# Put your name online — your personal brand page (Kit 8)

Seven kits of accounts, keys, and a server. Tonight the payoff: something real, live on the internet, at your own domain, from your own machine.

And the first thing worth putting online is you. One simple page that says who you are, what you do, and where to go next. Your portfolio. Your free stuff. Your business. Your socials. One page you own that everything else hangs off.

Here's the part most people get backwards. They think a personal site has to be a project: a builder subscription, a theme, weeks of tinkering, and it still ends up "coming soon." Meanwhile the pages that actually work are embarrassingly simple. I follow marketers who run eight-figure campaigns through pages that are basically a headline, a photo, a few buttons, and good copy. Plain looking. Fast. Clear. And they get clicks, because clarity beats decoration every single time.

So that's Kit 8: a clean one-page hub with copy that actually says something, plus the two boring pages every real site has (privacy and terms), deployed to your Kit 7 server at your Kit 5 domain behind your Kit 3 Cloudflare. No builder, no theme, no monthly bill. Claude interviews you, writes it with you, builds it, and puts it live.

## What a hub page actually is (read this once)

It's not a portfolio site, a blog, or a funnel. It's simpler: **one page whose only job is to route people to the right place.** Someone hears your name, searches you, lands here, and in ten seconds knows what you do and where to click.

Three parts:
1. **A headline that makes a promise.** Not clever, clear. What do you do, for whom? "I help small shops automate the boring parts" beats "Welcome to my digital home" every time.
2. **A few link cards with real copy.** Each card is a destination plus one line about what's in it for the clicker. "See what I've built" pulls better than "Portfolio."
3. **One main action.** Decide the single thing you most want a visitor to do (email you, see your work, grab your free thing) and make that the loudest button on the page.

That's it. If you're tempted to add more, don't. A page that exists beats a masterpiece that's coming soon.

## The formula the page follows (simple on purpose)

Direct response has fancy frameworks, but a hub page only needs the simple one. Five beats, top to bottom:

1. **PROMISE.** The headline: "I help [who] [get what] [without the usual pain]." If a plain "How to X without Y" fits you better, use that shape instead. Either way it's about the visitor's outcome, never your title.
2. **WHAT, EXACTLY.** One or two plain lines on what you actually do. No buzzwords, no "passionate about." The test: a stranger could repeat it back correctly.
3. **WHY YOU, BRIEFLY.** A couple of lines of proof or background, and every line has to earn its place by answering "and what does that mean for the visitor?" Your skills are on the page to help them, not to impress them.
4. **THE OFFERS.** The link cards. Each one is framed as what the visitor gets: check out my free stuff, see my work, look at my business, read what I write. Offer language, not trophy language.
5. **ONE ACTION.** The loudest button. One.

The rule under all five: **the page is about what you offer, never about you as a person.** Count the words. If the page says "I" and "my" more than it says "you" and "your," the copy is facing the wrong way, and Claude rewrites it until it faces the reader.

## Prerequisite
- Kit 1's terminal and Claude Code, so Claude can build and deploy.
- Kit 3's Cloudflare, Kit 5's domain, Kit 7's server. This kit is where those three finally shake hands.
- Optional but nice: your Kit 6 email address, so the contact link on the page is you@yourdomain.com.
- A photo of yourself you don't hate. Optional too, but a face makes a personal page personal.

## How to use it (any OS)
- **Quick:** hit Copy, open Claude Code, paste this in, and say the line below.
- **Most reliable:** hit Download, then tell Claude:
  *"read ~/Downloads/personal-brand-page.md and build it with me."*

Either way, say:

> "Help me build and launch my personal brand page on my own server. Start by interviewing me, one question at a time, don't dump a form on me: (1) my name and the one-line version of what I do and who it's for, (2) the 3 to 5 places I want to send people (portfolio, free stuff, my business, socials, whatever I have) and what each one gives the visitor, (3) the ONE action I most want a visitor to take, (4) the look: dark or light, one accent color I like, and the overall vibe (clean and minimal, warm, bold), (5) whether I'm using a photo, and (6) my contact email (the Kit 6 address if I have one). Then write the copy WITH me, following this simple direct-response formula top to bottom: PROMISE (a headline about what I do for people, shaped like 'I help [who] [get what] [without the usual pain]' or 'How to [X] without [Y]', never my job title), WHAT EXACTLY (one or two plain lines a stranger could repeat back), WHY ME BRIEFLY (a line or two of proof, each one earning its place by answering what it means for the visitor), THE OFFERS (a benefit line for every link card, framed as what the visitor gets, not what I've achieved), and ONE ACTION (a single main button). Enforce the golden rule the whole way: the page is about what I OFFER and how it helps people, never about me as a person. If my answers drift into listing cool things about myself, pull me back and reframe them as help for the visitor. Run the you-test before showing me anything: if the copy says 'I' and 'my' more than 'you' and 'your', rewrite it to face the reader. Ban 'welcome to my website', 'passionate about', and buzzword titles. Push back if my copy is vague. Then interview me separately for the privacy and terms pages, because they should match what my site actually does, not be boilerplate: ask me whether I'm collecting emails or running a newsletter, whether I plan to run ads or use analytics, whether I'm selling or promoting anything (mine or affiliate), what my angle for the site is, and roughly where my audience is (some regions have stricter privacy rules). Use my answers to write a privacy.html and terms.html in the same style as the page, in plain language, that honestly describe what I do and don't collect, linked in the footer. Be direct with me that you're not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, it's a solid, honest starting point that fits my actual situation, and flag anything in my answers that's worth a professional look later. Then build it: a single index.html with inline CSS, no frameworks, mobile-first, fast. Then deploy: put the files on my Kit 7 server, serve them with pm2 so they survive a reboot, and connect my Kit 5 domain through my Kit 3 Cloudflare (tunnel if I have one) so the page is live at https://mydomain.com with HTTPS. Show me the URL when it's up, and set things up so future edits are just me telling you what to change."

## What it sets up

**1. The interview.** Claude asks before it builds: who you are, where the links go, the action that matters, the palette, the vibe. Ten minutes of questions so the page is yours, not a template with your name pasted in.

**2. Copy that pulls.** The words are the page. A promise up top, a human paragraph in the middle, a reason to click on every card. Claude drafts, you react, it tightens. If a line could be on anyone's page, it gets rewritten until it could only be on yours.

**3. One clean file.** The whole page is a single index.html with the styles inside it. No frameworks, no build step, no dependencies to break in a year. It loads instantly and works on a phone first. Simple to host, trivial to edit, impossible to outgrow by accident.

**4. The two boring pages, fitted to you.** A privacy page and a terms page, plain language, linked in the footer. And not boilerplate: Claude asks what your site will actually do first. Collecting emails? Planning ads? Using analytics? Selling or promoting anything? The pages get written to match your real answers, so they describe your site instead of some imaginary generic one. Claude will also say the quiet part out loud: it's not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, it's an honest starting point, and it flags anything in your situation worth a professional look later. Nobody reads these pages until the day something needs them: an ad account that wants a privacy link, a newsletter signup, a partner doing diligence. Real sites have them. Yours does now, and yours actually tell the truth.

**5. Live on your own stack.** The files land on your Kit 7 server, pm2 keeps them served through reboots, and your Kit 5 domain reaches them through your Kit 3 Cloudflare. Type your domain into your phone and watch your page load from your machine. That moment is the whole series paying off at once.

**6. Edits by sentence.** "Change the accent to green." "Add a card for the new project." "Swap the photo." The page is one file your assistant knows by heart, so updating it is a sentence, not a session. Pages like this stay current because updating them is easier than ignoring them.

## The copy rules (the part not to skip)
- **Offer, not ego.** The page displays your skill set in the one way that works: as help. Nobody visits to admire you; they visit to find out what you can do for them. Every line about you must convert into a line for them, or it goes.
- **Promise, not poetry.** The headline says what you do for people. If it makes you feel clever, it's probably costing you clicks.
- **The you-test.** Count "you/your" against "I/my." The reader should win. Claude runs this before showing you a draft, and rewrites until the page faces the visitor.
- **Benefit lines on every card.** Not "Blog" but "Short lessons from what I'm building." Not "Services" but "Hire me to fix your slowest process."
- **One loud button.** Everything can be on the page; only one thing gets to be the star. Pick it on purpose.
- **First person, like you talk.** Read your about paragraph out loud. If you wouldn't say it to a person at a table, Claude rewrites it.
- **Short.** The page should be read in under a minute. The links are where the depth lives; that's the whole trick of a hub.
- **Claude is the guardrail.** Mid-interview you'll be tempted to add your titles, your journey, your certifications. That's normal; it's your page. Claude's standing instruction is to catch it and ask the only question that matters: "what does the visitor get from that?" If there's an answer, it goes on the page as help. If there isn't, it doesn't go on the page.

## Cost, straight
Zero new dollars. This is the first kit in the series with no new account and no new bill. The domain (Kit 5), the Cloudflare (Kit 3), and the server (Kit 7) are already paid for, and this page is a rounding error on the smallest VPS. Everything from here rides on infrastructure you already own.

## Make it stick
One page, your name on it, your words on it, served from a machine you control at an address you own. Most people online are a bio field on someone else's platform. You're now a website. When a platform changes its rules, your front door doesn't move.

You're done when: https://yourdomain.com loads your page on your phone, the footer links open your privacy and terms pages, and you've changed one thing on it (a word, a color) just by telling Claude, so you know updates are a sentence away.

That's Kit 8. The stack stopped being setup and started being yours: name, address, mail, machine, and now a front door. From here, everything we build has a home to live at.

-- Cliff (connectwithcliff.com)