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What does a dev's personal website need to include?

Kathryn Grayson Nanz on March 20, 2019

I have a background in graphic design, but have semi-recently (over the past ~3 years) career shifted to a point where my current title is Front-en...
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Ben Halpern
  • It should load quickly. Render static from a CDN.
  • It should get to the point. Describe your skills and interests.
  • It should link to things you’ve written.
  • It should link to your profiles: GitHub, DEV, etc.
  • It shouldn’t be overly fancy, or generic. Make it unique but understated if possible. Going to flashy can really be a bad idea in web design.
  • It probably shouldn’t look like this
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rhymes

HHAHAAHAH I was actually going to comment "nothing like Ben's, unless you're Ben" :D

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Jonathan Kuhl

The fact that that website plays music when you scroll is the greatest and yet most terrible thing ever.

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Ivo Limmen • Edited

I just got a call from 1990; they want their website back...

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Marvin Kirkland

Nice Rick and Morty reference?

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Ivo Limmen

No, never watched Rick and Morty.

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Marvin Kirkland

okay. One of the characters uses a similar line. I thought perhaps you were referencing the show

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Helen Anderson

This is right on. ;)

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Alex Antra

This is a masterpiece

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Dmitry Yakimenko

Is http:// also part of the statement?

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Ben Halpern

That’s a matter of having not updated this in years. I’ll get that updated soon, I swear!

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Dmitry Yakimenko

I think in this particular case it works in your favor. Subtle and completes the picture =)

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Ben Halpern

😄

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Matthew Cory

That site is awesome.

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Kristophe Sankar

You're Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!

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sam

The site is amazing and I added it to my favorite sites list

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Quentin Sonrel

Plot twist: your website was actually an example of what not to do all along.

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Christopher C. Johnson

Rawhide 🤣

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naijadeveloper

lool, it should definitely not look like that😄

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Thibaut Allender

Explain what you achieved and what value you added to the businesses you worked for.

Github etc Profiles doesn't really matter up front, unless you contribute massively to open source projects or created a major open source app yourself.

It needs to be fast, responsive and accessible.
Should pass W3C validation and Lighthouse speed tests.

If you put a (C) year somewhere, make it dynamic so it doesn't show you haven't updated your website for 3 years (pun intended ;-))

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Stephen Belovarich • Edited

Screenshots are not needed. Reduce down what you want to say to a simple headline and short statement about the project. Only include the React logo and a description of what you do with React i.e. I lead a team of engineers that work on React app company uses to market thier products. Minimal is key. Nobody has time to read about the full breath and scope of your work. Keep ideas byte sized.

It helps if your website is somewhat unique or stands out in some way. @bendhalpern has an awesome example that definitely also highlights his personality. That is even better.

In other words don’t copy this but make your site unique, to the point, and easily updatable so you can focus on all those other projects.

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James Turner • Edited

Just went to your site and it wasn't working for me (Firefox 65). Checked the console and had this error:

ReferenceError: res is not defined main.js:35:7

    <anonymous> https://stephenbelovarich.com/main.js:35 one 
https://stephenbelovarich.com/lib/head.load.js:89 load 
https://stephenbelovarich.com/lib/head.load.js:352 each 
https://stephenbelovarich.com/lib/head.load.js:51 load 
https://stephenbelovarich.com/lib/head.load.js:351 error 
https://stephenbelovarich.com/lib/head.load.js:377 errorTimeout 
https://stephenbelovarich.com/lib/head.load.js:500 

Looking at the resources you loaded though, it does sound like it would be an interesting site 😉

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Stephen Belovarich

Huh... I just visited the site in Firefox 65 and it works!

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Michael Gale

Blank screen for me (iOS Safari) :(

But, I take your points though, has me reconsidering some things.

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Sophie The Lionhart

Whatever you do for the love of all that is good, have a favicon. Nothing makes me worry more about what other little details a developer got wrong or important practices they deem as unnecessary than a missing or using the framework default's favicon image.

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Matthew Cory

If it's a "personal" site and you're not trying to market yourself for a job, I'd say put whatever you want, don't worry about doing anything special with it. Put cat pictures and memes - put Ben's site to shame if you want. Have a separate site strictly for professional stuff like portfolio work. Make that one impressive (and nothing like Ben's).

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Max Ong Zong Bao

Well since you are learning React.

You can start off with converting your static sites to Gatsby.

Updating your about page is important to showcase your understanding and what your doing now.

If your not a blogger, you could post YouTube or short articles about design and frontend your looking into.

I find that it's hard for me to keep up in that area. So I always think that design is really cool and I follow articles when people is talking about them.

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Fen Slattery

My tip is to consider accessibility and run a tool like Axe to help you fix any critical issues that put up barriers to people with disabilities.

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Clive Da

and of course links to all their online SMN and BMN presence ! see SMN & BMN for devs post

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C.S. Rhymes

I think you need a bit of your personality in your ‘personal’ website, just like Ben...

I get most visitors landing on blog posts so I would definitely recommend blogging every month or so.

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Andres Avila Wille

On the other hand, should a dev focused on backend should have a personal site? Would it serve the same purpose? What should it display?

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Andrew (he/him) • Edited

I do back-end work and my site is just a "hub" which references my other sites: awwsmm.com

All of these are on my CV anyway, so just linking to them rather than repeating everything is like DRY applied to web design.

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Luke Inglis

I found this medium.com/@johngranstrom/making-a... to be an interesting read on the topic