Why Create a Resume Website?
If you’ve read my free eBook “10 Killer Strategies to Supercharge your Professional Marketability in 2015“, you’ll know that one of the strategies I asked you to consider strongly was creating your own resume website.
I won’t go into the importance of having your own space online, since I already spoke about it in the eBook. This post will detail the steps you need to follow to get your own site up and running within the next 30 minutes. There’s absolutely no ‘coding’ involved, and anyone with access to a computer and a form of payment should be able to do it.
We’ll use Wordpress as our content management system. We’re not going to get a free hosting provider, because you need to have a professional website – http://joeapplicant.blogspot.com just isn’t going to cut it.
6 Steps to Create Your Resume Website:
1. Buy a Domain Name
2. Buy a Hosting Package
3. Integrate your Domain with your Hosting Provider
4. Install WordPress on your Website
5. Install a Resume Theme on WordPress
6. Fill in your Details
You’re done! Your website is ready to be shared with the world. It might be the first search result for your name (if your name isn’t common) in due time, so make sure you’ve covered everything and it doesn’t look incomplete. Let’s get into the details now:
1. Get a Domain Name
Alright. The first thing you need to do is check if your desired Domain (website name) is available. I personally recommend NameCheap, as it’s the service I use and I haven’t had any problems with them so far. Watch the video below to learn how you can register your domain (www.yourname.com).
A normal domain name costs about $10 a year.
If your chosen domain name isn’t available, try using your full name or choose a ‘.co’ extension instead of ‘.com’.
Done? You have your domain name, but it doesn’t yet have a place on the internet to sit on. We need to purchase ‘hosting’, which is a virtual home for your domain.
Let’s move on to step 2.
2. Get a Hosting Package
The hosting provider I personally use and recommend is HostGator. Web hosting usually costs anywhere from $3 to $10 a month. I recommend you choose the Baby Plan, because you only have the ability to host a single domain on the Hatchling plan (if choose to create another website later after your resume website).
During the checkout process, you can use the code ‘gradsup1free‘ to get $9.94 off your first month or the code ‘gradsup25off‘ to get 25% off your entire package. If you use these codes, I will get a commission at no extra cost to you, rather at a discount (wonderful, how that works huh).
It should be pretty straightforward to set up, so use the above link, click on ‘Get Started’, and then the ‘Baby Plan’.
3. Integrate your Domain with your Hosting Provider
This basically has two steps to it:
1. Get your Nameserver Information
The first thing you need to do is find out what your ‘nameservers’ are in your Hostgator hosting account. The first step is to find out which nameservers you should use for your HostGator hosting account; this varies by server and type of hosting. Usually, your HostGator Welcome Email will contain your nameservers too, they’re usually something like ab123.hostgator.com and cd456.hostgator.com.
If you can’t find them in your email, you can log in to your HostGator account using the cPanel login information you would have received from HostGator. Once you log in, you will be able to find the nameserver information in the box titled ‘Account Information’ on the left, like so:
Image courtesy Hostgator.com
2. Change Nameservers
Now, we need to tell NameCheap that we have a hosting plan up and ready with HostGator. How we go about doing that, is we change the default nameservers that NameCheap set up for you when you bought your domain to the ones in our HostGator hosting plan. Keep the nameservers you got in the previous step ready, we’ll need them shortly.
- Log in to your NameCheap account.
- Go ahead and click on your username at the top of the page
- Navigate to ‘Manage Domains‘.
- Since you have only one domain right now, just click on it to bring up your domain’s settings.
- Now click on Domain Name Server (DNS) Setup or on Transfer DNS to Webhost.
- Put in the HostGator nameservers here.
- That’s it. Go ahead and Save Changes.
Now, your NameCheap and HostGator accounts will talk to each other for a while (virtually) and get the DNS information updated for you. This can take anywhere from 1 minute to a few hours; I never had to wait more than 10 minutes.
4. Install WordPress on your Website
You’re almost at the end!
HostGator makes it very easy for us to install WordPress, through the ‘Quick Install’ option. Go ahead and watch the following short video to set WordPress up for your website too:
This shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes.
Let’s move on to the last couple of steps!
5. Install a Resume Theme on WordPress
WordPress has a bunch of cool themes for free use that you can use to get your resume website up and going in a jiffy. Sadly, a good resume Theme isn’t very easy to find for free. Even so, there are a couple of free themes you can look into, CV Card and zeeBizzCard.
Free WordPress Resume Themes
Installing a free theme on WordPress is very easy.
- After logging into your WordPress account (from www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin), mouse-over the Appearance button on the left, and click on Themes.
- Click on Add New, and then enter ‘Resume’ as the search term.
- You should be able to view both CV Card and zeeBizzCard, install the one you like.
- Once installation’s done, activate the theme. That’s it!
Premium WordPress Resume Themes
I would recommend you use one of these themes just based on the fact that they’re yours to use for life when you purchase them, and they look amazing when compared to what you can do with the free themes. With this resume website being your online face to the world, it’s a no-brainer to use one of these themes if you can afford it. I’m going to list my top 3 here.
1. VERSUS Resume – Responsive CV WordPress Theme
One of the best and most easily manageable resume themes on WordPress. Looks great and has great support too.
Get it here.
2. Personage – Easy Setup CV Resume
A really nice looking theme, also very easy to set up.
Get it here.
3. Promotion – Animated Resume Theme
A great looking animated theme. Easy to set up and combines form and function.
Get it here.
Installing a Premium Theme
WPBeginner is a good resource that has a great post on installing themes here.
6. Fill in your Details
That’s it! Log in to your website from the back end at www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin and proceed to start filling in your details. Each theme would be slightly different in how we should go about this, so I’m not going to get into that here. Rest assured that this is the one of the simplest parts of this entire exercise.
And voila. You now have your own resume website. Remember to share and promote it! At a minimum, you should have it on your resume, cover letters and LinkedIn profile.
The post How to Create your Own Resume Website appeared first on GradsUp.
