DESIGN

Elena is my second daughter and a very talented mind in Art & Design. She studied at Slade School of Fine Arts (UCL) and at Central St. Martins College of Arts & Design (UAL) in London, and does many interesting things, among others, helping her father to set up a modern website. Of course, if you are interested in her services, feel welcome to contact directly (email). To see samples of her work visit Creative Services at:

www.elenamachado.com

HOSTING

There are many hosting sites offered in Internet. I started with IPage after a not very thorough analysis of all possibilities. It looked good, big capacity, upgrading possibilities, a reasonable price, at the beginning at least. But later, price increased and the speed of my website slowed down dramatically. So in 2023 I switched to a Spanish company called IONOS, and I am still astonished about the price, the website speed, user-friendly dashboard and efficient phone support. Incredible. They merit five stars!

www.ionos.es

WEB COMPOSER

You may suffer a lot if you select the wrong tool to build your website. It is a question of matching the tool with your own capacities. I considered other options (price was not the key), but Elena convinced me about the easy-way of using WordPress. The millions of users, was also a solid argument. My only complaint is that being so popular, when you have to look for a special plugin, the offer is enormous and it takes a lot of energy to fish the one that fits your needs and is compatible with your theme. On the other hand, support via open forums and WP community is excellent. We are very pleased with our choice. We opted for the English version because my previous website was in English, but WordPress is also available in Spanish.

www.wordpress.com

THEME

FACULTY – Responsive Academic Personal Profile

When I searched for a theme focused on personal webpages for researchers or other professionals, I was astonished to find almost none. Most academic themes were designed for institutions and not for individuals. Finally I selected “Faculty” Theme which suited more or less my needs. The main problem was the simple and single way in wich it handles publications. So, I found a way around to have the many publications (with pdf) split in different menus, by just using ordinary text-blocks. It misses some little issues, like a nice print-application. But in general, it is fine and elegant.

Faculty theme

PLUGINS

Plugins are a double-edged sword: they can be a real life-saver or become a real nightmare. They can do incredible things that are not provided by your web-composer basic add-ons, or do it just better. On the other hand, there are so many, so many, so many, that it takes you ages to find the best suited for your case, your version, or your pocket. But once you find it, then it is like a happy marriage. Here is a list of those that we have selected, whereas we are still struggling for some better ones in a few cases.

MULTILANGUAGE

My old website (ca. year 2000) was in English and therefore I started the new one in the same language. The good news is that now you can run a site in as many languages as you like, using special plugins to manage the translations.  Thus, having my ‘digital headquarters’ in English and Spanish, was a must. The best rated plugin is WPML, and in recent years  has greatly improved its user interface. In addition, WordPress allows that if you access from an Internet browser configured in Spanish, my page automatically changes to this language.

www.wpml.org