Initially creating my own WordPress site was easier than I had thought. However, I had trouble changing themes and customizing them with CSS. While I have experience with CSS in the past it was different integrating it with WordPress. Here is a link to my page: https://wcisloa.sites.carleton.edu/about-me-alex-wcislo/
A platform like this has several potential uses, mainly displaying projects/other information you want people to know about you, perhaps for a project portfolio or gallery of images. Having a digital presence in this day and age is becoming increasingly important to display professional skills.
Hosting your website instead of using a different service or platform can be arguably better and worse, depending on one’s needs. Some benefits of hosting your own website is you can customize it to your liking with ease, have control over all the features, and choose how the world views your online presence. Hosting your own website can be seen as more professional than displaying your work on Instagram for example. The negatives of this is mainly the fact that everything has to be controlled by yourself thus being more time-consuming. If you will constantly be putting information up I think it is better to create your own site, whereas if it is a one off event, it may be more efficient to go through a service.
Overall, I think building and maintaining a personal site is a useful skill that combines technical knowledge as well as creative and personal elements. It provides a platform to showcase one’s expertise in ways that other services won’t provide. Ultimately, one needs to decide whether the control of the page is worth more than saving time by going through other providers. A personal cite can be good for creative and personal projects, career advancement, and branding.
