HN Explorer

Ask HN: Guidelines for building a developer's personal website

8 points by xecutioner ↗ HN
Hi guys, I would appreciate if you guys could provide me with some suggestions on building a personal website. I am a ruby developer and following would be the priorities of my website.

For my Web presence. To engage with fellow ruby developers from all around the world. Blog about ruby stuffs , tips and tricks. Summarize my technical skills. Possibly attract better career choices/Jobs.

5 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] thread
junto
I would suggest that by sharing your experiences with Ruby, via a blog or personal website, you increase the value of your own personal brand. Potential employers can see from the outset that you are a Ruby "go-to-guy" (or girl).

Combined with a good code repository, you are then the more attractive hire, compared to the person that doesn't have any of this.

Take a look at the developers that stand out in the Ruby community. I assume that all of them have become well known by blogging or for having founded something (e.g. the developer of a popular Ruby gem).

In the .Net world, Scott Hanselman, Rob Connery, Scott Guthrie and Troy Hunt are well known mainly due to their commitment to the community. Most of that is through blogging and podcasts. Their personal brands are now extremely valuable, when it comes to employment, work contracts, public speaking.

brianchu
1. Have a blog.

2. Have an About/Bio page.

3. Have a projects page that showcases your projects, ideally with pictures.

4. Links to Github, Twitter, LinkedIn.

5. Responsive (lots of mobile visitors).

Bonus: Make sure everything is SEO-ified and social-media-ready (e.g. use Google authorship, make sure the right meta tags are present for SEO and social media sharing). Overkill-bonus: Add a contact form to reduce the friction of people reaching out to you. You can see my website, http://www.brianchu.com, for an example.

I'm a university student, yet engineers at tech companies have in fact reached out to me through my website (contact form) before.

rumbling
Since you're focused on blogging and not about managing your blog I suggest you go for self hosted WordPress. Find a clean fast loading theme and you're good to go.

Then add some nice articles showcasing your expertise. Add an about me section, preferably in top of the sidebar so it's visible to anyone. This is a great place to summarize your technical skills.

If you want to engage with fellow Ruby developers then I suggest you join a community. When it comes to visibility a Google+ community is a good place to join.

Your site can attract better job opportunities if you write enough and provide value. But you'll have a better chance with a good LinkedIn profile. I know few job hunters and they almost always look in LinkedIn first.

Good Luck :-).

xecutioner
Thanks guys for all your suggestions. Most of the developers web site I've looked into has a portfolio section where they show of their front-end work. But I am not that much good at front-end and have mostly worked with building backend stuffs with crawling, Indexing etc. In such a case I have no visual portfolio. So what would be the best approach to show casing my previous works?