A Customizable, Comprehensive Page About You!
If you have browsed around HackerNoon lately, you might have noticed a curious little button under certain authors’ profile, that looks like this 😉
These About Pages were created by our awesome developer Marcos Fabian (ideation from CEO David 🎉) exclusively for Top HackerNoon Writers and certain internet famous people (like Elon Musk, Paraga Grawal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Timnit Gebru, Jack Dorsey, etc*.*) to aggregate linkages around the web about them in a fun and comprehensive manners.
….. But I’ll let you in on a little secret:
You can now create these pages yourself too….. as long as you are a published HackerNoon Writer!
So, without further ado, let’s explore some awesome features of this brand new about page!
Step by Step: How to Customize Your About Page
If you don’t already have an About Page (but are an editor on HackerNoon):
- Click on https://app.hackernoon.com/about
- Hit
Create Page - Add your HackerNoon Handle
- Click on
+Page.
Coming soon: Writers will soon be able to request their own about page! Stay tuned!
If you already have an About Page (currently, only certain published writers do), you can access the “backend” page one of 2 ways:
-
Via Your Dashboard:
-
Click on your profile page on the top right
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Click on Dashboard
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Click on About
-
-
Via Your About Page itself:
Upon entering the about page, you will then notice 2 things right away:
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The Left side is Editable fields for all information you want to share on your About Page
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The Right side is a Preview page of how these fields would look, live!
Pro-tip: The customizable fields might overwhelming, but they are all very optional! Fill out what you like, and leave blank the rest.
About You: Your Bio, Expertise, & Interests
Thinks of this section like a mini “Autobiography”, something on the front page of a book about you, or your personal website!
Helpful questions to think about while filling out these forms:
- What’s the tl;dr about you? Your elevator pitch, if you may.
- If you get stuck, ask yourself: Have you written a bio before? Perhaps on your linkedin or Twitter?
- In my case I was lazy, soI just copied-pasted my Linkedin bio.
- What topics tickle your brain?
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In my case, I just kept my selection of all the tags I’ve already subscribed to via the TechBrief.
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Pro tip: Your “Interests” will lead to Tag Pages on HackerNoon! Explore all the tags here.
Vested Interests: Companies and Coins
When we at HackerNoon refer to “Vested Interests”, primarily we mean money. Specifically, how money potentially influences your writing.
Sidenote, this is why this box appears every time you submit a story:
In this section of the About Page, you can disclose the companies you have worked for, or are currently working for, and the Stock, Shares or Coins you hold (if any). This will tremendously help you establish trust with editors (so you can be published again with us) and readers (so they come back for more stories from you) 💪
Pro-tip: Once you disclose vested interests once, you won’t have to do it over and over again in your published stories with us. Editors will stop interrogating asking you for more information about your writings.
Call to Actions
Ah, now on to the good stuff… driving traffic to YOUR corner of the internet. HackerNoon allows up to 15 CTAs (yes, I know!) which are essentially juicy links to wherever your heart desires. To get you started, the team provides many Default CTA examples, some of which have been used by contributors, like:
-
… and many more!
Pro-tip: enter a full link (with https:// in the beginning) and don’t forget to hit Save Changes!
Social Media
This section is quite self-explanatory! We allow links out to 6 popular social channels including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Github, Youtube, and Instagram. You can add whichever channel you desire, or none.
Make sure you enter the full URL with https://www. for social links to work properly!
Design and Layout
Finally, the last step! As you probably know, at HackerNoon, we are a little bit crazy about color 😅. From our decision to use Green as the primary color, to our brand guidelines with…interesting combos like “dual tone”, “mysterious”, or “color block”, to our latest Site-wide “Choose Your Color” feature, we love to let users (and ourselves!) experiment and go a bit off the beaten path with their own designs/colors of choice. So, this about page feature is no exception!
You are presented with 6 different options to “decorate” your about page. You can adjust in real time by making use of the Preview layout on the right. How convenient!
Don’t forget to click “Save Changes” to preview the Color in real time!
Share Your About Page with the world!
Finally you are done and ready to share your about page to the world! Will you be next?
Last pro tip: don’t forget to click “Publish page!” up top when you’re ready to share your About page with the world. Without it, your page will result in a 404!
After publishing the page, don’t forget to click “View” to be directed to your fresh new about page!
Happy creating! 🎉🎉🎉🎉