Ultimate Academic Website Guide: Create A Professional Academic Website For FREE
By: Ellyssa Limelight Websites
Tags: Student Life, Website Design, Students, Academic, Academic Writing

Click HERE to view the live demo of the academic website we will be building today.

Why An Academic Website Is The Best Reputation Manager

The best academic websites are the ones that exist and are updated regularly. Whether you are an assistant professor, a PhD candidate, or a tenure-track academic, you need your own academic website.

A profile page at your university or an account on academia.edu isn’t enough. Why? Because you do not control the content or management of your information on those platforms.

Solely relying on third-party platforms is like relying on information sharecropping on digital real-estate.

Start taking control of your reputation!

Here are the facts. If you don’t have a website…

Then you leave your reputation in the hands of the unpredictable, angry mess that is the internet.

Google will create a reputation for you through the chaos of their algorithm

Your top search results will return 1.) your institution’s name or department, and 2.) your Rate My Professor webpage

Simply put, if you don’t have your own personal website, preferably with your name in the domain name, then you risk losing credibility to one of the most professional industries — academia.

The goal is to have Google return your personal academic website, followed by social media profiles, followed by direct links to your publications in that order.

But how do you achieve this?

No one has walked academics through the process of setting up a website, getting a domain name, and building all of the pages to perfection.

As a website developer who spent 3 years in academic research, it is my privilege to walk my respected academics through the academic website creation process.

If You Can Write Emails, Then You Can Make Your Dream Website

What You Need

Brizy.Cloud (forever free, email required) — website hosting, drag-and-drop website design, publishing your website

Getterms.io (forever free, no email required) — make your website legal

Unsplash.com (forever free, no email required) — high-quality images to decorate your website

Links to a portfolio of your material (eg. YouTube videos of presentations, or PDFs of articles)

OPTIONAL: Namecheap.com ($9–12/year, email required) — custom website domain, eg. drcherylharper.com (paid) vs drcherylharper.brizy.com (free)

“I Don’t Want To Make My Own Website”

No worries! We offer a $99 done-for-you website service for academics. Get a beautiful, fuss-free website launched by this week! No exceptions.

Your website includes all of the essential pages, legal terms, security, and video tutorials that you need to customize and publish your website in as little as 2–3 days.

We recommend that academics purchase the “Non-Wordpress Website” service. Most academics do not need the complexity and high maintenance costs of a WordPress website to build a credible website for themselves.

>> Click here to see all of the inclusions! <<

The Step-By-Step Guide To Create An Academic Website That Is Beautiful, Functional, And FREE

*Watch the video for a complete Over-the-Shoulder walkthrough on how to do everything!

Let me show you how to make a free academic website.

Click HERE to view the live demo of the academic website we will be building today.

Think of it as a template. Feel free to customize it to be a minimalist academic website or a content-rich academic website for research.

1. Go to brizy.cloud

2. Sign up with the FREE PLAN

3. Create a header

4. Create a footer with Privacy Policy + Terms of Service (required)

5. Create a new page to put Privacy Policy text

6. Create a new page to put Terms of Service text

7. Go to https://getterms.io to make basic Privacy Policy & Terms of Service (no email required)

8. Paste text into pages that you created

9. Create a captivating Homepage

10. Create an About page

11. Create a Work With Me/Contact Me page

12. Create optional pages that showcase your personal academic brand. Options include:

Research

Teaching

Service

Consulting

Products

Media/Press Kit

Work With Me

Blog

13. Go to unsplash.com to find free, legal, and high-quality photos to decorate your website with

14. Link sections and pages together

15. Publish to a domain name (subdomain under Brizy AND connecting to your own domain is free, but you need to buy your own domain from somewhere like Namecheap.com)

Click to HERE for detailed instructions on how to connect your custom domain that you purchased

3 Rules For Maintaining Your Website

Update your website at least 4 times each year

If you post content (videos, blog articles, etc.), make sure that you can commit to posting them consistently because…

An outdated website is worse than no website at all

That’s A Wrap!

Send me an email or tell me in the comments about what you love or hate about putting your academic content online.