from your faculty page.
3. Add it to your Google Scholar, ORCID, LinkedIn and email signature.
4. Submit it to Google Search Console, so Google finds it quickly.

For showing up in AI answers too, see how professors can show up in ChatGPT and AI search.

Step 8: Keep it current

A website that stops at an old book signals that you’ve stopped too. Set a reminder to add new papers, talks and media every month, or hand it to someone who will.

See real examples

For three finished professor websites and why each works, see academic website examples.

If you’d rather not build it yourself, I design, write and maintain academic websites. I’ll design two sections of yours from your real work, free, within two working days. Request your free preview.