My New Personal Website Design Took Me a Complete 1 Month

I’ve been working as a UX/UI designer for over 8 years. During this time I created many products, starting from simple landing pages to complex CRM systems. But during this period I couldn’t find time to create a personal website.

“The first word in the phrase, “personal brand” is “personal.” Now add an “ity” to it, drop the “brand” and that’s what it really means. That’s the secret.” — Adam Ritchie

This was hilarious because I used Behance as my major platform for my designs. While I believe in Behance power, I felt a need to go beyond its limits and create my personal brand.

If you want to have a brand, you need to have a solid personal website. You need to tell people about your achievements. All your awards, publications, courses, and other materials need to be in one place.

When I started to collect everything on one website, problems started to arise.

Personal Brand Improvement

You start to build your own personal brand. The starting point is your website with all the information until this very moment.

Working on your website structure, you can ask yourself a question. What elements should be on your website? You have portfolio pieces, a section about you, and contacts on your Behance page. What else can you share? Which sections are important for your website visitors?

I was at this place. I didn’t know where to start or how to compose things. During the last 3 years, I focused on achievements that could help my name become more recognizable.

For example, I started a blog and founded my own publication which you can read now. Apart from that, I created 9 design courses on Education Ecosystem and won a few design contests.

Being an active speaker, I participated in multiple online events as a major speaker. My goal was to share my experience and help aspiring beginners.

It was good that I placed all my achievements into a Google spreadsheet. But every aspect is so different. It’s a challenge to compose all achievements in one place.

When I started to think about my website structure, it was a big problem. I used to think about presenting my work first. But now, I needed to showcase how my skills, knowledge, and achievements could help other designers.

And still, I need to show my design skills to recruiters and companies who are interested in collaborating with me. This was a new experience for me.

My website is a presentation of all design services and coaching experiences.

When you plan your brand, you need to impress recruiters with your website and demonstrate your value among other experienced designers.

For example, one of my website pages is about my design community on Facebook. It’s super cool for recruiters to see that I am a founder. But designers who would like to join my community are interested in benefiting from a design tribe.

Instead of being proud of my achievement, my goal was to explain the value. There are so many design communities on Facebook, that every new member asks me why he or she needs to join it.

Because of my new personal website, I explain the benefits of getting into my community. I highlight that all benefits are free. Which is a kind of magic in this greedy world for designers.

One of my strong community benefits is a restriction on portfolio or project promotion. I analyzed the other communities and found that 90% of them are focused on work spam. People want to promote themselves and start to post their works.

Such communities have no value. That’s why I focused on providing value over promotion. Also, the engagement is pretty high in my small but dedicated Facebook group. Again, people aren’t interested in digits, but in value. My community confirms this theory.

But let’s go back to website creation. Every page that you make, tells unique information. Recruiters can learn about my experience. Designers can get lessons and knowledge from me. It’s a win-win.

This double-goal strategy is the basis of my website. I will explain and provide information to both parties and stay on track with them.

To be honest, I spent one week on design. During this week, I ordered food from cafes to save time on cooking and spent it on my website.

While it was a pretty expensive and unusual experience for me, I have a live website that works and brings results.

Today I’m starting my brand-new website. I concentrate on what you can get from me. This logic is fresh air in my design journey. I am looking to add more content to my website to increase value for designers.

Webflow Experience

As a designer, you work with many design tools every day. It can be Figma, Sketch, or even Photoshop. It doesn’t matter where you design your website, because your final result will be online.

When it comes to the online stage, you need to find a perfect fit for your website. There are dozens of free platforms, and you can start thinking about them. For example, my initial platform was Behance.

Behance was my favorite place to stay during all my 8 years of design experience. It was free and easy to use with a lot of professional resources and tools.

My personal website requires me to go beyond the standard Behance page. I immediately remembered Adobe Portfolio and checked the paid plan.

There were pretty cool features, but in general, it seemed like a better version of Behance, but still Behance.

Even the paid Adobe Portfolio option wasn’t a good fit for my brand new website. Yes, I could have a section with information about myself, and tell more unique stories. But it’s not what I wanted to have.

When you create your website, you need to have a domain. Also, multiple pages with unique content are required. Preferably more engagement opportunities with your website visitors would be great.

Behance, Dribbble, and similar places aren’t a good fit for such goals. You can use these platforms to post your design projects and tell us about yourself.

When it’s time to build unique sections and have counters on your website, free platforms are helpless.

During my mentorship sessions on ADPList, I met with other designers who created their websites on free builders. One of the most popular solutions was Wix.

When I saw websites, I understood how limited they were. Yes, it is already a website with multiple pages and unique sections. But the builder limits the designer.

My mentees weren’t able to create unique elements, sections, and personal identities.

It seemed like a very cheap solution. Considering this experience, I decided that I need to have a more complex platform.

A few years ago, I tried to create a personal website on WordPress. While I worked a little bit with this platform, I couldn’t understand how people benefit from it and why it’s popular.

I checked many bloggers and influencers on YouTube, and most of them were inspired by WordPress.

If you’ve never heard about the WordPress theme business on the Envato market, you’d be surprised how much people earn from it. This is a separate industry where people earn thousands of dollars by creating one WordPress theme.

I thought that being a designer at FAANG company is my level of dream. After learning about Envato market and stories from WordPress theme creators, I was seriously interested in creating WordPress theme with a developer. Unfortunately, my dream didn’t became true.

Anyway, let’s go back to your website. When you want to have it, it’s important to select a platform where you’ll host it. Why do people choose WordPress?

Well, the very first reason, is it’s the super popular and widely used solution for a personal website. There are tons of resources where you can adjust your website from scratch.

Even though it’s a very complex CMS, you can easily start your website from the free templates that are available on the platform. You can even start with a free domain and upgrade later.

Because of this, WordPress is a common solution for newcomers to the website world. There are alternatives, like Squarespace, but unfortunately, I don’t have experience with other platforms.

The second reason is that WordPress is a perfect choice if you want to have a blog on your website. WordPress was first created for bloggers and transformed into other directions and needs.

When I started my career 8 years ago, all bloggers had their websites on WordPress. I can’t remember someone who had a blog on Joomla, for example.

One of my first jobs was also connected with WordPress themes. My company concentrated on theme editions for clients and I supported the design part.

After some time I edited themes on the front-end editor on WordPress. Maybe because of both these factors, I decided to start my website on WordPress afterward.

Since I wanted to have a blog on my website, I decided to choose WordPress. In the beginning, I was only able to create a home page. I couldn’t find time to finish all the pages, because it took me long hours and days.

As a designer you probably experienced times when you created products for your clients, but not for yourself.

This is why I decided that it was time to find a simpler solution and finish my website. I found a great alternative to WordPress that gave me full control over the design with immediate website results.

I was happy about it until I figured out that Webflow isn’t good for having a blog.

WordPress-Webflow Dilemma

It was a nightmare. I was able to finish my website and was ready to launch it. But even with a paid Webflow plan, you can only have 500 items in your CMS.

I have a big question for the Webflow team. Are you serious? Like 500 items for my blog? I have 500 articles that I wanted to transfer to my new website, but now it’s impossible.

So my major question was how to keep up with my ongoing publishing. How to create articles every month, week, or day?

Ok. I came down and I was upset. Furthermore, I couldn’t believe that I needed to go back to WordPress. I started to imagine how much time I’ll spend on re-creating every page from Webflow to WordPress again.

Even with a front-end editor, it takes time. I need to create it, adjust it, and update it. Checking results on the live website while working on the front-end editor takes a long time in comparison to Webflow.

In Webflow you create a design and immediately see an online result.

It seems like I love Webflow for design control, but I need unlimited article options for my blog, like on WordPress. What if there was a tweak that allowed me to combine these things?

And there is such a thing! When I started to re-create my first website page on WordPress, I found a plugin called Webflow Pages. When I checked it, it was like thunder.

This plugin allows you to build pages on Webflow and integrate them into your WordPress website. Finally, I was happy about it. It was the solution I was looking for.

I constantly get updates or new achievements that I need to add to my website. Finally, there is a solution to keep my Webflow website inside WordPress.

What is even more important, I could publish my articles on WordPress without any limitations. It was my dream which came true.

So if you’re currently struggling between WordPress and Webflow, you can combine these things and live happily.

The only thing that you need to consider is SEO, which I know nothing about, but hope to learn within the next few months.

Final Thoughts

The road to your personal brand includes a must-have step — your website. When you’re serious about building a strong name in the industry, free options won’t work for you. You need to have authority, so your website needs to be solid and trustworthy.

This is why you need to spend enough time on your website creation. Probably you’ll spend sleepless nights because you have a full-time job, and you have evenings and nights free only.

But the result is definitely worth your struggles. When you can present your skills, identity, and uniqueness, you stand out from other designers, and potentially can increase your paycheck.