I build academic websites! If you want one, get in touch!
Lots of academics and postgrad student need a website,
especially as they (you) set out on the job market. I have
significant experience with building such sites, and I can help
you with more or less of the process, however best fits. I also
have lots of experience with the process and mechanics of buying
and administering domain names, setting up email addresses and
linking social media accounts to your site, embedding displays
of your work, etc.
If you want to know more, email me (hugo.heagren@kcl.ac.uk) or
fill out
this
form.
There are more details below about the sites
themselves, the process
and how much I charge. There is also a
list of my previous work.
First, I can build a site (or improve an existing site) in one
of the popular website-building platforms like Wix or
Squarespace. There are two major advantages to this setup: it's
easier for you to maintain after I've built it (because it
doesn't require any real programming skills) and these platforms
include tools for buying and administering web addresses
(otherwise you have to do this manually). I
built philosophyarts.co.uk
like this.
The downside of this way is that there is less flexibility in
the design, and often things which seem like they should be easy
can end up being surprisingly difficult (the changing pictures
on the front page of the CPA site do work, but they're a bit of
a hack and it's hard to maintain behind the scenes). In
particular, these platforms are not aimed at academics,
they're aimed at people starting small businesses, so there's no
way to easily add automation for academic things like a list of
publications. You also (often) have to pay for the platform
itself, as well as paying for your domain name.
Second: I can build the whole site from scratch, doing the programming myself. This has complete flexibility, and I can do absolutely whatever you want. The downside is that maintaining it, adding extra features, and even simple updates require some programming skills. If you host through GitHub pages (as I would recommend) then you don't pay for the platform. This is useful if you want something unusual, and especially if you want any complicated automation. For example, on my own site I have a list of publication and talks, and I have the same lists on my CV, and these are both automatically generated from a central bibliography file so that the two are always in sync. If you host through GitHub pages (as I would recommend) then you don't pay for the platform.
Here's how it works: first we do an initial consultation where
we talk about what you want and look at examples of other sites,
and work out the prices for things like web addresses and
platforms. This usually takes about an hour, and I'll only
charge you for it if you decide you want to take it further.
(It's easiest to do this in person.)
After that, I go away and do everything I can on my own, and
check in which you as we go. Generally the only thing we need
significant coordination for is setting up payment for a web
address.
I charge £35/hour to anyone with a regular income, and £25/hour
to anyone without (for anyone outside the UK, we'd jointly agree
some reasonable international rate before I did any work). I
track my own time and just stack it as I go. A simple site would
take something between 4 and 10 hours, including consultation
and administration (buying domain names, etc.).
Usually I'll just invoice you once we're done, but if you want
lots of complicated features or whatever, then I'd probably want
part of the total in advance, part way (e.g. once I'd done 10
hours of work).
You can pay however you like—paypal and direct bank
transfer are probably simplest.