This week, I have been working on building my own personal website, which you will be able to view at https://volkamerr.sites.carleton.edu/.
Through Carleton, I am able to host and manage my own private WordPress website. This has many advantages, as I am able to display any content (assuming it is appropriate) that I wish with full creative freedom. I can make the site interactive and even work with live databases. I have not made it quite this far yet.
So far, I have created a home page introducing myself. I experimented with a few different themes, but ultimately found that I was happiest with a heavily customized Twenty Twenty-Five theme. The hardest part of building my personal website was getting the process started. Carleton uses a program called cPanel, which I found initially unintuitive. It was difficult for me to know where to direct my attention because I had so many buttons and choices. Naturally, this freedom and versatility are advantageous for the more experienced website builders, but for a newbie like myself, it presented a significant challenge. Once the website was built, I spent over an hour playing with colors and formatting options till I found a website design that felt clean but fun.
I want to be able to update the website and have it work as a more elaborate resume. I think it would be nice for the website to act as a hub for awards, research experiences, and other notable activities. Something that bugs me about resumes is the limited space and the lack of pictures. A website would be a great place to have everything compiled over many years, and be able to sort my experiences by relevance.
The benefit of having my own website is that all of this is possible; I just fear that there will be a strong learning curve.
