Inspired by discussions that happened here for other questions asked, and perhaps close to another question.
Question: Is it good for an academic to maintain two websites --- personal and institutional?
Note that the question is regarding putting material on the web that is primarily connected with one's academic work.
It is true that for those of us in the early part of their career or late into their career(!) the institutional option may not exist as they may not be sufficiently closely associated with an institution to merit a web page under the institutional banner.
However, most people who are regularly employed in academia have the possibility of an institutional website.
Pros for Institutional Website:
- Likely to have a professional website designer who is paid (a) to make it work well for visitors, (b) to have an automated procedure for making updates. (c) to be optimised for search engines, (d) to be secure from "hacking" when unattended.
- People who know your affiliation will easily get to your page. (Not the same point as above, but related.)
Pros for Personal Website:
- Greater control over design and contents. This means that one is (a) not constrained by someone else's views on a good website (b) free to add material as and when one wants without waiting for an approved update process (c) able to change institutions without having to "inform the world" of a changed web page.
- One can also develop/demonstrate some basic expertise (on website management) which is potentially useful anyway.
The "pros" in each case can, in principle, be converted to "cons" for the other case. Thus, one could argue, that to get the best of both worlds, one should maintain two websites. This is what the question asks!
However, this does mean that there is likely to be duplication of effort, or neglect of one or the other website.
It is possible that many people on Academia Stackexchange anyway have multiple websites, but what would be your advice?
