What should a professor's website include? A page-by-page checklist
The 6 pages a professor's website needs, what to put on each and what to leave out. Use it to plan a new site or audit your current one.
A professor's website needs five core pages: a homepage with a plain-language summary and photo, a research page, a page for each book, a speaking page, and a press page with bios and headshots. Add a clear contact route, links to your faculty page, Google Scholar and ORCID, and keep a dated list of recent work.
Key takeaways
- Start with five pages: home, research, books, speaking and press.
- Lead every page with plain language. Put technical detail one click away.
- Give each book its own page with praise, a summary and buy links.
- Make the press kit downloadable: short bio, long bio, headshots.
- Show dates. A current site signals an active career.
A good academic website is not a copy of your CV. It’s a set of pages, each built for a specific kind of visitor. Here’s what to include, in order of importance.
1. Homepage
The homepage has one job: tell a visitor who you are and send them to the right page within a few seconds.
- Your full name, title and institution
- One or two sentences on what you work on, in plain language
- A good, recent photo
- Your book(s), if you have them, with covers
- Clear links to Research, Books, Speaking and Press
- A short Recent list: latest paper, talk or media appearance, with dates
Leave out: a long welcome message, a quote from a famous thinker, and anything that sounds like a departmental page.
2. Research
Write for an intelligent non-specialist first.
- A summary of your research in three or four short paragraphs: the question, why it matters, what you’ve found
- Two to four research themes, each with a sentence or two
- Selected publications (five to ten), each with one line on why it matters and a link
- Links to Google Scholar, ORCID, SSRN or your preprint server for the full list
- Current projects, grants or collaborations, if you want them known
3. A page for each book
Publisher pages are thin and disappear when a book goes out of print. Your own book page lasts.
- Cover image and full title and subtitle
- A summary of 100–200 words, written for readers, not reviewers
- Praise: endorsements and review quotes, with names and publications
- Buy links: publisher, Amazon, Bookshop and international editions
- Media about the book: interviews, podcasts, excerpts
- Book details: publisher, date, ISBN, translations
4. Speaking
If you give talks, this page earns its keep. (There’s a full guide to speaker pages here.)
- Two to five talk topics, each with a title and a short description
- Video of you speaking, near the top
- Past events and organisations
- A short enquiry form, or your bureau’s contact details
5. Press and media kit
Journalists work on deadlines. Give them everything in one place.
- Short bio (about 50 words) and long bio (about 150–200 words)
- Two or three high-resolution headshots, free to download
- Topics you can comment on
- Recent media: interviews, quotes and op-eds, with dates and links
- A contact line: email, and your university press office if you work with them
6. Contact
- An email address or a simple form
- Who to contact for speaking, media and academic enquiries, if different
- How quickly you usually reply
Across the whole site
- Your own domain (yourname.com), not a free subdomain
- Mobile-friendly layout, since many visitors arrive from a phone
- Fast pages with compressed images
- A clear page title and description for each page
- Structured data for you as a Person, and for each Book
- Links to your faculty page, and a link back from it
- Dates on news and media items, and someone responsible for updating them
What to leave out
- Every paper you’ve ever written on the main page. Link out to the full list.
- Outdated news. A “Latest” section from 2021 hurts more than no section.
- Jargon in headlines. Keep it for the research detail.
- Text inside images. Search engines and AI tools can’t reliably read it.
Prefer to have it done for you? See academic website design. For the full process from domain to launch, see how to make an academic website.
If you’d like to see your homepage and one other page built from this checklist with your own work, I’ll design and write two sections for free. Request your samples.
Frequently asked questions
Should I put my full CV on my website?
Offer it as a downloadable PDF, but don't rely on it. Put the highlights (positions, books, selected papers, awards) on the page as text so people and search engines can read them.
Do I need a blog?
Not necessarily. A 'Writing' or 'Commentary' page linking to your op-eds and interviews does most of the job. Write original posts only if you'll keep doing it.
Should I list every publication?
Link to Google Scholar for the complete list, and feature five to ten selected publications on your research page with one line on why each matters.