

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

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.<p>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&#x2F;Jobs.
======
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.

------
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 :-).

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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](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.

------
adnanfasih
I suggest you to go with Hosted WordPress site and a WordPress Blog, where you
can share your stuff and engage your fellow developers. Must have twitter ID
to post your twitters and divert the traffic on your website.Here are some
famous WordPress plugins might be useful for you:
[http://www.cloudways.com/blog/9-wordpress-plugins-favored-
by...](http://www.cloudways.com/blog/9-wordpress-plugins-favored-by-
developers-and-agencies/)

------
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?

