Free checklist

The Personal Hub Checklist

Your professional identity should live at an address you own. This checklist condenses the steps fromHow to Build Your Sovereign Personal Hub on the Weband the proof-of-work ideas in Reputation as Code into one page you can print and work through. The only thing you should have to pay for is the domain.

Read the full guide →

1. Own the address

Buy your name as a domain: FirstnameLastname.com first, then a middle name, a suffix like "coder", or a .dev or .org if the .com is taken.
Pick a registrar with free WHOIS privacy and free email forwarding, so you are not paying monthly just to receive mail.
Set up a catch-all email forward so anything@yourdomain lands in the inbox you already use.
Decide your public addresses: hello@ for the site, speaking@ for event organizers, press@ for podcasts and interviews.

2. Ship the site without breaking email

Host the site on a free static tier (Netlify or Vercel are both fine for a personal site).
Keep your nameservers at the registrar. Moving DNS to the host can switch off the free email forwarding.
Add an ALIAS or ANAME record for the root and a CNAME for www pointing at your host, and leave the mail settings on email forwarding.
Put the code in a GitHub repository and connect it to the host, so every saved change rebuilds and publishes the site.

3. Put proof of work on the homepage

Write one line that says who you are and what you work on. Name your technical anchor instead of a generic title.
Show three pieces of real work with links: a repository, a live demo, an article, a talk, or a book.
Add a short career timeline. A non-linear background is an advantage when you say it plainly.
List your recent writing with dates, so visitors can see the work is ongoing.
End the page with one clear way to reach you.

4. Replace paper business cards

Create a mobile-first /bcard page and mark it noindex. It is for people you meet, not for search results.
Add a "Save Contact" button that downloads a .vcf file with your name, title, email, phone, and website.
Add a short form so the people you meet can leave their email and you can follow up.
Write the /bcard URL to an NFC card or bracelet with a free app like NFC Tools, and test it on two different phones.

5. Make it readable by search engines and AI answer engines

Canonical URL, title, description, and Open Graph tags on every page.
An XML sitemap, and a robots.txt that allows crawling of everything except /bcard.
Person structured data (JSON-LD) with your name, job title, employer, and a sameAs list of every profile you control.
An llms.txt that summarizes who you are and links your main pages, plus an llms-full.txt with the full text of your articles.
Verify the domain in Google Search Console with a DNS TXT record.

6. Keep it compounding

Once a month, read the Search Console queries. Write a dedicated guide for any topic where you already show up on page two or three.
Run each real project through the waterfall: the code, then an article, a video walkthrough, a podcast discussion, a talk proposal, and a few short social notes.
Publish on your own domain first, then share out to the platforms. The hub is the source; the feeds are distribution.
Update the site when your title, links, or work change. The NFC card and the links people saved keep pointing at the right place.

Next steps

Not sure where your brand stands? Take the two-minute brand audit. Want the full system behind this list? It is in Reputation as Code(book page). To have Alex talk about proof of work and personal branding at your event, seespeaking.