As if you didn’t have enough online profiles to manage already, along come personal pages. But then… maybe the fact that there’s almost nothing to manage is what makes them so appealing?
What are personal pages?
Personal pages, also called personal home pages, are one page websites that are meant to be used as web-based business cards. Like a business card, your personal page typically contains information about how to contact and follow you online or off. Like a business card, your personal page can be used to brand you in as memorable a way as you (or a designer) can imagine.
The two personal page creators that have become popular so far are about.me and flavors.me.
about.me
Signup is easy from the homepage: just type in your email address, a password and choose an about.me url (use ‘firstnamelastname’) and then click ‘Create Your Profile’.
The second registration page asks for your name and a short bio, before sending you on to the final page in the creation process, where you do the heavy lifting of choosing the content and the design.
I liked:
- The wide variety of design options, all of which seem to look good
- You can upload an avatar in addition to the background image
- There are ‘layout guides’ to to help you choose the best background image size
- The Dashboard where you can see statistics about traffic, your social reach (with respect to the services connected to your profile only), links to your page and more.
- You can submit your page to each of the major search engines with one click
- There is an easy way to delete your account
I didn’t like:
- The Facebook service exposes private information but to their credit, about.me warns you about this before you activate the service. To avoid this, include your Facebook profile or page as a custom url instead. The downside is that you don’t get the pretty Facebook icon to appear.
- The site is somewhat slow to load in edit mode when adding services or displaying information while editing your profile page
- Adding custom websites or RSS feeds is a little buggy; the feeds aren’t always recognized, and the websites’ favicons aren’t always found right away
- The selection of services you can add to your profile in 2 clicks is limited but they have the main ones you’d expect to find
- All your information is grouped into a single block that doesn’t allow for much design flexibility
- Your profile is immediately available online, even as you’re creating it and making changes. There’s no ‘Publish’ button when you’re done. This is ok when no one knows about your profile but can be very confusing once you’re getting visitors who catch you editing live.
flavors.me
Click ‘Get started’ to do just that. After choosing a username which will be your flavors.me url, you’re sent to your new page, which is immediately live just like with about.me. Hovering above the page, you’ll see the ‘design panel’, an accordion of options from which you’ll upload your background image, choose a font, add services and more.
I liked:
- Sign up using Facebook, Google or Yahoo accounts
- You can assign a favicon to your personal page
- Changes you make appear immediately
- Use your own domain name (for a fee)
- Wide selection of services to choose from for adding to your page
- Recent updates appear directly on the page when the related service is clicked, but the results don’t always fit well unless you have a large screen
- There is an easy way to delete your account
I didn’t like:
- The signup page doesn’t mention that your username will ultimately be your flavors.me url
- The aren’t enough design options, leaving the final result very text-oriented
- Too many basic features require the paid upgrade
Which one is for you?
Although both are personal page creators, about.me and flavors.me actually have different goals in mind, and their differences will determine which one you should use.
- about.me makes it easy to build a pretty hub page from where you can send people to your different web presences, already having a positive impression of you.
- flavors.me, on the other hand, pulls in information from your different web profiles, aggregating it one central location where people can pause to learn about you in depth.
People who have no blog or other major dedicated web presence won’t mind paying the $20 yearly subscription to access all the upgrade-only features of flavors.me. Anyone else can just stick with the (currently) 100% free-to-use about.me as an extra brand-building search engine result.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
