Why to start your own web representation?

Have you ever thought about presenting yourself on the internet? To provide and share your gained experiences and skillset with the goal to get in touch with others? Inspired by others I had thought about it and I can welcome you to my web representation now.

It was a great experience to think about how to set up the website and which content I like to present. Through the development I increased my knowledge about web-programming, learned some web regulation and got an overview of the different approaches you can choose today. But this blog should not be a tutorial – I would like to give you a little inside why and how I started this personal project. Next to informations about inspiration I will explain you which tools I choose for my website.

I got the idea to start a web representation somewhere in December 2018 and the idea growth up till January 2019. First I never thought about the added value a personal web representation will lead to, do you have? After looking around and talking with others about the possibilities, the benefits were very clear:

• Have your experiences, skills and executed projects on a centered place which is easily accessible
• Share your knowledge and experience for general public benefit
• Present yourself (mindset, projects, skills) by sharing the things you do and stand for
• Expand your network – by the persons who will get in contact with you
• Be founded by others which can lead to interesting requests

I like to present you some of the sites and persons which inspired and affirmed me to start with an own webpage:

• I worked for nearly one year with Sevasti Tsaousidou. As she is an executive expert UX/UI talent and works as a freelancer, it is major important to present her portfolio. I like her very impressive webpage sevasti-tsaousidou.com. Next to Sevasti´s showroom of her joined projects and references you will find her hobby music as well as short impression of various points about UX.
• Marielle Lexow was a student I worked with in the project ConnectFleet. As she is studying interface design, she used her website mariellelexow.de to present all the experience she made so far. For her it is a totally good medium to present her skills on a central pace for future job applications.
• nathalie-martin.de is Nathalie Martin´s page. She is actually a StartUp Cross Trainee at Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and has also worked with me on ConnectFleet for some time. She made her Bachelor in applied computer science 2013 and uses her web representation to show her portfolio.
• Some weeks ago I get to know Christian Eulenstein. He gives mathematic workshops for economist and provides his service over his page goegeeks.de.

Based on all this great web representations and the resulting benefits, I decided to start building up my own webpage. Read in the next section which approach I take.

If you think about starting with a webpage, you have different options how to do this. There are a lot of tutorials on the internet which explains very easily what you need. In a general manner you have three possibilities: Using a homepage construction kit, a content management system or building the website by your own. Because I wanted to start shortly, I figured out the options I have with a homepage construction kit or a content management system (cms). Next to other opportunities I take the following three into account:

• Wix is a very rich homepage construction kit.
• WordPress is a widespread content management system with a huge amount of plugins. Additionally you have the possibility to change code by yourself.
• ghost is a competitor to WordPress.I would say that ghost provides more or less the same functions like WordPress, but is more expensive.

Of course, there are much more variants out there, but this three where my favorites. I picked WordPress for my website, because I have a cheap self-hosted plan, the options to customize the themes as I like it, a big community and a lot of flexibility through all the different (free) plugins.
After my decision was set, I had to choose a hosting and a domain. There are a lot of providers where you can book a hosting and domain – I chose STRATO. Setting up the Server, installing WordPress and register a domain is totally easy today and done in a few minutes. In the following I had two options: Using a theme for my website or building an own html-side for the beginning. I thought about what I want to present and when the website should be launched. This leads me to decide for a theme. I started with free once – but this is somehow a struggle. Not all customization works as documented (maybe it is not the same with all themes, but I have had this problem). I searched for an alternative theme which would fit to my requirements. I founded the Elmastudio and bought the “Theme Bundle” (which is the only invest I have made for my website by the way) where I use the “Pukeko” theme. I like it very much because it is clean and very adjustable. Integrating the theme and setting up some of the standard configurations happen fast. Then I go step by step to further improve the website. First I generated the content I wanted to present and started to search for the imagery. I naively thought that the used photos will be automatically tailored into the right size, but that was wrong. I have to edit each media data to be displayed correct.
By generating the content I added different WordPress plugins to improve the user experience on my page stepwise. Hereinafter I will give you a list of all my used plugins, maybe this is a good starting point if someone wants to get going with an own website. All plugins were integrated and activated fast. Two points took me a lot of time. On the one hand the customizing of the theme (because the documentation is sometimes misleading and if you have special wishes, you have to add custom css code). And on the other hand to get the newsletter registration working in the way I needed. At least I activate HTTPS as standard. This feature is provided in my hosting plan directly from STRATO. Therefore it was no great effort to configure it.
The last point I would like to mention is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). I spend some time to figure out, what is necessary if you have a private webpage/blog. Till now I am not sure if I got all points, because most of the topics for private related usage are in a grey area. To be sure, that you cover mostly all points of GDPR have the following in mind:

• If you use cookies or you are not sure that on of your plugins uses them, show a cookie notice on your page
• Provide an imprint and privacy policy
• Be aware where you save personal data, i.e. from a newsletter registration, to give your user an information provision if required

What plugins I have used

Just in short and clustered by the usage I listed my different plugins here. Check out the links if you are further interested and have a look at youtube to get a first overview of the functionalities.

• Styling of the webpage: Elmastudio, Elementor, popupmaker and Contact Form 7
• Newsletter integration: MailChimp, MailChimp for WP and Contact Form 7 MailChimp Extension
• Social integration: Shariff and Jetpack
• Security: Antispam Bee,
• Multi language: Loco Translate
• General Data Protection Regulation: Cookie Notice, termsandconditionstemplate.com – Privacy policy template generator and translate-24h.de – imprint generator
• Improvement of search engines: Yoast SEO
• Improvement of user experience: WP Super Cache
• Maintenance and backup: WP Maintenance-Mode and UpdraftPlus

I have several open points on my website which I want to work on in the future. First of all I would like to make deeper changes on the theme, such like presenting more then three references on the “talks” or “about me” page. Therefore I would like to integrate a slider or carousel web element to be able to show as much references as I want. Additionally I will add more and more custom css code to my theme as so called child css. Just to learn more about the different css customizing options. I will also try to get a look at Semplice and OceanWP which seems that both are used to customize your webpage in a fast and intuitive way. I would like to try it out and make my own experiences.
Furthermore I will invest some time to change my backend newsletter subscription. At least I will work on more diversity for my blog posts – for example by getting other experts writing articles on my side.

My first blog post is done. I learned a lot of valuable skills. If I have to, I would chose WordPress again. Even if the beginning was a bit strenuous, there is a big community on the internet and you can find a solution for each problem. To reach your goals, there are many plugins available there are various ways. This makes WordPress very flexible and it is possible to build up a webpage with very less programming skills.