It will be Thanksgiving in the US in a few days. I wanted to thank you all for using Owlstown to share your research online. You spread knowledge around the world and inspire others to continue learning and discover new knowledge.

Thank you for filing bug reports and giving ideas on new features. Owlstown becomes better because of you. I appreciate your patience while I resolve bugs and add new features.

Lastly, thank you for spreading the word about Owlstown with friends and colleagues. Word-of-mouth is the primary way that people learn about Owlstown. With your help, Owlstown has grown to host thousands of websites. You can see many of them featured in the Owlstown Academic Gallery.

Cheers,
Ian

Winners of the Best Personal Academic Websites 2025

Congratulations to the winners of the Best Personal Academic Websites Contests! The winners’ websites are truly inspirational. They are great examples of how to share research online.

I am proud to announce that 4 of the winners are Owlstowners. It is so cool to see Owlstown being used to create such high-quality websites.

• Roberta Valtorta (Overall Best Personal Academic Website)

• Akshata Naik (Owlstown Website Award)

• Patrick Manser (Best Academic Portfolio Website)

• Learning & Behavior Change Lab by Dr. Allie Sinclair (Best Research Lab or Group Website)

Show PDFs in full screen

I added buttons to the PDF block, so that visitors can view your PDF in full screen. There are also buttons to open the PDF in a new tab and to download it.

Heading anchors

You can now link to headings within pages. To use, hover over a heading and click on the pound sign (#) that appears next to the heading. The browser address bar will update with the anchor to the heading. You can copy this URL to link to the heading.

Turning images into links

You can turn your pictures into links by setting the URL property of the Picture block. This was a frequently-requested feature, so I’m glad to have finally added it.

Improved rendering of banners

Multiple users reported that banners appear grainy or blurry on their websites even after uploading high resolution images. I found the source of the problem and resolved it. If your website has a high-resolution banner, it should look better now.

Updated and cleaned up development environment

Having a working development environment is important in adding new features to Owlstown. In the past few months, I’ve been updating and cleaning up various aspects of Owlstown’s development environment.

• Upgraded to Ruby on Rails 8.

• Removed Bootstrap code and upgraded to Tailwind and DaisyUI.

• Converted some Javascript code to Typescript code.

• Removed use of @apply in SCSS files because it prevented live updates when editing SCSS files.

• Removed a gem that slowed down rendering times during development.

It’s been a while since my last newsletter. I have so many updates to share with you.

Owlstown Text-Only

Owlstown Text-Only is a feature that automatically creates a text-only version of your Owlstown academic website. This makes your site more accessible to visitors with low-bandwidth Internet or those who prefer a simpler browsing experience. Learn more about Owlstown Text-Only

Google Translate Widget

Every Owlstown website now has a Google Translate widget. Your visitors can now translate your website to any language that Google Translate supports. Learn more about the Google Translate Widget

Site-wide Password Protection

If you’re on a paid plan, you can now set a site-wide password to your website. When you turn on this feature, visitors to your website will have to enter a password to access your website. Learn more about Sitewide Password

Improved editing interface

The Owlstown editor has an improved interface for editing a page.

• Edit a block by just clicking on it, instead of clicking on an edit button.

• Move up and move down buttons are in a new location.

• Delete button is inside the block editor to reduce accidental clicks.

Support for Powerpoint slides

You can now upload and share Powerpoint slides in your website. Just upload your slides in Media Files and link to them.

Best Personal Academic Websites Contest 2025

We’d love to celebrate the work you put into your academic websites. The 3rd annual Best Personal Academic Websites Contest is now open for entries. Submit your academic website here.

I hope you had a lovely summer (or winter if you're in the southern hemisphere). It was a very busy summer for me. We moved houses, so that took a lot of time. And it is still taking a lot of time—we are now dealing with lots of repairs around the house.

Speaking of repairs, I made a bunch of repairs on Owlstown in the midst of packing and unpacking. I listed them at the end of this newsletter. Thanks to all of you who reported bugs and provided suggestions to improve Owlstown.

You can also find the list of updates on this new page. This new page is created with a new feature I created called Owlstown Highlights. Every Owlstown website has a Highlights page. With Highlights, you can write short descriptions of the many events in your academic work and life. These highlights are organized by date and listed in a special Highlights page or block. I made this because I’ve noticed that people use the Posts feature (which is designed for long form content) to write short descriptions of happenings in their academic lives. Now, you have Highlights for short form descriptions.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

Repairs and Updates

• CLEANUP: Removed the MUI React Component Library from Owlstown’s code making Owlstown faster.

• BUGFIX: Color selector doesn't work in Theme Screen.

• BUGFIX: Fixed support for favicons so that they appear in Google Search results.

• BUGFIX: Remove flickering on Picture Gallery.

• UPDATE: Revamped the Domain Name screen to make it easier to use.

• FEATURE: Added PhilPapers and PhilPeople logos to Social Links

• FEATURE: Added lists of research papers, courses, and blog posts in the Owlstown Academic Gallery.

• FEATURE: The Academic Link home page lists Owlstown profiles. And it's searchable.

• FEATURE: Use content blocks (e.g., text, Markdown, pictures) to prepare your CV directly into the CV page.

Hello Owlstowners!

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs: email me at hello@owlstown.com or message me on Twitter.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

Edit titles inline

As part of Owlstown’s goal of supporting more inline editing, you can now edit titles inline. In the editor, click on the title of the page to open the inline editor. You can edit the title and the subtitle of the page. For some pages, you can even toggle if you want to show or hide the title.

Page not found

It used to be that if a user visits a webpage that doesn’t exist on your website, a text-only web page will appear that says “Page not found”. To improve the experience of your visitors, a new page will appear with your theme design that says “Page not found”. This way, they can easily navigate to other parts of your website.

Here’s an example web page.

Table support in Markdown block

You can now add tables to your webpage by using the Markdown block. The syntax is described here.

Removing content editor from the sidebar

In the next few months, I will start removing the content editor from the sidebar. Please start using the inline editor to edit your webpage content.

I’m excited to share a few features to improve listing your publications in Owlstown: highlighting authors and improved filtering and sorting. Many of you have requested these features, so I’m glad to finally make them available.

As you use the features, take note of what is easy and what is difficult. Let me know your experience, so I can keep improving Owlstown.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

Highlight authors

In the List of all publications block, there is now a Highlight Authors field where you can enter the names of authors that you want to highlight. The matching author names will be displayed in bold in the publications list. Example

Filter by title, author, tag, and section

Owlstown has a new content block called Custom list of publications. This block gives you more control on what appears on your publications list. It has fields that allow you to filter your publications by author, title, section, and tag. It also has fields for changing the order of your publications.

I’m excited to share with you a couple of new features that will improve your editing experience in Owlstown.

These features have been in my todo list for a long time, so I’m glad it’s finally available. Thank you to those who suggested these features. I appreciate your patience.

As you use the features, take note of what is easy and what is difficult. Let me know your experience, so I can keep improving Owlstown.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

Inline editing

The inline editing feature that I mentioned in the last newsletter is now available in the Owlstown Editor. This feature will make it even easier to update your academic website.

With inline editing, you can edit the content of your webpage directly on the webpage itself instead of editing a form on the Owlstown Editor sidebar. This feature will also save your changes automatically, so you don’t lose changes when you forget to click the Save button.

I left the old UI, in case there are problems with this new UI. Over time, I’ll remove the old UI. If you experience any problems, don’t hesitate to reach out with feature ideas or bug reports.

Nested links in the Navigation Bar

Owlstown now supports nested links in the Navigation Bar. With this feature, you can put more links in the navigation bar, while keeping it more organized.

I also updated the Navigation screen, so you can now link to any page in your Owlstown website. You can also link to PDF files.

Many people have asked for this feature, so I’m glad to have gotten around to it. This feature is available in all themes.

Owlstown Website Insights

For a limited time, I'm offering a free service to review your website to help you improve your academic website.

I will provide 1-2 actionable suggestions that you could use to improve your website. I will look at your website for its content, organization, and design.

This offer is available to Owlstown users and non-Owlstown users, so feel free to let your colleagues know.

Submit your website for review →

I haven’t sent a newsletter in about 3 months because I’ve been mostly working on the inner workings of Owlstown, such as security enhancements, speed improvements, and software updates. I didn’t post about them because I thought they’re not as “shiny” as user interface updates or as “pretty” as a new design theme. But I think that was a mistake.

From now on, I’m going to start including updates to the inner workings of Owlstown. By doing this, I hope you’ll learn more about how Owlstown works behind the scenes, and you can be rest assured that your academic websites are hosted and served in the best possible way.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

BibTeX brackets in publication titles

Owlstown will now properly render publication titles that have BibTeX brackets. For example, if your publication title has the BibTeX string "Hello {World}!", it will appear in your Owlstown website as "Hello World!". Words surrounded by \emph{} will be rendered in italics.

Check it out →

Custom Links

You can now add custom links to your list of social links. Custom links are displayed with a letter icon of the first letter of the link.

Check it out →

Speed up site access

Accessing sites is now several milliseconds faster because I added indexing to subdomain values in sites.

Check it out →

Reduce Ruby memory usage with jemalloc

I just reduced the amount of server memory used by Owlstown. This means that Owlstown websites can respond to more requests. It also means that webpages will load faster.

Check it out →

IN PROGRESS: Inline editing

I’m working on a new UI that will allow you to make edits directly in the Preview panel of the Owlstown Editor. I think this will make the UI more intuitive. Plus, editing might be faster when there is less switching between panels.

Here’s a preview:

Questions for the community

I’m adding a section to ask you about things I’m considering adding to Owlstown. If you have ideas and thoughts about any of them, please respond to this newsletter. I’d love to hear from you.

Other ways to provide feedback?

I turned down the Owlstown Forum because it's not being used that much. People prefer to send feedback via email or DM. I'm considering other channels to receive feedback from. Do people use Reddit or Discord? Other tools?

Referrals?

Do you have friends/colleagues interested in making an academic website? Want to give them a gift to nudge them? Let me know and I’ll send you a discount code that you can share with them.

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs: email me at hello@owlstown.com, message me on Twitter, or post a topic on the Owlstown Academic Forum.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

Faster Pages

I just added page caching to Owlstown websites, so now your webpages will load even faster. Faster webpages mean that your website visitors will less likely leave before your webpages load.

Fun fact: did you know that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds (source)?

Academic Website Contest

Brittany Trinh, Jennifer van Alstyne, and I are organizing the Best Personal Academic Website Contest again for 2023. Submit your academic website to enter.

Zoom Live Event

As part of the contest, we’re hosting a live event on Zoom on Aug 1 at 9 PM EST (register here). I will demonstrate how to start an academic website using Owlstown, then we’ll have a fireside chat to discuss frequently asked questions about making academic websites.

Hello Threads

I just set up a Threads account. If you have a Threads account, follow me at @owlstown. I’ll be posting updates about Owlstown on both Threads and Twitter.

From the Community

“EdWeek Fans the Flame of Teacher Blaming” by Kate Peeples

“Navigating the AI Boom as a Biophysics PhD (and watching out for the biases)” by Vadim Bogatyr

“Latest results from our Computer Vision in Radiation Therapy project” (video) by David Thomas

“Interview with BioPatrika: From PhD to Entrepreneurship: A Researcher's Journey of Turning an Idea into a Reality” (video) by Shrishti Singh

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs: email me at hello@owlstown.com, message me on Twitter, or post a topic on the Owlstown Academic Forum.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

Design Wiz

Experience how easy it is to design an academic website with Owlstown Design Wiz. Use the demo to try combinations of themes, fonts, and colors. When you find the design you like, you can apply it to your existing website.

New Theme: Jersey

Introducing a new Owlstown theme called Jersey. Now, you can choose from 10 themes to design your academic website. Switching themes is as easy as clicking a button.

Multi-colored palettes

Multi-colored palettes are now available to all Owlstown websites (including free subscribers). Personalize your website with your favorite colors. Visit the Owlstown Editor to try it.

Improved Cite Dialog

I just added some features to the Cite Dialog on your publication pages.

• 📋 Your visitors can effortlessly copy citations with just a click.

• ⌨️ Plus, BibTeX is included too.

For an example, click on the Cite button on this page.

From the Community

Perseverance Amidst Familial Criticism by Eduardo González-Mora

My (Extremely Positive) Experience as a Fulbright Alternate by Brianna J. Muir

The need to improve the federal government support during disaster management: the failure of the Strategic National Stockpile by Andrea Patrucco

People respond to incentives by Mark L.J. Wright

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs: email me at hello@owlstown.com, message me on Twitter, or post a topic on the Owlstown Academic Forum.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

Follow

Your Owlstown website just got a new Follow feature. With this feature, your website visitors can follow the latest updates on your website. This makes it easier to inform your audience of your academic work and improves the reach of your research.

I’m so happy to announce this feature because it’s another step forward in Owlstown’s mission of fostering a strong community around research.

Notes about this feature:

• You cannot follow your own website. If you are viewing your own website on the same browser that you are logged into Owlstown, you will not see the Follow button. Visit the Academic Gallery to find other websites that you can follow.

• If you don’t want the Follow button to appear on your website, you can hide it by turning off the feature in the Owlstown Editor.

New Dashboard

I also reorganized the logged-in experience in Owlstown. When you log in, you will see a new navigation rail on the left side with these links:

• Sites: This page lists your website, other sites that you can edit, and sites that you follow.

• Inbox: This page lists the latest updates from websites that you follow.

• Discover: This page lists the latest updates from all Owlstown websites.

From the Community

Embracing Diversity: 6 Unique Gender-Neutral Names for a Global World by Piotr Godzisz

Exploring fair climate policies under uncertainty and conflicting goals: a computer-aided approach by Patrik Jansson

Elle Lett shared 30 Days, a Penn Med Moth Story that she performed after the death of her mother.

Measurement: Trade and the Balance of Payments by Mark L.J. Wright

Project management course for PhDs by Priya Srivastava

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs: email me at hello@owlstown.com, message me on Twitter, or post a topic on the Owlstown Academic Forum.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

Search page

Add a search page in your Owlstown academic website. Help your visitors easily find things in your website. Learn more about adding a Search page to your website.

Check out this example Search page.

Extra links and Altmetric badge

Show additional links for each publication in your publications list. You can link to additional info about your paper, e.g. a PDF, a journal website, a DOI url, etc. You can also show an Altmetric badge in the publication list of your academic website. Learn more about the publications list block.

Picture Gallery

Add a picture gallery to your academic website. This is one of the most requested features, so I'm glad to have finally created it. Learn more about the picture gallery block.

The picture gallery automatically lays out your pictures into a justified grid. A justified grid displays your pictures in rows while maintaining their aspect ratio. Clicking on a picture opens a lightbox, so users can see a bigger version of the picture. Users can use the left and right buttons to click through the rest of the images.

From the Community

Andrew Mitchell appeared on the official podcast of the Acoustical Society of America.

“Ally training for men : stand against discrimination” by Adrien Méry

“Aboriginal health research in the Hunter region, community panel” by Guy Cameron

“Advertising to Advertisers” by Cynthia B. Meyers

“Early Dispersal of Horses into the Great Plains” by Brianna J. Muir

“The scope and limits of oscillations in language comprehension” by Sander van Bree

50! 50 newsletters of updates and improvements to Owlstown. That's 3 years worth of new features. Thank you all for believing in the mission of Owlstown and trusting it with sharing your research online.

Stay tuned for more newsletters. I have a long list of features and ideas that are in progress or in the planning stages.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

New Design for Academic Gallery

The Academic Gallery has a new design. In addition to listing hundreds of great academic websites, the gallery now showcases individual webpages from Owlstown websites. This means you can browse webpages and discover new research content. I also added an improved search feature that makes it easier to find what you are looking for.

Ace plans

Owlstown subscription plans are now called Owlstown Ace plans: Ace Start, Ace Pro, and Ace Premium. With a subscription, you have the option of using the new domain ending: academicwebsite.com. Also check out Ace Awards for discount eligibility.

Contact info block

I created a new block for contact information. With this block, you can put your contact info on any page on your website. This is most relevant to websites that use the themes Duffel, Elbowpatch, Goggles, and Hoodie. You can move the contact info that appears in the home page and move it to a different page.

From the Community

“From Chaos to Order: Using Scrum in my PhD Research” by Vadim Bogatyr

“Exploring Maternal Mortality in Roman Egypt” by Brianna J. Muir

“Computing optimal policies for clean energy and sustainable development” by Patrik Jansson

Video interview with Biopatrika: A researcher’s journey of turning an idea into a reality by Shrishti Singh, PhD

The 2023 evaluation of the math curriculum in Austria by Michael Toppel

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs: email me at hello@owlstown.com, message me on Twitter, or post a topic on the Academic Forum.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

Owlstown supports 2 new domain name endings: research.st and scholar.st. You can use these domain names when you upgrade to a Pro plan.

Visit Owlstown Academic Domains to see if your domain name is available.

All Owlstown themes with horizontal navigation bars support automatic overflow menus. The overflow menu appears when the links in the header don't fit the width of the header. As the header width shrinks, more links are moved to the overflow menu.

I added more functionality to the Editor header. Now, you can see the URL of the page that you are editing and you can open the URL in a new window. The Account menu makes it easier to manage your account. When you need help, you are just a click away from many options in the Help menu.

From the Community

“Things I’ve learnt as a doctoral student about presenting” by Priya Srivastava

“The End of Easy Money for the Advertising Industry?” by Cynthia B. Myers

“Navigating the UK Graduate Visa Process: A PhD Graduate's Experience” by Andrew Mitchell

Notes from the Night Economy Annual Forum 2023 by Tuhin Batra

“Ngarrama community event” by Guy Cameron

Here’s your update of what’s happening in Owlstown. For feedback, questions, and bugs:

• Email me at hello@owlstown.com

• Message me on Twitter

• Post a topic on the Academic Forum.

Cheers,
Ian 🦉

What’s New

The Academic Forum is the official discussion site for Owlstown. You’ll find topics on features, bugs, development, and general support.

Embed and customize your Buy Me a Coffee button using the Buy Me a Coffee block.

You can now add footnotes to Markdown text blocks. Footnotes appear as numbered badges. Click on a badge and a panel will show up with the text of the footnote.

Lists that are sortable now have drag indicators to make it clear that they are sortable. To sort a list, click on the drag indicator of a list item and drag to the desired position.

From the Community

Celebrity Endorsements & Crypto by Cynthia B. Meyers

Christos Gkoumas submitted his Ph.D. dissertation: “The effects of visual clutter in naturalistic environments on perception and cognition during childhood and adulthood”.

Shrishti Singh developed a promising new technology that would allow cancer to be visualized in deep tissue and perhaps diagnosed earlier.

The evolutionary war — how to beat cancer in its own game by Mahmoud Ahmed

Call for SSIs 2023 Applications by Rashid Ahmed Rifat

Want a simple webpage to link to all of your academic and social profiles? Create an Academic Link.

You can now add a link to your Mastodon profile in your list of Social Links.

You can now add custom pages using the Custom Pages section under Collections. I hope this makes it clearer how to create custom pages.

From the community

Taotao Wu and Rashid Ahmed Rifat are among the winners in the 2022 Best Personal Academic Websites Contest. See the full list of winners. Thank you to all who submitted their websites to the contest.

Science Communication: 5 easy ways to get involved and reasons why by Clara Stein

Hopping Down Memory Lane - My First Scientific Article! by Jacqueline Shaia

2 teaching posts by Rachel Gunter

• Teaching Sojourner Truth's Most Famous Speech

• Teaching Secession with Primary Documents

Qualitative Analysis Examples by Jess Hagman

“FTX: The Most Trusted Way to Buy and Sell Crypto” by Cynthia B. Meyers

New publication on interviewer overconfidence in the European Joural of Work and Organizational Psychology by Risk and Decision Making Lab

Job market section

I added a job market section to the Academic Gallery to highlight academics and researchers who are in the job market.

If you’re in the job market and want your academic website listed, send me a tweet with your website URL at @owlstown.

Right-to-left languages

Owlstown has support for right-to-left languages. This feature is automatic. Owlstown figures out the direction of the text based on the first letter of the text block and changes the direction accordingly. This saves you time, since you don't have to select left-to-right or right-to-left modes for your text.

Keep track of your pictures

It's easier to keep track of pictures that you use in your website. First, you can now add names to your pictures, so you can browse through them more easily.

Second, you can track where your pictures are used throughout your website.

From the community

The deadline to the Best Personal Academic Website Contest 2022 has been extended to November 2, 2022 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

Notes on Grad School Experience by Usman Afzali

What I learnt from studying Psychology (2021) by Clara Stein

Booth and poster presentation at the 18th Panhellenic Conference on Psychological Research by Christos Gkoumas

Mari-Liis Korkus describes the first week of her linguistic fieldwork.

Best practices in countering SOGIESC-based hate crimes in Europe by Piotr Godzisz

NL-eEDM research program has 6 open PhD positions.

Cheers,

Ian 🦉

What's new

Introducing The Academic Gallery. It's a website where you can discover academic websites by PhD students, faculty, researchers, and scientists.

If you have an Owlstown website, your website is already in the gallery. If not, let me know. Make sure your site has at least your name, contact info, and a short bio. +1 for a site avatar and project descriptions.

You can now set the alignment of several blocks (text block, Markdown, and callouts). I also updated the menu UI across all blocks.

You can now add mathematical equations into your text using LaTeX math format. More details

From the community

Brittany Trinh, Jennifer van Alstyne (The Academic Designer), and I are organizing a contest for the Best Personal Academic Websites.

Taotao Wu invites PIs, postdocs, and students to join a Slack workspace on biomedical engineering and health science.

Patrik Jansson shared a presentation video and slides on Domain-Specific Languages for Societal Challenges.

Luz Ospina wrote The Authoritarian Personality: Preparing Your Data.

Bahruz Jabiyev posted Biological Inspiration.

Cheers,

Ian 🦉

What's new

Your website visitors can now share your webpages on social media websites with the new Sharer widget feature.

I added support for more sizes for headings. You can use up to 6 levels of headings (H1-H6, biggest to smallest). 

Want to make a pledge to foster a supportive research environment? You can show your support by adding the #MentorFirst logo on your Owlstown website.

From the community

Rachel Gunter shared several class activities to teach history. The titles sounds very interesting: The Comatose Uncle Exercise, Boston Massacre Activity, Independence Day Break. Up Activity.

Rupleen Kaur wrote about "Intro to Premetastatic Niches and Tumor Secreted Factors".

Vaibhav Kalvakota wrote "But where are the wormholes?".

Luz H. Ospina wrote "The Effect of Positive Emotions on Cognitive Performance".

Cheers,

Ian 🦉

What’s new

Multi-color support is available for all themes. You can use it if you have an Owlstown Pro subscription.

5 free tools to check the quality of your academic website and make it better.

Use TitleShot to create beautiful images of your research paper titles that you can share on social media websites.

From the community

Cathy Gilburn wrote "Girls can't do physics!" and other damaging stereotypes.

Usman Afzali shares his academic journey with a dedication to his father.

Piotr Godzisz wrote Extremism, Pride, Security, and Democracy: In the aftermath of the Oslo shooting.

Brittany Brashear wrote On the importance of positionality statements.

Lois King shared her experience researching child pneumonia in Bangladesh.

Cheers,

Ian 🦉

What’s new

Add columns to your website using the new columns block feature.

You can use callouts to add tips, suggestions, hints, and warnings to your academic website.

I created Help Center for instructions on how to use Owlstown.

From the community

Gerald Gallagher describes what computational engineering is.

Seeking Solutions to Arctic Energy Security Locally Through Renewable Energy Transitions by Chad Walker

Jacqueline Shaia interviews Two Blind Brothers.

Sander van Bree introduces the Brain Time Toolbox.