Monday, July 06, 2009

Virtual housekeeping

I've done a round of cleanups on my home page, including links where appropriate to published versions of things that previously had links to SSRN drafts, complete citations, etc. Also tied 'em all up together in a single "recent papers" list, forgoing the annual sublists.

My homepage is, well, boring. I'm still basically writing the html I taught myself in January 1996; I've never acquired any knowledge of java or javascript of xml or (etc.), and I deleted the two pictures that used to be on the page. At the end of the day, I like text. I just wish I had a better eye for the presentation of text; I find my homepage intuitive but dull.

I'm aware that some friends and colleagues have fancy homepages. But it seems to me that the more bells and whistles it has, the harder it is to update regularly-- is that so? (Or is it just a matter of having appropriate software?)

The pages I know of that are both fancy and constantly updated are more of the promotional-site-for-one's-public-intellectual-career type than of the research-and-teaching-stuff type.

In comments, I encourage readers to identify particularly good examples of academics' homepages. Who's setting a high standard?

8 comments:

Russell Arben Fox said...

I've always loved the look of Patchen's pages. But, as you say, it doesn't seem like he updates all that often.

My pages are pretty basic and text oriented as well--but I think they work well enough.

Jacob T. Levy said...

I agree-- I like yours. (Nice picture, too!) And, yeah, Patchen's are gorgeous. But it seems like a lot of work.

Russell Arben Fox said...

I confess that I had your pages partly in mind when I originally designed mine, however many years ago it was.

Matt said...

I like that you have a link to your librarything page, though I'm not sure if the link to the library part is better than a link to your profile or not. I'm not sure who has a great page, but I think people should update their CV's at least yearly and preferably more often, assuming it's needed.

Unknown said...

I like Sala-i-Martin's:

http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/Indexmuppet.htm

Anonymous said...

Mearsheimer's was recently used at a workshop I went to on "Creating Your On-Line Portfolio" (run by the MAPSS program's Emily Easton... if rumours are right, I think you were the old Chad before you moved on to the bigger and better right?). But back to Mearsheimer's: it's snazzy, though I bet it is hard to update (+ he doesn't seem to have a blogging space). In general, as far as looking good and being easily manipulable, wordpress dominates blogger.

Jacob T. Levy said...

"if rumours are right, I think you were the old Chad before you moved on to the bigger and better right?"

Nope.

But I agree, that's an excellent website-- here.

Anonymous said...

Ah, my bad. Not sure where I got that impression. I may have projected it onto Chad (Cyrenne) having mentioned you a few times to me (since I did my undergrad at McGill).