Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own ?

Question

My institution provides a dedicated storage space to host our academic websites, which is reachable via the institution domain (something like http://people.institution.org/John.Doe/).

I try to have a tidy website of a few pages listing my publications, research area, contact, etc. It is currently reachable through my institution domain. I try to also put some efforts in SEO when people look up for my name or particular research area on search engines.

I'm in my last year of Ph.D. and I will undoubtedly move to other institutions in the next few years, so I am wondering if it wouldn't be preferable to host my academic webpage on a dedicated domain http://www.johndoe.com, which would prevent the need to do the SEO all over again each time I will switch to a new institution.

The only advantage to use my institution domain is the affiliation, but this information is present on my website anyway.

I'm a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering in France, if it matters.

Answer 1

Why don't you just do both? By both, I mean use both URLs. I "do both", so when I graduate, I'll still have my site for others to see. You can do this in many ways, but I had my university student page auto-redirect to my personal home page. The code for that is like a one-liner.

This grants me the opportunity to refer people to different sites depending on the situation. I think myname.com is undoubtedly easier to remember than the nuances in my university student site URL: people.school.org/first.last ... On the other hand, if the situation is more institution-based, perhaps it's better to stick with my college's name. You've got options this way.

Answer 2

I find it really strange that no one has mentioned the possible reputational benefits of using the university's website. I don't think there's any way to write this without sounding like a snob, but I'll say it anyways; people are snobbier than they like to admit, and academia is probably worse than many other fields. If you're at an at all prestigious institution (even actually, if you're at a not so prestigious one), you want to emphasize that affiliation. Of course, your work has to stand on its own two feet ultimately, but people will be more open to it if they see you're connected to a serious institution, rather than some dude in his basement (remember, there's always something they could be doing rather than reading your paper). Most academics keep a mental rolodex of where people are located for different purposes, like knowing where to send students or where they might like to visit. Why make it harder for them to figure this out?

A couple of other commenters have mentioned that you should be building your own brand, not the universities, but I don't see how you separate those. Usually, the university has a much stronger brand than you do, so you want to steal a bit of it for yourself. If you're in a situation where this isn't the case, it's still a virtuous cycle where improving the department's reputation should ultimately pay you back, and shouldn't stop you from moving.

That said, I've certainly experienced the trouble of moving my website (many times), so I see the appeal of having a stable website that doesn't have to be moved, but why not both?

Answer 3

Reasons to use your own host/tld:

1. You don't expect to be at your current (or future) institution for very long.
2. Your institution uses a painful CMS system, requires you to use ugly templates, or has content or size restrictions.
3. You don't want to ask your department head or IT manager/webmistress for permission every time you want to update your page.
4. Your personal brand is more important than the university brand (see #1).
5. You are part of a multi-university project.
6. You created your own domain website when you were a graduate student and never found a good reason to switch to your employers' sites, even a dozen plus years after graduation (my case).
7. etc.

Reasons to only use your university website:

1. It's the default position.
2. It doesn't cost you any additional hosting or domain registration fees.
3. In many cases, the department or IT admin will help you set it up using one of their templates, meaning you do not have to learn web design
4. In some cases, the database that populates your research publications will be pulled from your Faculty Annual Report (or vice versa). This means that keeping the university CMS happy results in less paperwork overall in terms of reporting your research activities to the university.
5. The google-juice (SEO) of the university will likely be higher than your own.
6. Some may argue it looks more professional to have an .edu/~name site rather than a private.com website.
7. Loyalty
8. etc.

And of course, one can always do both. The cons of doing both are:

1. Requires updating both.
2. Visitors may be confused about which site to go to (or you have the same info mirrored, which leads to #1)

Answer 4

I think you should do both, but in a different way that has been suggested by Raphael and by rch. Both of these other suggestions involve doing some sort of invisible "redirect" from one page (almost always the temporary institutional page) to the permanent page on your domain. RoboKaren suggested having two pages which is the closest to my answer. I suggest you should create a page on your institution but have it be a small "soft" redirect that asks people to click through.

Keep an institutional page but keep it very simple. Have the page give the following information (at most):

• A short narrative biography of you and your research or teaching interests.
• A nice recent picture of you. [Nice, but optional.]
• A link to your CV on your website. [Optional]
• A list of 2-3 recent selected papers. [Optional]
• A very prominent link to your actual homepage on your domain. I do this with text like, "For more detail on my research and teaching, visit full academic homepage.

Ben Webster is correct in citing the importance of association with your institution for status reasons In order to get the benefit, put the name and the logo and/or seal for your institution prominently on your personal page in a way that makes it clear that you are associated with the institution but also clear that it is your personal page.

This is what I have been doing for years. One benefit is that many institutions make updating institutional pages tricky (e.g., you need to go through a webmaster). This is a nice compromise in this situation because you only need to update the biography, picture, etc. infrequently.

Answer 5

You are trying to find a design solution for a technical problem that does not exist.

You mention SEO as your primary concern (for whatever reason¹). So when you move your professional website to another institution, (have your admin) put a 301 (Moved Permanently) in your old website's .htaccess and search engines will automatically update their databases accordingly.

This assumes that you can keep your old (sub)domain/page at least for a few months; as far as I can tell, this is common. Many groups/departments maintain lists to alumni at their current position, anyway; it is as much advertisement for them as it is for you (if you're good).

Note that you can still use one domain as an alias for the other. Which direction you choose is probably irrelevant in most cases. I'd argue that it is important to have something at an institution URL so that you have a representative address that looks official and leaves no doubt that you are, indeed, the John Doe from the University of Illustriousness and not some dude who happend to be the first to register john-doe.com.

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1. As a researcher, I figure that your publications are your business cards. These are indexed in other places and your moving does not change how they can be found (and thank the powers that be for that!). Search engines pick up on your new website in a matter of days (for some you can even trigger indexing yourself) which should be enough, assuming that there is little more value but contact data besides the publications there. But ymmv.