Many of you are freelance writers, photographers, designers, etc. Is there a better way to possibly display your work than through a Web site that anyone in the world can see?

No.

A well designed, easy-to-navigate site is a great place to display works, especially for journalists. I tell my writer friends all the time to build a Web site for their clips. Instead of photocopying clips and snail mailing them away, you can have a digital portfolio that is accessible by anyone.

Sean Blanda has an interesting post about the subject. Every freelancer, journalist, etc should have a personal Web site (it’s a good way to get more work). More importantly, however, it should be a good Web site. Don’t waste your time making a Web site that embarrasses you and detracts from you work.

Blanda’s post was inspired by his own desires to make a new site, but when he looked around for inspiration from fellow freelancer writers, he realized their sites weren’t very good.

His recommendations are:

1. Make the writer easy to contact
2. Present themselves as a business, not an individual with a Blogger account
3. Have a home page that does not try to list all of your articles
4. Let the user decide if they want more details on you or your work
5. Support transparency and answer questions people have about your article/book/etc.
6. Stand out without compromising usability

His site, however, is an example of what not to do. It’s buggy, a lot of pages don’t have content and there are several glitches. I don’t know if he is working on the site right now, but don’t use his site as an example.

But his advice is very sound, which is probably why he realizes he needs to make a new site. Don’t have pages without content on them and make sure features work on all pages. And you must test your Web site across Internet Explorer 6 and 7, FireFox 1 and 2 and Safari at the minimum.

If you follow those recommendations, you’ll be well on your way to having a quality Web site to display your work. A good Web site will help any journalist professionally. No one ever looks down on you for having a strong Web presence.

When I designed The Pat Thornton Files a few a year ago, my goal was to build something that was clean, elegant and easy to use. It was important for me to display some of my varying works between writing, Web design, graphic design and photography. I also needed a site that would allow people to easily contact me and view my résumé.

Since, I built the original site, I have been adding additional graphical flourishes, like CSS and Ajax effects. I added these later because they weren’t crucial — my work was the main attraction. The additional effects, however, fit in perfectly with my design because I kept the design simple and flexible (ala Apple.com).

If you’re not a graphic designer, don’t try to be one. That’s the No. 1 mistake people make when designing sites. I have years of experience with photoshop and design, but I wouldn’t consider myself a graphic designer.

My advice is to be elegant, keep your site clean, display your best work (not all of it), make it easy for people to find out about you and be easy to contact. Every Web site should have a contact form. Just listing an e-mail address is unprofessional and may lead to you getting spammed out of your mind..

The Web is your friend journalists.

Let it make you a better journalist.