I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date.
Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk your ear off about the places I've been and the things I've done, but if I'm objective about it, none of it is particularly praiseworthy, and it's hardly going to make me stand out to a potential employer. Any attempt to dramatize my life or skills is going to reek of pomposity, even the rare bits that are somewhat unique.
I'm not a designer. I'm not a visual person. Any attempt to fashionably describe myself is going to backfire. My resume is a good overview of my skills and experience, but if I try to turn that into an online portfolio, it's not going to be any more impressive. If I don't keep it up to date, and remodel it constantly to keep up with contemporary fashions, it's going to make me look old and out of touch.
I have an exceedingly common first and last name, so I'm hard for employers to find online. I'm happy about this. I don't want employers scrutinizing my social media presence, as benign as it is. I would never give a potential employer any of my online IDs if they asked.
If you've got something to say or show and you want your own home page, go for it. I don't think most people actually have enough interesting content to warrant it, though, and I'm pretty sure that I don't.
Some of the most interesting things online are people writing about things they are passionate about, for the sake of writing about them. At least in my opinion, so it’s fair to say that I agree with the author.
I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though. I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down, almost as though the journaling is me thinking out loud on something. I could certainly do this in an old fashioned journal, or keep things to myself, but in my experience, I’ve learned a lot about something by having to write about it in a way that anyone could read. Which includes explaining things that are obvious to me, but not to you.
I know it’s not for everyone, and I respect that, but if you do think out loud, then do us all a favour and share the things that are most important to you. I think it’ll help keep the internet much more interesting in the age of social media.
If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs.
If you're passionate about a subject, you're going to have strong opinions about said subject. If you voice/publish those opinions, some people are going to hate you. Perhaps a potential employer was set to hire you until they read your blog post in which you were eloquently critical about offshoring, for example.
Or worse, you expressed an off-hand opinion about some social issue back in 2006 in an otherwise technical blog post that the wrong person stumbled upon and now the world is going to cave in on you.
I would love to write more, but censoring myself for the sake of future employers, psychos, etc. tends to make anything I do produce come off as bland and uninteresting.
The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company you worked for, or any news outlet article where your name is mentioned will rank first and ahead of any personal website.
I understand if one's full name combination is too common to show every personal website, but I feel like if a unique name is googled, or there's one or two decidedly well known person(s) of that name, and that person has authored a personal site, search engines should prioritize that on the first page, if not the very first result(s).
Try googling for John Carmack, Barack Obama, or (op) Mark Christian. What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine?
In Finland it is illegal to google for applicant's online presence, because of the possibility of judging the candidate because of misidentification. You have to have applicant's permission to that. And I am glad, because one of my name doubles isn't very representative person according to their online presence.
I started running a vanity domain name around 2000, for email and Web, and have a few thoughts based on that...
Hosting chronology something like: home Linux box on ADSL, 2 different shared hosters, 1U in a colo facility, back to earlier shared hoster.
For my real-name vanity domain, I went with a `.org`, since I didn't want to be a `.com` in personal life, though today I'd prefer `.net`. (The longer story behind this is that, early in dotcoms, I very quickly got tired of being at social parties of grad students, with MBA students always wanting to talk to me for startup reasons. Also, CS departments and culture were changing due to the gold rush. Going "non-profit" was an idealistic youth reaction.)
The reasons I keep the vanity domain and hosting include:
(1) I'm not signing over rights to some snooping companies to snoop on my email, nor will I implicitly endorse that practice. (IMHO, the current practice of corporate snooping on everyone's private communications is a bad for society. All this time, we techies have been shirking our responsibility to advise people about what they're signing away, and why that's an undesirable direction. I haven't done my part, but I'll try not to make it worse.)
(2) The vanity domain name gives me flexibility for where&how I host, and doesn't lock me into anyone. (Though I'll remain loyal to a hoster who's worked well, even if that means my site is not a showcase for a currently popular service. I've done novel things on AWS professionally, and I shouldn't have to prove anything with my quaint little personal site.)
(3) I've run the canonical Web pages for various niche open source projects, and there's never been an obviously good third-party permanent home for them. (I did almost move those projects to a `git`-centric third-party service, fairly recently, but then my first choice service was acquired by a very different corporate culture, and this also raised the question of how my second choice is going to change (due to competition, or presumably being courted for acquisition). Moving is a lot of trouble to go to, for a situation that might make me want to move again soon after that, so I stick with my ancient site design and hoster.)
I have mixed feelings about the Web site's dated visual design, and I think this is a consideration for anyone who makes a Web presence that will last for years... Mine has looked almost identical for ages, and now feels personally "genuine" to me, compared to better but generic modern looks. While the look stayed the same, the implementation has moved from `table`, to CSS that mimiced the `table` look, to CSS that's responsive while still respecting user's preferred font size. In parallel, there was also a move from HTML4-ish, to XHTML, to HTML5. Along the way, I dropped some unnecessary features that were flashy when I did them, like code syntax coloring (for which I rigged up Emacs into site generation).
I suppose a dated-looking site filters out job opportunities from people who insist that one's personal Web site showcase their best frontend practices. It could stand another look, at tweaks or makeover or complete rethinking, but I'd rather invest unpaid time in contributing to an open source project or techie community, than futzing around with the vanity domain.
You might keep updating your own site, but at some point you might have better things to do, so try to leave it in a style you won't mind being frozen at for years.
I would consider being an online ghost as a great compliment with how everything has been lately. There is way too much public information being pumped out for no reason at all.
A lot of commentary around recent development on the web kind of falls into a common theme of "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to do WWW like it was 1997 again?"
The thing that makes a personal webpage now different from a personal webpage in 1997 is this: Back then you could expect to immediately rank #1 on your own name, and you would even have a decent chance of ranking for some keywords related to content that you put up. Nowadays, if you're unlucky and you have a name that's somewhat common, or even just a single other person exists with a strong online footprint that has the same name as you, then you won't even rank for your own name any more. If you want any of your actual content to rank, then the chances of making that happen are even slimmer.
More eyeballs on the internet means greater incentives to put content online that will get noticed, which means that commercial interests will throw money and resources at making that happen which a personal side project can't compete with. More content online means search engines get to be pickier about what they show to users. The cost/benefit calculation has changed dramatically, especially around how much content you have to put up and how frequently you have to put up content, because search engines heavily penalize content for being old or stale even when content ages well when it's good and even when you actually write on stuff that you are a real authority on and even when the web is desperately in need of less of the "sponsored" kind of content and more of the "independent & authoritative" kind of content.
So in order to truly solve the problem of making it worthwhile again for people to have personal websites, one first needs to solve the discovery problem.
I think somebody should invent a search engine to do that.
I think that when people put up personal webpages now, they should adopt a "fediverse" technology stack to turn their personal webpages into a social-media-like experience that allows for an alternative vector of discovery next to keyword search.
I think that policymakers should reverse the current trend wherein they put liabilities on website owners & operators that a private person doing a personal webpage can't possibly shoulder.
So, in conclusion: Bring back some of the goodness of the WWW of 1997 again. I'm all for it. But the technology community has a loooong way to go, before that can become a reality.
I think the main thing you should have in mind when you make a personal website is to not have any expectations. Nobody cares, nobody will read your words, etc - until they do, until you're suddenly discovered, and people go back through your years of posts and find a lot of gold stuff.
I think that was the core of the "old" 97 websites - I mean Google didn't exist back then, so finding a page when you search for a name was neither here nor there. Instead you found a webpage through word of mouth, and unlike today, you'd sit down and spend the time to have a good browse through the site.
On that last note, personal websites are often still manageable - that is, if you sit down for a couple hours, you can consume a lot of the content that one person created in the span of an X amount of years. Not so much with a lot of the bigger websites nowadays; Medium.com is a rabbithole and you'll quickly end up going to another author's posts. News and moreso social media sites are an infinite torrent of rapid fire blurbs, all tugging you one way then the other in terms of subjects, political sides, and in ways to try and sell something to you.
You make it sound like a big audience is the only thing that matters. The linked post talks about a personal website as a digital identity. Giving people a link so they can find you online is a good reason to have a website, even today.
Besides that, making your own website is rewarding in many other ways - Being creative, getting thoughts out of your head, pinning down certain arguments you tend to repeat, etc.
I'd like to point out that all said is not true for small languages. I got a website in Hebrew, and due to the lack of competition I'm #1 on my name, and #1 in many keywords.
A place on the internet that you own and can write your thoughts down is very valuable. Yes, there are other services that you can leverage (medium, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, stack overflow, to name a few, depending on your content and desired reach) but your content there will alwybe subject to the whims of others. Big companies aren't always going to have your best interest at heart.
It's a bit of a pain to set up, but as the article states, you get your own space. Writing is one of the ways I learn best, and any writing I do is highly leveragable and can be used by folks far into the future. With your own site, you also have, again as the article states, a place to do low risk but still meaningful technical exploration.
I have had my own site for almost 20 years and look forward to having it for 20 more.
Also, see this post from Dion Almaer about bringing content back to his site vs a third party service:
This is the comment I came here for. It's always a good idea to have your own spot on the Internet that you have control over, and can write about whatever you like.
My website is my username DOT org, for anyone who is curious.
Completely agree with the article. I think it's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose.
I've been told several times that I was Googled prior to interviews/meetings and have heard great things about my website, my online presence, my books (I have an "author" card when people Google me), etc. Whatever you do to make you stand out is a boon.
> I think it's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose.
A logical consequence is that you compete with other vain people online who might choose to stretch the truth a bit more than you do. At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have?
I don't think everyone must have a website, but I do think many more people would if they realised that the cost and difficulty of setting one up are much lower than they used to be.
A personal site can be about pretty much whatever you want, and look how you want it to look. It doesn't need to be a sales pitch, or on topic all the time. It doesn't need to come top in google when you search for your name. You get to decide why you're building it and who your target readers are (if any).
Like almost everyone I've done the blogging thing on blogging platforms, on hosted traditional sites, on github with jekyll, etc. At some point I always get tired of dealing with it, question why I am even posting something, and what the whole point of it is.
Essentially what I want is a journal, and as my vanity continues be killed, I'm sure I'll eventually go to using an actual paper journal.
Right now I am one step away, I've been using gopher to blog on SDF.org. A huge reduction in audience, and since it is text based, its about as simple as you can get.
I don't judge a person's technical skill through this metric (or at least I make an attempt not to), but it's rather noticeable when someone has nothing going on online. A blank GitHub, no website, no projects, etc. For an employed person, eh, whatever, maybe they just have a life.
But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracurriculars. But something like a simple GitHub projects site or more than 50 commits in a year goes a long way to making yourself seem like an active, competent developer. I can count the number of people I've met with semi-active GitHubs at my school on one hand. That's not exactly a vote of confidence for my school's CS program.
"Oh so you call yourself a mechanic, huh? Well you aren't blogging about cars and mechanic-related things in your free time, so I'm suspicious".
"Oh, an architect, huh? You don't have an online presence, which is worrying".
I'm baffled as to why people expect programmers to spend most of their time behind a computer, and to make social git commits or blog about it on top of that.
I program professionally. It's true that I sometimes program after work on personal projects and write for my blog, but I also devote my time to studying Korean, and Japanese kanji. I also draw, spend time with friends, or occasionally play videogames. Programming is exhausting and oftentimes the last thing I want to do is look at code or write about it after work.
And of course, people have things like kids or other responsibilities in their life. College students may have extracurricular activities or work. Not every college student has oodles of free time as you so broadly assume.
We shouldn't have to justify NOT blogging or pushing to github. How dare I have any interests outside of computers and programming. Blegh.
I sometimes wonder if the culture in Europe is different. I don't know a single person working in SWE who has an active GitHub presents or a personal blog. Of course, GitHub wasn't a thing during my college time (subversion was king, not sure if GitHub was available). But even now, of all the things you can do with your free time, why would you choose more coding or writing about coding? The people who are that passionate about coding have to be quite rare.
Personally, I tried to do side projects several times. But after a while I realized, that I really don't care and that it is not necessary for my employment. SWE is just a job, it's enjoyable work, but still nothing but work. I do enough at home to remain employable and to be decent at my job. There is no point doing any more.
I used to think the same way as you. Until something happened in my life that changed me.
I used to have a very fruitful open source life. I have a personal website, a blog, etc. Some of my libraries are useful and reasonably known on my niche.
Then I had a child. Everything changed after that. I suddenly don't have time or energy to devote to open source any more.
I am the same person as before, but if you looked at my online activity before and after, it's like two different people. If you "give points" to the person who had a lot of personal free time in the past, you'll be missing the one who doesn't know (but is just as capable, he just has other things to do, or less free time).
With students it's the same deal. If you give points to the ones with a very strong online presence you are prioritizing the ones which have the luxury of free time to invest. You will miss on the ones who, say, are taking care of an elderly person, or have to work in the cafeteria every day after class in order to make ends meet.
I don't see why a student should be measured differently when the developers with full-time jobs are excused with "maybe they just have a life". Some students have jobs outside of school or obligations/hobbies that take precedence over coding projects. I just think everyone should be held to the same bar, even students.
Some people like to be ghosts online but I really do like to post and write about my experiences whenever I can and it is nice to look back and see what I was doing a couple of months or years ago.
Personally, a website I can just do whatever on is great and I don't have to be worried about a platform's limitations, requirements, or nuances.
Most people prefer simplicity of networks like Twitter, facebook, etc but I really like having my own blog where one blog post is 50 words and another is 1500 words and many other things at the same time. And my individual pages can be anything from experiments to documentation.
Except for all the reasons you shouldn't. The biggest reasons is that if putting up a website doesn't feel like a good use of time, it's probably better to just not have one.
An alternative way to think about it is this... is it a good business decision to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real surprised if the answer was yes.
This is an uncompelling piece. I believe the core argument is that you should have a personal website a) because the author was unsettled by his own lack of an online presence and b) a side benefit is that he has somewhere to use tech that is interesting to him but not something he can do at work. There's also an offhand comment buried in there about writing practice being good, and an audience making it easier to stick to.
There's not even a real attempt to turn this into a persuasive piece - it's like it started as a post "why I like having a personal website" and then got a new title and intro paragraph. I'd like to see an attempt to explain why the two major points apply to "everyone" - or perhaps the first one wasn't even intended to be an argument, just background?
I've been blogging for 7 years using Wordpress (hosted, with my name as the domain name). It's been a great experience, and I wish I had started earlier. I don't feel any pressure to blog every week or every month, but over the years the content has built up anyway. At an interview recently, I was asked several questions (e.g. What makes a great programmer, What are the most important lessons you have learnt) for which I could point to blog posts I had written.
Okay, so what? Is it a blogger or promoter position? Otherwise, why should you have any visible online presence?
The whole thing is about one guy who decided to make a personal website and how he made it, that's fine. But why call it "You should have a personal website" without any reasoning/examples for others? I don't get it.
What are people’s thoughts on an ideal personal domain name?
firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous when used for things you’re the author of but not the subject of, like “andrewredford.com/my-js-library” or “andrewredford.com/notepad”.
fml.com (initials), if you can score a good TLD? flast.com? Create an unrelated but brand-able name like vegandev.com?
I've started blogging on firstlast.com (using my online alias), but by now I've turned it into my de-facto online portfolio. Most of what I publish goes to firstlast.com/project or project.firstlast.com. I don't think there is anything wrong with this approach: I'm not the subject, but it is my project after all.
The only issue I've had with my domain name was chosing my default email address: I did not like [email protected], so I went for [email protected] instead.
I use <last>.com which makes for a neat <first>@<last>.com email.
I've had it for more than 20 years. Funny story is that the hosting company keeps being bought, acquired or merged. I think I went through this process 6 times now which meant creating/converting a new account just in time to pay the yearly invoice.
I'm lucky enough to have a quite rare name, at least in that specific orthography. There are probably a few dozens of us around, and I have a remote idea of who everybody is.
So I manage to get my name.TLD quite easily (one of them was owned by a distant cousin until recently). I think [email protected] is pretty much the cleanest email address you could have. And I can spin other addresses for members of my family if needed.
> firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous
I'm not sure why that would be seen as pompous. It is your site, why not have it associated with your name?
I'm lucky enough to have got <last>.<tld> many years ago as my surname isn't that common (though common enough that <last>.com was already gone). Not that I currently have anything hosted on it (I had a personal site with photos and such, but that long since fell to bit rot as life got busy) but it is still handy for email. I have plans to resurrect it for a small amount of "about me" stuff (on <first>.<last>.<tld> maybe aliased as <first>.<middle>.<last>.<tld> to) and to hang some techie/professional projects off (<project>.<last>.<tld>) when I get of my lazy arse and actually implement some of them instead of just thinking about it all.
Unfortunately, for most people <last>.<tld> is very much no longer an option though. For many <first><last>.<tld> is most likely already gone too. If not to an actual person using the domain, or holding it for future use, then to someone who wants to sell it to you with a 900% markup.
> Create an unrelated but brand-able name
This works. It doesn't even need to be meaningful given that most of the time people aren't really aware of URLs the way they used to be, and many brand names are not meaningful beyond being brand names anyway. Your content matters much more than the name, as long as the name isn't in some way inappropriate to the content. Heck, if you don't need the name for branding purposes just pick a couple of random words from the dictionary until you find a pair/triplet/other that scans nicely, and use that.
I think I get the best of both worlds. Because my domain name is a numeronym of my name. So yes, it is my name (in a sense) and personal, but if you don't know me or care it can be anything. Also, it is really short, which I like. (j11g.com).
I don't think there's an ideal, but your tld is a big part of your brand in the long-run. I don't think it has to be based around your name, but basing it on your universal online handle is also a pretty good way to go about it.
I got a devoweled version of my middle name, four letters. Mostly just so I could have my own domain name for email, to get away from google, but I've also started putting up content. Right now it's just recipes, but I'll add other stuff if I find it interesting or important. I do very basic hand-coded HTML, because I'm sick of bloated websites.
I'm not making my site for anyone other than me. Curious people who look at my email address can visit my domain if they want to.
first + last.slice(0, last.length - 2) + "." + last.slice(-2)
No clue if it's a good idea since I've never actually used it and the unusual TLD may throw people off (especially since it is the TLD for a country I'm not from and have never been to). I just thought it was neat splitting my last name across the "dot".
[+] [-] caymanjim|6 years ago|reply
Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk your ear off about the places I've been and the things I've done, but if I'm objective about it, none of it is particularly praiseworthy, and it's hardly going to make me stand out to a potential employer. Any attempt to dramatize my life or skills is going to reek of pomposity, even the rare bits that are somewhat unique.
I'm not a designer. I'm not a visual person. Any attempt to fashionably describe myself is going to backfire. My resume is a good overview of my skills and experience, but if I try to turn that into an online portfolio, it's not going to be any more impressive. If I don't keep it up to date, and remodel it constantly to keep up with contemporary fashions, it's going to make me look old and out of touch.
I have an exceedingly common first and last name, so I'm hard for employers to find online. I'm happy about this. I don't want employers scrutinizing my social media presence, as benign as it is. I would never give a potential employer any of my online IDs if they asked.
If you've got something to say or show and you want your own home page, go for it. I don't think most people actually have enough interesting content to warrant it, though, and I'm pretty sure that I don't.
[+] [-] jaabe|6 years ago|reply
I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though. I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down, almost as though the journaling is me thinking out loud on something. I could certainly do this in an old fashioned journal, or keep things to myself, but in my experience, I’ve learned a lot about something by having to write about it in a way that anyone could read. Which includes explaining things that are obvious to me, but not to you.
I know it’s not for everyone, and I respect that, but if you do think out loud, then do us all a favour and share the things that are most important to you. I think it’ll help keep the internet much more interesting in the age of social media.
If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs.
[+] [-] loosetypes|6 years ago|reply
Once, in the functional programming rabbit-hole, a coworker advocated for a hypothetical Indian food truck named Haskell's Curry.
And when I was studying propositional logic I certainly wouldn't have said no to a side of De Morgan's ColesLaw.
[+] [-] jcadam|6 years ago|reply
Or worse, you expressed an off-hand opinion about some social issue back in 2006 in an otherwise technical blog post that the wrong person stumbled upon and now the world is going to cave in on you.
I would love to write more, but censoring myself for the sake of future employers, psychos, etc. tends to make anything I do produce come off as bland and uninteresting.
[+] [-] tigerlily|6 years ago|reply
Hmm, I wonder if there's a search engine tailored to this sort of thing? As in search all the blogs for human knowledge and experience.
[+] [-] gf263|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keerthiko|6 years ago|reply
I understand if one's full name combination is too common to show every personal website, but I feel like if a unique name is googled, or there's one or two decidedly well known person(s) of that name, and that person has authored a personal site, search engines should prioritize that on the first page, if not the very first result(s).
Try googling for John Carmack, Barack Obama, or (op) Mark Christian. What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine?
[+] [-] jzzskijj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|6 years ago|reply
Hosting chronology something like: home Linux box on ADSL, 2 different shared hosters, 1U in a colo facility, back to earlier shared hoster.
For my real-name vanity domain, I went with a `.org`, since I didn't want to be a `.com` in personal life, though today I'd prefer `.net`. (The longer story behind this is that, early in dotcoms, I very quickly got tired of being at social parties of grad students, with MBA students always wanting to talk to me for startup reasons. Also, CS departments and culture were changing due to the gold rush. Going "non-profit" was an idealistic youth reaction.)
The reasons I keep the vanity domain and hosting include:
(1) I'm not signing over rights to some snooping companies to snoop on my email, nor will I implicitly endorse that practice. (IMHO, the current practice of corporate snooping on everyone's private communications is a bad for society. All this time, we techies have been shirking our responsibility to advise people about what they're signing away, and why that's an undesirable direction. I haven't done my part, but I'll try not to make it worse.)
(2) The vanity domain name gives me flexibility for where&how I host, and doesn't lock me into anyone. (Though I'll remain loyal to a hoster who's worked well, even if that means my site is not a showcase for a currently popular service. I've done novel things on AWS professionally, and I shouldn't have to prove anything with my quaint little personal site.)
(3) I've run the canonical Web pages for various niche open source projects, and there's never been an obviously good third-party permanent home for them. (I did almost move those projects to a `git`-centric third-party service, fairly recently, but then my first choice service was acquired by a very different corporate culture, and this also raised the question of how my second choice is going to change (due to competition, or presumably being courted for acquisition). Moving is a lot of trouble to go to, for a situation that might make me want to move again soon after that, so I stick with my ancient site design and hoster.)
I have mixed feelings about the Web site's dated visual design, and I think this is a consideration for anyone who makes a Web presence that will last for years... Mine has looked almost identical for ages, and now feels personally "genuine" to me, compared to better but generic modern looks. While the look stayed the same, the implementation has moved from `table`, to CSS that mimiced the `table` look, to CSS that's responsive while still respecting user's preferred font size. In parallel, there was also a move from HTML4-ish, to XHTML, to HTML5. Along the way, I dropped some unnecessary features that were flashy when I did them, like code syntax coloring (for which I rigged up Emacs into site generation).
I suppose a dated-looking site filters out job opportunities from people who insist that one's personal Web site showcase their best frontend practices. It could stand another look, at tweaks or makeover or complete rethinking, but I'd rather invest unpaid time in contributing to an open source project or techie community, than futzing around with the vanity domain.
You might keep updating your own site, but at some point you might have better things to do, so try to leave it in a style you won't mind being frozen at for years.
[+] [-] RenRav|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stakhanov|6 years ago|reply
The thing that makes a personal webpage now different from a personal webpage in 1997 is this: Back then you could expect to immediately rank #1 on your own name, and you would even have a decent chance of ranking for some keywords related to content that you put up. Nowadays, if you're unlucky and you have a name that's somewhat common, or even just a single other person exists with a strong online footprint that has the same name as you, then you won't even rank for your own name any more. If you want any of your actual content to rank, then the chances of making that happen are even slimmer.
More eyeballs on the internet means greater incentives to put content online that will get noticed, which means that commercial interests will throw money and resources at making that happen which a personal side project can't compete with. More content online means search engines get to be pickier about what they show to users. The cost/benefit calculation has changed dramatically, especially around how much content you have to put up and how frequently you have to put up content, because search engines heavily penalize content for being old or stale even when content ages well when it's good and even when you actually write on stuff that you are a real authority on and even when the web is desperately in need of less of the "sponsored" kind of content and more of the "independent & authoritative" kind of content.
So in order to truly solve the problem of making it worthwhile again for people to have personal websites, one first needs to solve the discovery problem.
I think somebody should invent a search engine to do that.
I think that when people put up personal webpages now, they should adopt a "fediverse" technology stack to turn their personal webpages into a social-media-like experience that allows for an alternative vector of discovery next to keyword search.
I think that policymakers should reverse the current trend wherein they put liabilities on website owners & operators that a private person doing a personal webpage can't possibly shoulder.
So, in conclusion: Bring back some of the goodness of the WWW of 1997 again. I'm all for it. But the technology community has a loooong way to go, before that can become a reality.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|6 years ago|reply
I think that was the core of the "old" 97 websites - I mean Google didn't exist back then, so finding a page when you search for a name was neither here nor there. Instead you found a webpage through word of mouth, and unlike today, you'd sit down and spend the time to have a good browse through the site.
On that last note, personal websites are often still manageable - that is, if you sit down for a couple hours, you can consume a lot of the content that one person created in the span of an X amount of years. Not so much with a lot of the bigger websites nowadays; Medium.com is a rabbithole and you'll quickly end up going to another author's posts. News and moreso social media sites are an infinite torrent of rapid fire blurbs, all tugging you one way then the other in terms of subjects, political sides, and in ways to try and sell something to you.
[+] [-] raffomania|6 years ago|reply
Besides that, making your own website is rewarding in many other ways - Being creative, getting thoughts out of your head, pinning down certain arguments you tend to repeat, etc.
[+] [-] prennert|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neiman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namarie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooreds|6 years ago|reply
A place on the internet that you own and can write your thoughts down is very valuable. Yes, there are other services that you can leverage (medium, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, stack overflow, to name a few, depending on your content and desired reach) but your content there will alwybe subject to the whims of others. Big companies aren't always going to have your best interest at heart.
It's a bit of a pain to set up, but as the article states, you get your own space. Writing is one of the ways I learn best, and any writing I do is highly leveragable and can be used by folks far into the future. With your own site, you also have, again as the article states, a place to do low risk but still meaningful technical exploration.
I have had my own site for almost 20 years and look forward to having it for 20 more.
Also, see this post from Dion Almaer about bringing content back to his site vs a third party service:
https://blog.almaer.com/almaer-com-reopens-for-business/
[+] [-] dmuth|6 years ago|reply
My website is my username DOT org, for anyone who is curious.
[+] [-] dvt|6 years ago|reply
I've been told several times that I was Googled prior to interviews/meetings and have heard great things about my website, my online presence, my books (I have an "author" card when people Google me), etc. Whatever you do to make you stand out is a boon.
[+] [-] lazyjones|6 years ago|reply
A logical consequence is that you compete with other vain people online who might choose to stretch the truth a bit more than you do. At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have?
[+] [-] bifrost|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qubyte|6 years ago|reply
A personal site can be about pretty much whatever you want, and look how you want it to look. It doesn't need to be a sales pitch, or on topic all the time. It doesn't need to come top in google when you search for your name. You get to decide why you're building it and who your target readers are (if any).
[+] [-] CIPHERSTONE|6 years ago|reply
Essentially what I want is a journal, and as my vanity continues be killed, I'm sure I'll eventually go to using an actual paper journal.
Right now I am one step away, I've been using gopher to blog on SDF.org. A huge reduction in audience, and since it is text based, its about as simple as you can get.
[+] [-] _hardwaregeek|6 years ago|reply
But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracurriculars. But something like a simple GitHub projects site or more than 50 commits in a year goes a long way to making yourself seem like an active, competent developer. I can count the number of people I've met with semi-active GitHubs at my school on one hand. That's not exactly a vote of confidence for my school's CS program.
[+] [-] intertextuality|6 years ago|reply
"Oh so you call yourself a mechanic, huh? Well you aren't blogging about cars and mechanic-related things in your free time, so I'm suspicious".
"Oh, an architect, huh? You don't have an online presence, which is worrying".
I'm baffled as to why people expect programmers to spend most of their time behind a computer, and to make social git commits or blog about it on top of that.
I program professionally. It's true that I sometimes program after work on personal projects and write for my blog, but I also devote my time to studying Korean, and Japanese kanji. I also draw, spend time with friends, or occasionally play videogames. Programming is exhausting and oftentimes the last thing I want to do is look at code or write about it after work.
And of course, people have things like kids or other responsibilities in their life. College students may have extracurricular activities or work. Not every college student has oodles of free time as you so broadly assume.
We shouldn't have to justify NOT blogging or pushing to github. How dare I have any interests outside of computers and programming. Blegh.
[+] [-] kharak|6 years ago|reply
Personally, I tried to do side projects several times. But after a while I realized, that I really don't care and that it is not necessary for my employment. SWE is just a job, it's enjoyable work, but still nothing but work. I do enough at home to remain employable and to be decent at my job. There is no point doing any more.
[+] [-] otikik|6 years ago|reply
I used to have a very fruitful open source life. I have a personal website, a blog, etc. Some of my libraries are useful and reasonably known on my niche.
Then I had a child. Everything changed after that. I suddenly don't have time or energy to devote to open source any more.
I am the same person as before, but if you looked at my online activity before and after, it's like two different people. If you "give points" to the person who had a lot of personal free time in the past, you'll be missing the one who doesn't know (but is just as capable, he just has other things to do, or less free time).
With students it's the same deal. If you give points to the ones with a very strong online presence you are prioritizing the ones which have the luxury of free time to invest. You will miss on the ones who, say, are taking care of an elderly person, or have to work in the cafeteria every day after class in order to make ends meet.
[+] [-] stormbeard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 0x54D5|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] numbers|6 years ago|reply
Personally, a website I can just do whatever on is great and I don't have to be worried about a platform's limitations, requirements, or nuances.
Most people prefer simplicity of networks like Twitter, facebook, etc but I really like having my own blog where one blog post is 50 words and another is 1500 words and many other things at the same time. And my individual pages can be anything from experiments to documentation.
[+] [-] PopeDotNinja|6 years ago|reply
Except for all the reasons you shouldn't. The biggest reasons is that if putting up a website doesn't feel like a good use of time, it's probably better to just not have one.
An alternative way to think about it is this... is it a good business decision to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real surprised if the answer was yes.
[+] [-] lazyasciiart|6 years ago|reply
There's not even a real attempt to turn this into a persuasive piece - it's like it started as a post "why I like having a personal website" and then got a new title and intro paragraph. I'd like to see an attempt to explain why the two major points apply to "everyone" - or perhaps the first one wasn't even intended to be an argument, just background?
[+] [-] sebastiangraef|6 years ago|reply
That includes personal website and social media.
[+] [-] henrik_w|6 years ago|reply
I've written about my experience blogging here: https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-pr...
[+] [-] mapcars|6 years ago|reply
Okay, so what? Is it a blogger or promoter position? Otherwise, why should you have any visible online presence?
The whole thing is about one guy who decided to make a personal website and how he made it, that's fine. But why call it "You should have a personal website" without any reasoning/examples for others? I don't get it.
[+] [-] Sujan|6 years ago|reply
The author was the interviewer, and the comment came from a candidate that wanted to research his interviewer as preparation for the interview.
The reasoning why he thinks one should have a personal website follows in the paragraphs "Practice" and "Learning".
[+] [-] jrootabega|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twhb|6 years ago|reply
firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous when used for things you’re the author of but not the subject of, like “andrewredford.com/my-js-library” or “andrewredford.com/notepad”.
fml.com (initials), if you can score a good TLD? flast.com? Create an unrelated but brand-able name like vegandev.com?
[+] [-] darekkay|6 years ago|reply
The only issue I've had with my domain name was chosing my default email address: I did not like [email protected], so I went for [email protected] instead.
[+] [-] rdschouw|6 years ago|reply
I've had it for more than 20 years. Funny story is that the hosting company keeps being bought, acquired or merged. I think I went through this process 6 times now which meant creating/converting a new account just in time to pay the yearly invoice.
[+] [-] goddtriffin|6 years ago|reply
https://www.toddgriffin.me/
[+] [-] Bayart|6 years ago|reply
So I manage to get my name.TLD quite easily (one of them was owned by a distant cousin until recently). I think [email protected] is pretty much the cleanest email address you could have. And I can spin other addresses for members of my family if needed.
[+] [-] dspillett|6 years ago|reply
I'm not sure why that would be seen as pompous. It is your site, why not have it associated with your name?
I'm lucky enough to have got <last>.<tld> many years ago as my surname isn't that common (though common enough that <last>.com was already gone). Not that I currently have anything hosted on it (I had a personal site with photos and such, but that long since fell to bit rot as life got busy) but it is still handy for email. I have plans to resurrect it for a small amount of "about me" stuff (on <first>.<last>.<tld> maybe aliased as <first>.<middle>.<last>.<tld> to) and to hang some techie/professional projects off (<project>.<last>.<tld>) when I get of my lazy arse and actually implement some of them instead of just thinking about it all.
Unfortunately, for most people <last>.<tld> is very much no longer an option though. For many <first><last>.<tld> is most likely already gone too. If not to an actual person using the domain, or holding it for future use, then to someone who wants to sell it to you with a 900% markup.
> Create an unrelated but brand-able name
This works. It doesn't even need to be meaningful given that most of the time people aren't really aware of URLs the way they used to be, and many brand names are not meaningful beyond being brand names anyway. Your content matters much more than the name, as long as the name isn't in some way inappropriate to the content. Heck, if you don't need the name for branding purposes just pick a couple of random words from the dictionary until you find a pair/triplet/other that scans nicely, and use that.
[+] [-] janvdberg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keerthiko|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KozmoNau7|6 years ago|reply
I'm not making my site for anyone other than me. Curious people who look at my email address can visit my domain if they want to.
[+] [-] iamatworknow|6 years ago|reply
first + last.slice(0, last.length - 2) + "." + last.slice(-2)
No clue if it's a good idea since I've never actually used it and the unusual TLD may throw people off (especially since it is the TLD for a country I'm not from and have never been to). I just thought it was neat splitting my last name across the "dot".
[+] [-] crehn|6 years ago|reply