Personal web page vs Academia.edu vs ResearchGate I will soon finish my PhD and start searching for a post-doc position and I was wondering which web-based solution is the best suited to present myself and my work (I work in plant biology).

I see two main options: social network type, such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate or a personal page (using  for instance Wordpress).

My concern is that social networking solution does not offer a lot of flexibility (attaching documents, presenting my current research more in depth), but I do not want to seem too pretentious by having my own webpage while I am just a PhD student.

My question is then:


  Isn't it too soon to have a personal web page at this stage of my career (I am still a PhD student) to present my work or is the pre-made solution more adequate?
As soon as you have even a single preprint, people will begin searching online to find out who you are and what else you have done, so you must have a web page.  It doesn't have to be elaborate, and it's enough to start with a few lines of professional contact information and a list of links to papers, but you have to have something.

I think a generic web page looks more professional than one created using a social networking site, but perhaps that's because I'm old.  However, there is one absolutely critical issue: the page must allow visitors to download any content without logging in.  At least one of the social sites lets visitors view papers on the site, but insists that you create an account if you want to download anything.  This is terrible!  In my experience, nobody's going to create an account unless they really, really want that paper, and either way they are going to be unhappy at the imposition.  Offering access to papers and then harassing anyone who tries to download them leaves a very bad impression.