In the modern age, having a personal website is a must for some individuals, such as freelancers. It was likely a very short time ago when you needed information on someone, and immediately looked them up on Google, DuckDuckGo, or your preferred search engine.
Oftentimes, you can easily find the necessary information even if the person does not have a website, however, in many cases, a website will do a much better job of showcasing the person and their work than social media can.
Throughout this article, we’ll teach you how to easily create a personal website — a digital ID — containing all the necessary information, using a tool called Site Publisher. Furthermore, visitors will also have the option to download a vCard file and add you as a contact in their contacts application with all the provided information.
In this tutorial, you’ll need to have website hosting using the cPanel control panel. If you do not already have hosting, you can check out our cPanel hosting plans.
Another thing you will need is to have a domain name to use with your hosting, so your website is accessible from the internet. Don’t worry, if you don’t have a domain or don’t want to purchase one, reach out to us, and we’ll provide you with a subdomain you can use.
Let’s get started.
There are three ways you can log in to cPanel with a VisitingHost cPanel hosting account.
The first method is to simply go to domain.com/cpanel, and you’ll be redirected to the cPanel URL. Note that the domain here is the main domain on your cPanel account and should already be pointed to our nameservers.
Another option is to simply go to our cPanel URL directly which is — golden.cpanelonline.com:2083 — and then enter your login details which you received in the welcome email.
The final and easiest option is to log in to the Client Area, go to Services → Hosting → Log in to cPanel. This will log you into cPanel without requiring a username or password.
Once you’re in cPanel, go to the search field at the top-right and type “Site Publisher”, then open the app.
If you have more than one domain or subdomain created on your account, you’ll be able to select which one you’d like to use. Once you do so, you can move to the next step, which is selecting the template.
You’ll see many templates to select from, however, for this specific case we’re looking for ones prefixed vCard, as these will allow your visitors to export your information as a contact file.
There are 4 templates with this option, that are tailored for different audiences:
Choose the one that you like most, for our example, we’ll choose Dev. To choose a template, all you need to do is click on it.
Now let’s move on to customizing your personal digital ID website.
On the customization step, you’ll see quite a few editable fields which are self-explanatory. Don’t worry if you feel that’s too much information — you don’t need to use them all.
Enter all the necessary information here, and then move on to the design customization. In this example, we’re creating a personal digital ID website for Harry Potter, so we’ve entered the following details:
Moving on, we’re getting to the colors section of the customizer. Since Harry’s in the Gryffindor house, we opted to use their colors, which are Red (#740001) and Gold (#D3A625).
For the background image, we used a free image from Pexels. On the off chance you do not want a background image, simply leave the field blank, and choose a color instead.
Uploading the background image
To upload the background image, you’ll need to open cPanel in a new tab (again), and then go to File Manager. From here, open the folder for your domain, usually public_html, and add the image here or in a sub-folder, we used a sub-folder called assets. To create a folder, click the “+ Folder” icon, and to upload a file, click the “Upload” menu item at the top row.
To acquire the link for your image, open a new tab, write your domain name, then slash (/), the name of the image. If you placed it in a sub-folder, you’ll also need to add that to the URL. An example URL is the following:
https://vcard.visiting.host/assets/pexels-mikhail-nilov-8390636.jpg
Notice that we used a sub-folder. This is the recommended method, as we’ll also need to add a profile image in the same way as well.
Below the background image, you have the option to add a button with a link. You can link this to some external page or portfolio. In our case, we decided to forego it.
The portrait is a very important part of the website, choose a good image with good lighting to ensure you are shown in the best scenario. The instructions for adding a portrait image are the same as adding a background image – click here to scroll back.
Additionally, you have the option to add Google Analytics to track page engagement if you desire to do so. All you need to do is enter the GA tracking code.
Once you’re done editing, click the button at the bottom labeled Publish to open up your website to the internet. When you do this, you’ll be able to visit it through the domain you chose for it.
Here’s our final result:
Your visitors can click the “Download vCard” button to download a file which will allow them to add your details to their contacts application with one click.
Congratulations, you now have a personal digital ID website that you can send to your contacts or potential clients as a digital business card.
Hopefully, we were able to help you improve your digital presence just a little bit with this guide. Site Publisher is an amazing tool for quickly whipping up a personal digital ID website, as it makes it easy and quick to do so.
If you’ve read the guide, but haven’t created your website yet, then what are you waiting for? Create your personal website and stand out!
