How to make a personal webpage - do's and don'ts

Namaste. You are reading my first blog post and this is my new website. From the past few days, I have been working hard on my website. It all started like this.

I felt like its time to change my website which I made it four years back during my early days of interaction with a foreign object called computer. Now that I am quite familiar with it, I planned to have a new personal web presence. Web has evolved so rapidly these past four years where I think almost have no place in it. Anyhow, I don't want to lose more and here is my effort.

I didn't want to waste time learning new web languages/technologies and decided to build a simple website using some content management system which readily make websites for you. Inspired from the website of my GSoC organization, I have chosen to build my website using Mediawiki. I loved its syntax and Mediawiki with Cavendish theme looks great. But it doesn't provide a blog which I thought would be a best way to share my thoughts with this world. So I decided to have a Wiki + blog.

Wikyblog was the answer. But there is always a "but". I did not like its interface. Searching for latest CMS systems I found Wordpress.

Even Wordpress has a "but". Wordpress themes are the best "but" it is more a blog than a personal web page. What I needed was a Personal Web page + blog + may be a forum too and some other features which may ponder into my mind in future.

Drupal came into my consideration and it answered many of my questions. Read a lot about it and liked it. Still there is a "but". The drawback was that Drupal themes were not as good as Wordpress. Compromised a bit and started building the website. The evil inside me did not compromise. The themes are not convincing to me. I wanted a very professional, simple looking, stylish web page but could not find a theme of my taste. Ought not to waste more time on googling for themes, decided to write a own theme for Drupal. (A big commitment and I would have saved a lot of time). Finally I found the problem. Problem is not with the CMS systems. Its with me.

I learned CSS, PHP, Drupal's architecture and html to meet the requirements of making a theme. Lot of hours went into building the theme and this is what you see finally. Finally, I think I am web professional now. I know some of you might have liked the interface and some don't. Its ok. I know the secret ;-)

These are some points I want to share with you if you are making a personal web page.

Some facts

Some Do's and Don'ts

Before building the site, be clear about your requirements.

Some useful tools

I hope my experience helps some of you. If you have any comments, do post them. Little feedback (either good or bad) means a lot to me. After all, this is my first blog.

Thanks to Abhilash, Spandana, Bhargav, Gopal who encouraged/criticised/suggested me during the engineering phase of this website.