Guide
How to build your site, start to finish
Everything from signing in to sending someone the link. Most people are done in under ten minutes, and nothing here needs any technical knowledge.
Part one
Getting your site live
Three questions and a template. This is the whole of setup.
- 1
Pick your address
This is the web address people will type, so it is worth ten seconds of thought. Your name is usually the right answer - short, easy to say out loud, and still right in three years. You get it as yourname.siteofme.com straight away, free, and you can point your own domain at it later without changing anything you have built.
Avoid numbers and hyphens if you can. They are hard to say over a phone call.
- 2
Tell us about your work
A few questions: what you do, who you do it for, and one line about yourself. This is not a form you are filling in for us - the answers become the first draft of your actual site. Write them the way you would introduce yourself to someone at an event, not the way you would write a CV.
One honest sentence beats three polished ones. You can edit all of it afterwards.
- 3
Choose a look, then publish
Pick whichever design feels like you. Every template holds the same content, so this is a look-and-feel decision and nothing else - you can switch later and your words and images move across untouched. Then press publish. Your site is live at that point, and you can keep editing it afterwards.
Publish before it feels finished. A live site you improve beats a perfect one nobody has seen.
Part two
Changing anything on the page
Click the thing you want to change. There is no separate admin screen for content - you edit your site on your site.
The panels down the side
- Template
- Swap the whole design. Your content stays exactly where it is - only the look changes, so trying one costs you nothing.
- Search
- The title and description that show up when your site appears on Google or gets shared in a chat. Write these as a sentence a person would read, not a list of words.
- Branding
- The small icon in the browser tab, and the name that appears there. Two minutes that make a site feel finished.
- Footer
- The line at the bottom of your site, and any links you want in it.
- Custom CSS
- For people who write CSS and want to change something the panels do not cover. Skip it entirely otherwise - nothing here needs it.
The parts your site is made of
Every template has the same set. Turn off the ones that do not apply to you - an empty section is worse than a missing one.
- Navbar
- The links across the top of your site.
- Hero
- The first thing anyone sees. Your name, what you do, and one line that makes them keep reading.
- About
- The longer version, plus the skills you want associated with your name.
- Projects
- The work itself. Pictures do most of the work here - one good image beats a paragraph.
- Services
- What somebody can hire you to do, and roughly what it costs if you want to say.
- Collaborations
- People and companies you have worked with.
- Testimonials
- What clients said, once you have collected some.
- Blog
- Your posts, if you write any.
- Contact
- A form that sends messages to your dashboard. No email address on display for spammers to scrape.
- Social
- Links to wherever else you post.
Part three
Running it after launch
The dashboard is everything that is not the site itself - who visited, who wrote to you, and what your address is.
- Overview
- Where you land. Your address, how many people visited, and a button through to the editor. If you only ever open one screen, it is this one.
- Messages
- Anyone who fills in the contact form on your site turns up here, with their email address. Nothing is sent anywhere else, so this is the place to check.
- Analytics
- How many people opened your site, where they came from, and which pages they read. Useful once you have shared the link a few times; not worth staring at on day one.
- Blog
- Write posts that appear on your own site. Worth using if you want people to find you through search - a site that gains a page occasionally does better than one that never changes.
- Testimonials
- Collect a kind word from a client and show it on your site. You send them a link, they write it, you approve it before anything appears.
- Resume
- Turns what is already on your site into a PDF you can attach to an email. Nothing to fill in twice.
- Domain
- Connect a domain you own, like yourname.com. It tells you exactly which two records to add at your registrar and checks them for you, and it explains what is wrong when they are not right yet.
- Settings
- Your name, email, password, and the switch that takes your site offline if you ever want it private for a while.
Part four
Questions people ask afterwards
- Do I have to finish it before publishing?
- No, and you probably should not try. Publish early and edit afterwards - everything on SiteOfMe is editable after it is live, and a site nobody has seen is not doing anything for you.
- What if I choose the wrong template?
- Change it whenever you like. Every template renders the same sections, so your words and images move across untouched and only the design changes.
- How do people find my site?
- Mostly because you send them the link - put it in your bio, your email signature, and your messages. Search traffic builds slowly on top of that, and writing the occasional blog post is what speeds it up.
- Can I take my site offline?
- Yes, from Settings. It stops being visible to anyone and nothing is deleted, so you can put it back whenever you want.
That is the whole thing.
Nothing above takes longer than a few minutes. The hardest part is deciding what to write about yourself.