Make your own personal website, with an About page and a contact form
A personal website is the one place online that says who you are in your own words and stays put when platforms change. It needs less than people think: a sentence about you, a fuller About page, links to where you are, and a way to get in touch that actually reaches your inbox.
A personal site is not a portfolio
A portfolio exists to sell work: it leads with projects and is judged on them. A personal site answers a broader question, usually asked by someone who has just heard your name: who is this, what do they care about, and how do I reach them? The visitor might be a future employer, a podcast host, an old colleague or a neighbour. Few of them want a gallery. They want a short, believable picture of a person.
That changes what goes on the page. Work samples can appear, but as evidence for a sentence about you rather than as the main event. If your work is mostly visual and you're looking for commissions, a portfolio site is the better format; if you're job-hunting, a resume website is more direct.
What to put on it
| Part | Its job | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| One-line introduction | Say what you do and for whom, in words you'd use out loud | A list of job titles separated by slashes |
| About page | Give the longer story: background, current work, what you're interested in | Writing in the third person when it's obviously you |
| Where to find you | Link the two or three profiles you actually keep up to date | A row of icons for accounts you abandoned |
| Contact form | Let people write to you without publishing your email address | A form that sends nowhere, or a raw mailto link that attracts spam |
| A recent thing | Show you're active: a talk, an article, a project, a photo from this year | A news section last updated three years ago |
Notice what isn't there: a blog you won't write, a skills bar chart, a testimonial carousel. Each of those creates an obligation or a claim. A small site that's all true and current reads better than a large one that's half stale.
Writing the introduction
The first sentence carries most of the weight. Try finishing "I help…" or "I'm a… who…" and then cut it down. "I'm a hospital pharmacist who writes about how medicines are named" tells a stranger far more than "Pharmacist. Writer. Curious human." Put your name in the page title and the heading, because that's what people searched for.
For the About page, three short paragraphs usually do it: what you do now, how you got there, and what you'd like to hear about. End with an invitation that matches the contact form, such as "If you're organising something on medicine safety, I'd like to hear from you."
How Anticode builds it
As a personal website builder, Anticode starts from a sentence like "a personal site for Rosa Lind, a hospital pharmacist who writes about drug naming, with an About page and a contact form". The Architect replies with a short plan and may ask a few questions that change the result, for example whether you want a separate About page or one long page, and which look suits you. You can tap a suggested answer or write your own.
- Pages. The design engine can add separate pages such as About and Contact alongside the home page, so the introduction stays short and the longer story has room.
- Look. The site is held to one of seven design systems. Editorial (Geist) suits writers and academics; Swiss (Inter Tight) suits people who want a quiet grid; Playful (Fredoka) suits a lighter personality. You pick an action colour and a Light, Dark or Auto theme.
- Contact form. Messages are saved in your dashboard, sealed at rest, and can be emailed to you, so your address never appears on the page.
- Editing. Change wording in place in the visual editor, or ask for a change in a sentence such as "make the About page shorter and move the talks list up".
Your own domain
A personal site is most useful at an address you control for decades, usually your name. You can publish straight away to a free <name>.anticode.dev address and connect your own domain later on a paid plan; Anticode verifies it with a CNAME or TXT record and issues the certificate itself. Free sites show a small "Made with Anticode" badge, which paid plans remove. See connecting a custom domain for the DNS steps, and /pricing for plans.
What Anticode won't do here
- No full blog engine. You can keep posts in a CMS collection, but there are no comments, RSS feed or scheduled posts. If writing is the point of the site, a dedicated blogging tool may suit you better.
- English only. The builder and its pages are in English; there's no second-language version of the site.
- No embedded feeds. Published pages carry no scripts, so live social feeds and third-party widgets don't run. Link to your profiles instead.
- It can't know your story. The model drafts from what you tell it. Read every sentence and replace anything that sounds like someone else.
Questions people ask
Do I need a personal website if I'm already on LinkedIn?
Not always, but a profile on someone else's platform follows their layout, their rules and their search. A personal site lets you choose what people see first and gives you an address that doesn't change if you leave a network.
Can I try it before making an account?
Yes. Preview builds of pages run in the browser with no account. You need an account to save, publish and use model-written builds.
Will my email address be visible?
No, unless you put it there. The contact form delivers messages to your dashboard and, if you choose, to your inbox, without printing your address on the page.
Can I add my own photo?
Yes. Upload a photo to the build and the model can see it and place it. Write a short description of it so the alt text is accurate.