The reasons to use blogger were:
1. Built in content management system
2. Minimal coding needed with guidance available
3. Independence from my current university
4. Easy to maintain and update
5. Looks (I think) professional
6. Free.
7. RSS feed (Okay so this is somewhat sad, who wants to follow someone’s CV? Well it allows me to update into facebook automagically and keep things updated there as well.)

If anyone wants a copy of my tweaked template then just send me an email if there is sufficient interest then I’m happy to post a how-to on one of my blogs. It really is easy though.

PS the biggest hassle of an online CV is keeping it updated – just like an offline CV, I have a reminder in my calendar to update it once a month.

Cheers
David Hunter

/oldskool

1997: http://web.archive.org/web/19971011153255/http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/ http://web.archive.org/web/19970620082428/http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/
2008: http://dannyreviews.com/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

It does many of the same thing as the Web Developer addon, although its a little more about debugging than editing. However, the “Inspect” feature is an amazing tool when used to inspect other people’s websites and learn how they accomplish things, and for debugging display problems on your own sites.

I think that your page, along with an all-white background and some (subtle) typographic design applied to it would be very, very good.

Its best if your site looks like it isn’t designed at all: unfortunately this effect requires some knowledge to achieve. The elements of typographic style applied to the web is a good place to start.This site for example, is legible, sober and professional looking.

I happen to like my own Web site’s design (shocking, I’m sure:), and it’s been the same for quite a while relying on basic HTML (although some serious manipulation of the table tag to get the layout I wanted).

I think a professional page could be appealing and completely functional without fancy style sheets or even fancy HTML.

That’s probably the first time I’ve been called a “design snob”.

The web is a lot better designed and thus a lot more readable than in the past. Thus, when we encounter sites designed like it was still 1998, they look out of place.

Take a look at a site of mine, a very old (the first, in fact) site on the Monty Hall Problem. This should resoundingly refute the “design snob” accusation.

The site badly needs a redesign for the same reasons as I’ve been giving: it looks archaic. It needs to be split up into several pages, it needs more white-space and navigational aids, among other things.

Unfortunately, I’m very much not a design snob and my HTML hand-coding skills pre-date complex sites with complex style-sheets. Which is what is needed these days.

That’s not to say that an academic site with limited scope—say, a CV and a few other things—can’t be simple enough to write by hand. But it should conform to current design standards, using a black-on-white color scheme, lots of white space, and is well-organized and easy to navigate.

I haven’t re-written my MHP site because for it to be what it needs to be, it needs to be something completely different than what it is. Not to mention that my entire approach to explaining the problem has changed in the last ten years. But the site still works well as-is, so until I have the time to re-evaluate my pedagogical approach in the context of a web site design, write a Java applet to simulate the problem, create (or have someone else create) much better looking graphics…it’s going to stay as-is. But I certainly wouldn’t want this dinosaur presenting my professional face. Fortunately, I have no professional face. I don’t work. So it’s not a priority.

But what’s being discussed here is someone’s professional face. As much thought should be given to the website design as would be given to one’s CV or research presentation.

And it uses frames, and not properly. Navigate through the site and notice how the URL in the address bar doesn’t change. Some tests with Google will show the effects of this – none of the sub-pages are indexed.

So beware of sites that look good but don’t actually work. You’re better off with a boring, plain site that works than something fancy that fails key functions.

Look:

New acquisitions and current favorites (5.14.2007)

His page is so wonderful to use that the frivolous fun part of it hasn’t been updated in a year.

So I call that success. Also, when I arrived for a visit, the existing grad students wanted to chat about some of my stranger jobs and hobbies, which was a nice ice-breaker.

One that I can constantly update myself. Is there a blog template that you could use to do that?

Oh, I want that webpage Do I really have to understand how to create webpages to do that? Why hasn’t someone invented some typepad/blogger/wordpress thing to do that for us…EXACTLY like that?