If this were true, SquareSpace would be trading way higher than they are now, Twitter wouldn't exist, and Facebook would look a lot like MySpace.
My take: people created websites back then because there was no other choice. People RUSHED into MySpace when it got hot partly because of this.
Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming. Just like many people don't become screenwriters or directors because they love TV or movies (though this is definitely a bigger pipeline than tech); they just want The Avengers or Real Housewives or whatever.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Most people have non-computery interests, and that's fine.
> Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming.
Strong disagree. People want to participate, they want to be part of a conversation. When you "consume" content on Facebook or Twitter, you can produce content and reasonably expect to get an audience - because you know there's other people there.
If you have your own personal website, you have no natural audience. If you're lucky, Google might like it and return it. But chances are, it won't thanks to SEO. And even if you do, you don't have any replies. A voice shouting into a void, signifying nothing. At that point, you need a blogging engine that allows for replies, and now you're in the world of off-the-shelf solutions. Not so far from Facebook or MySpace, which gets you your audience.
"People only care about consuming" -- it might seem that way to a lazy beholder. The entire digital landscape is engineered for consumption -- of ads, and the products they advertise.
Yet individuals continue to CREATE content on which these parasites piggy-back. We are creatives by nature. The consumption is just one facet; had we built "the internet" out of tools and spaces more suitable for creativity, perhaps this would be more reflected in the general trends. Even now, you can't stem the tide of silly, interesting, creative things people post in these narrow, controlled channels.
> SquareSpace would be trading way higher than they are now, Twitter wouldn't exist, and Facebook would look a lot like MySpace.
What is remarkable is that despite trying to wall the garden, the personal website is still a thing.
> Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming.
Maybe the era of shifting print, TV and radio to the internet is reaching saturation. You can view the internet as a content distribution system, but that ignores the key difference between internet and broadcast media: it is a two-way communication media.
> My take: people created websites back then because there was no other choice.
There were plenty of choices. The big innovation was the social network that allowed people to connect with friends, family, and people with common interests. Now you could write something, take a picture, make a video, whatever, and share it with people who would start communicating with you and form communities around those interests.
> Most people have non-computery interests, and that's fine.
Most people now communicate via the internet about those non-computer-y interests.
No. 20 years ago people created personal websites because it was a creative endeavor for creative personalities. Creative people are a population minority. Social media took over as the internet population grew because most people value immediate gratification more than personal expression.
I wish there was deep profound social, economic, or behavioral issues at play, but there aren’t. Some people want to build things and others just want to shout into a void or stare at those who do.
> Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming. Just like many people don't become screenwriters or directors because they love TV or movies (though this is definitely a bigger pipeline than tech); they just want The Avengers or Real Housewives or whatever.
Is it what they want, or is that only what the market is willing to give them that's profitable? And how much of it is the result of manufactured consent?
Consumption is important, but so is culture. Interaction is a big deal to many people. Look at the dynamics related to notifications, for example. People check in, desire the feedback, that interaction, and they seek more of it, form connections around it, and more.
> Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming.
> Most people have non-computery interests, and that's fine.
But personal sites don't need to be about web culture per se. The best ones were often about some other interest or perspective that happened to be combined in a person who was also tech-capable enough to share it online. And 15 years ago, if you had some passion, whether that was french cooking or birding or carpentry or something else, a personal website or blog was a pretty good way to share it. But now, you'd get a better audience through sharing that same perspective on social media.
I think the thing that's hard to get on a personal site is the immediate feedback that social media provides. The issue as I see it isn't so much that people only want to consume (that was always the case) but that people creating content are in a numbers-driven competition for eyeballs. Creating and publishing stuff online has been mashed together with status/follower-seeking behaviors, and your own personal site likely doesn't provide the same dopamine hit. Even if you're posting about your latest sewing project, putting it on social media can get you some likes and comments, but putting it on your personal site can feel like talking to an empty room.
And aside from the minor technical challenges of creating your own site, I think people rarely talk about the legal or administrative burdens of creating your own whitelabel place to host your content. Do you want to track how people use your site with some analytics tool? What TOS and cookie opt-outs do you need to provide in that case? Oh, you'd like to have a comments section under your posts? What are the GDPR implications of that? You're publishing online so it's not for "purely personal or household purposes" after-all. What if after your personal project gains an audience, you decide to sell some merch -- then because you're 'a business', what has to change for you to meet CCPA obligations? Whereas if you have just a bunch of social media profiles, you don't control and are not responsible for handling that user data.
I think the flaw in this logic is that somehow it's technically hard to start a personal blog, so they invent a technical solution (a better platform). But there are plenty of great platforms that are easy to use, Wix, Squarespace, and Wordpress.com, etc.
The problem isn't technical though, in my opinion, it's social. My working theory is that there are probably the same amount of people or more who were or would be vested in a so-called "personal web" as there were 10 or 20 years ago. But I think that we've all allowed ourselves to be trained that the levels of engagement and web visitors that we would have been happy with 10-20 years ago just doesn't match up to what social platforms can provide, so most people that would have a personal blog just aren't.
I know my personal blog from 20 years ago, which I posted to daily, feels very small and quaint. I also know that I would be disappointed with "engagement."
A more personal web doesn't really need better platforms or tech, it needs a mindset reset.
Great idea! But the problem, now, is on the client side. Readers need RSS. This lets authors publish at their own pace (which we can assume is relatively slowly) and doesn't burden the user with checking for new content manually. Of course, Twitter is a de facto RSS feed for some, and several other services (HN included) serve that role to some extent. But for the personal web, for those readers (and writers) of the web, you need RSS.
The other problem is that a lot of writing is just not very good. Perhaps contraversially, I think that too is a tool problem: I've noticed that good authors take more time with their posts, get more feedback from more people, and even go to the trouble of thanking them in the post - which for very popular authors, like pg for example, is quite effective motivation and reward. But most authoring tools don't particularly encourage this behavior, preferring instead to give the author the least resistance possible to publishing.
So, with either the return of Google Reader or equivalent, or the addition of a great RSS reader in Chrome, plus authoring tools that promote collaboration and revision, the personal web can flourish. Until then we'll have to make do with Twitter, etc for RSS and cobble together our own ad hoc editor networks via awkward emails and/or shared google docs.
>Until then we'll have to make do with Twitter, etc for RSS and cobble together our own ad hoc editor networks via awkward emails and/or shared google docs.
Or you can use existing blogware and rss. Plenty of people do use rss still today. Plenty of small and major media websites still offer it. Every few years there's a hn thread something akin to "ask hn: does anyone use rss still" at which point its the most engaged thread on the front page, with nearly all replies either saying that "yes I use it every day," or even "I got to this very thread from an rss feed." Honestly, if you are a blogger and want to select a readership base that has certain characteristics you are interested in (maybe it overlaps with your stereotypical hn user: techie or in the technology industry with more money than the median worker), you should offer an rss feed to capture these readers who might not even bother with platforms like twitter at all.
One of two things will happen. Either someone will build a huge business on top of a really great RSS reader, gradually adding features to feeds that customise to compete with substack / twitter etc; until the point where regular old feeds don't work as well, or at all in free readers. This is the IRC to Slack pipeline.
Or, RSS will continue as an important technology, but one that's sidestepped in favour of social networks.
I miss the old web, blogging, deep knowledge and intellectually diverse voices spread and hosted widely. But it stands in contrast to the centralising, oligopolistic tendencies of capitalism, and arguably high technology itself.
The HN zeitgeist (at least as of 2021) was to use a static site generator like Hugo or Jekyll. Why would we want to use Nym — speaking as someone who doesn't use either, that is.
When the itch to "small b blog" (love the term, by the way) came around, I built my own blogging frontend utilising GitHub Gists as the data store[1]. It's been working great so far, and uses basically no resources.
Totally agree as someone who has been making personal sites since I was a kid in '98. My latest iteration has been nearly 2 years in the making now. I had a WordPress blog for many years but finally decided it was time as a software developer to have a site that was custom. The core idea of the site is as if you've RDP'd into my Windows 10 machine and can see all my files and apps. Everything runs client side which was also something important to me. If interested please check it out, I nickname it daedalOS and it's also open source.
Personal websites still do live. Here on HN too I have seen blog posts from independent websites/blogs run by individuals. What has changed though is the rapid rise of content platforms like Twitter, Medium, Substack and the likes where the sheer number of posts overwhelm the number of posts individual website owners can produce.
But still the independent websites continue to run and stay alive. Some of them have quality content too and appear on HN many times.
Is there a community/forum/channel of these independent website owners somewhere? Would love to hang out there.
I've had my site (https://www.mountainwerks.org) going since 1998, and for sure, I am myself the primary user. But over time, my gosh, there is a lot of content. It started as a log of trips to the mountains. I found religion through trying to pay homage to nature by remembering each "piece" of it. Because an attitude of thankfulness gradually became nature (thanks to going out so danged much).
I wouldn't know any other way to live. Old ideas are often gold.
It's not going to be an original take if I say that I absolutely adored the early internet with the personal websites everywhere.
Comparing it with the internet of today it makes me think of the difference between a high street in a small city, full of different shops and cafes vs. a shopping mall, where everything looks the same, is loud, smelly, and obnoxious. (Of course the early internet had a lot of loud, smell, and obnoxious places, but those were much easier to avoid).
I also like the idea of people hosting their own sites. It was IMO much easier to talk about the free speech if you were hosting your own website and didn't have a "connection broker" (Twitter, Facebook) between you and your readers. The whole argument of "it's a private bussines, therefore it can just kick you out" goes out the window (unless you want to go and moles the ISP, but it's easier to argue that they are just an utility provider).
Anyone know how a way to run a personal site for around $50 USD or under a year that can be pointed to a custom domain? My wife does some rug making and wants a portfolio available to show off her art, but we would prefer not to pay $10-20/month for such a site.
If you're slightly technical that should be $1/year for hosting + $10 for domain name registration.
I don't know what the best way is now, but a few years ago I set up an s3 bucket that where I basically got charged nothing because the site was < 10mb, and I had that behind cloudflare's cdn which doesn't charge for bandwith. S3 lets you serve static files if the bucket name is the same as the domain name - so no webserver or anything needed.
I am pretty sure for a very small static site there's probably a handful of options that are basically free. One of gitpages, cloudflare pages, I think have free bandwith, not sure about vercel, or netlify.
I use digital ocean, but their cost actualy rose a tad bit over the last year, and i have heard that hetzner has better pricing, though i have not yet used them. Again, just take a look at the above site, and can search for a low cost hosting provider. Others leverage github pages, etc...for free, but that seems antithetical to this greater topic of self-host your own. Good luck!
Buying an old refubished computer and running whatever web server on a small & efficient linux distro is not really cheap in the beginning (since you've got to spend a few $ to buy the computer that will be a small home server), but in the long term it's really cheap (I spent 50€ in 2017 for an old dell optiplex fx160 on ebay, and it's still running my websites today).
Check out fastmail.com ... Given an email account, hosting a new website is nearly as easy as uploading an entire directory (to file storage) in one operation, then assigning a url to it (under one of the 20-30 fastmail domains). I have not linked a custom domain to one of these, but they do IIRC support it.
I've had excellent results with pointing people to Google Sites. The editor and available features work really well for just a static site for someone non-technical. You can set it up on a free Google account and point a custom domain name to it [1] very easily.
IMO making "a new Wordpress" doesn't feel like a great alternative -- Wordpress is pretty good as it is, and you have the option of self-hosting fairly painlessly if you want to.
The fun of late-90s website-making is real though, but I don't see a turn towards that for the vast majority of people.
One nice corner of optimism is projects like Glitch [1], which give just enough space to explore, go wild, and quickly host what you make.
Yes please. With the “creator culture” from TikTok etc, I think if personal sites could be made _that_ easy and fun, they’d come back in fashion. Personally I’m ready for MySpace 2.0
[+] [-] nunez|3 years ago|reply
My take: people created websites back then because there was no other choice. People RUSHED into MySpace when it got hot partly because of this.
Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming. Just like many people don't become screenwriters or directors because they love TV or movies (though this is definitely a bigger pipeline than tech); they just want The Avengers or Real Housewives or whatever.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Most people have non-computery interests, and that's fine.
[+] [-] nirimda|3 years ago|reply
Strong disagree. People want to participate, they want to be part of a conversation. When you "consume" content on Facebook or Twitter, you can produce content and reasonably expect to get an audience - because you know there's other people there.
If you have your own personal website, you have no natural audience. If you're lucky, Google might like it and return it. But chances are, it won't thanks to SEO. And even if you do, you don't have any replies. A voice shouting into a void, signifying nothing. At that point, you need a blogging engine that allows for replies, and now you're in the world of off-the-shelf solutions. Not so far from Facebook or MySpace, which gets you your audience.
[+] [-] Affric|3 years ago|reply
99% of people don’t want computers, they want computers to do the work of life for them so they can get on with what really interest them.
[+] [-] btbuildem|3 years ago|reply
Yet individuals continue to CREATE content on which these parasites piggy-back. We are creatives by nature. The consumption is just one facet; had we built "the internet" out of tools and spaces more suitable for creativity, perhaps this would be more reflected in the general trends. Even now, you can't stem the tide of silly, interesting, creative things people post in these narrow, controlled channels.
[+] [-] nightski|3 years ago|reply
Personally I hate it. But that's where all the creators are.
[+] [-] indymike|3 years ago|reply
What is remarkable is that despite trying to wall the garden, the personal website is still a thing.
> Many people don't care about web culture; they only care about consuming.
Maybe the era of shifting print, TV and radio to the internet is reaching saturation. You can view the internet as a content distribution system, but that ignores the key difference between internet and broadcast media: it is a two-way communication media.
> My take: people created websites back then because there was no other choice.
There were plenty of choices. The big innovation was the social network that allowed people to connect with friends, family, and people with common interests. Now you could write something, take a picture, make a video, whatever, and share it with people who would start communicating with you and form communities around those interests.
> Most people have non-computery interests, and that's fine.
Most people now communicate via the internet about those non-computer-y interests.
[+] [-] throwaway0asd|3 years ago|reply
I wish there was deep profound social, economic, or behavioral issues at play, but there aren’t. Some people want to build things and others just want to shout into a void or stare at those who do.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|3 years ago|reply
Is it what they want, or is that only what the market is willing to give them that's profitable? And how much of it is the result of manufactured consent?
[+] [-] jjav|3 years ago|reply
Even though I'm in tech in silicon valley, all the personal websites I maintain are related to non-tech hobbies.
[+] [-] ddingus|3 years ago|reply
Consumption is important, but so is culture. Interaction is a big deal to many people. Look at the dynamics related to notifications, for example. People check in, desire the feedback, that interaction, and they seek more of it, form connections around it, and more.
[+] [-] Gormo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abeppu|3 years ago|reply
> Most people have non-computery interests, and that's fine.
But personal sites don't need to be about web culture per se. The best ones were often about some other interest or perspective that happened to be combined in a person who was also tech-capable enough to share it online. And 15 years ago, if you had some passion, whether that was french cooking or birding or carpentry or something else, a personal website or blog was a pretty good way to share it. But now, you'd get a better audience through sharing that same perspective on social media.
I think the thing that's hard to get on a personal site is the immediate feedback that social media provides. The issue as I see it isn't so much that people only want to consume (that was always the case) but that people creating content are in a numbers-driven competition for eyeballs. Creating and publishing stuff online has been mashed together with status/follower-seeking behaviors, and your own personal site likely doesn't provide the same dopamine hit. Even if you're posting about your latest sewing project, putting it on social media can get you some likes and comments, but putting it on your personal site can feel like talking to an empty room.
And aside from the minor technical challenges of creating your own site, I think people rarely talk about the legal or administrative burdens of creating your own whitelabel place to host your content. Do you want to track how people use your site with some analytics tool? What TOS and cookie opt-outs do you need to provide in that case? Oh, you'd like to have a comments section under your posts? What are the GDPR implications of that? You're publishing online so it's not for "purely personal or household purposes" after-all. What if after your personal project gains an audience, you decide to sell some merch -- then because you're 'a business', what has to change for you to meet CCPA obligations? Whereas if you have just a bunch of social media profiles, you don't control and are not responsible for handling that user data.
[+] [-] beseku|3 years ago|reply
https://brianlovin.com/writing
[+] [-] wongmjane|3 years ago|reply
Not seeing Brian Lovin’s name in the LICENSE file in Nym either...
[+] [-] thisisnotanexit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] superultra|3 years ago|reply
The problem isn't technical though, in my opinion, it's social. My working theory is that there are probably the same amount of people or more who were or would be vested in a so-called "personal web" as there were 10 or 20 years ago. But I think that we've all allowed ourselves to be trained that the levels of engagement and web visitors that we would have been happy with 10-20 years ago just doesn't match up to what social platforms can provide, so most people that would have a personal blog just aren't.
I know my personal blog from 20 years ago, which I posted to daily, feels very small and quaint. I also know that I would be disappointed with "engagement."
A more personal web doesn't really need better platforms or tech, it needs a mindset reset.
[+] [-] javajosh|3 years ago|reply
The other problem is that a lot of writing is just not very good. Perhaps contraversially, I think that too is a tool problem: I've noticed that good authors take more time with their posts, get more feedback from more people, and even go to the trouble of thanking them in the post - which for very popular authors, like pg for example, is quite effective motivation and reward. But most authoring tools don't particularly encourage this behavior, preferring instead to give the author the least resistance possible to publishing.
So, with either the return of Google Reader or equivalent, or the addition of a great RSS reader in Chrome, plus authoring tools that promote collaboration and revision, the personal web can flourish. Until then we'll have to make do with Twitter, etc for RSS and cobble together our own ad hoc editor networks via awkward emails and/or shared google docs.
[+] [-] asdff|3 years ago|reply
Or you can use existing blogware and rss. Plenty of people do use rss still today. Plenty of small and major media websites still offer it. Every few years there's a hn thread something akin to "ask hn: does anyone use rss still" at which point its the most engaged thread on the front page, with nearly all replies either saying that "yes I use it every day," or even "I got to this very thread from an rss feed." Honestly, if you are a blogger and want to select a readership base that has certain characteristics you are interested in (maybe it overlaps with your stereotypical hn user: techie or in the technology industry with more money than the median worker), you should offer an rss feed to capture these readers who might not even bother with platforms like twitter at all.
[+] [-] aikendrum|3 years ago|reply
Or, RSS will continue as an important technology, but one that's sidestepped in favour of social networks.
I miss the old web, blogging, deep knowledge and intellectually diverse voices spread and hosted widely. But it stands in contrast to the centralising, oligopolistic tendencies of capitalism, and arguably high technology itself.
[+] [-] surprisetalk|3 years ago|reply
1. Keeping a public list of soon/current/recent projects forces me to keep priorities straight over long stretches of time.
2. Maintaining a monthly newsletter organizes my life into personal "sprints". It also provides a tiny community of like-minded people.
3. Essays supercharge reflections on deep questions. If you have any big ideas or strong opinions, public writing is incredible distillation.
4. Writing for fun is fun! It's a productive craft well-suited to curious/obsessive minds (much like programming).
---
https://taylor.town
[+] [-] julianlam|3 years ago|reply
When the itch to "small b blog" (love the term, by the way) came around, I built my own blogging frontend utilising GitHub Gists as the data store[1]. It's been working great so far, and uses basically no resources.
[1] https://devnull.land/github-gist-blog
[+] [-] Eupraxias|3 years ago|reply
I have been making website and pages since 1998, and have never done it another way.
[+] [-] devonallie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zote|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davesque|3 years ago|reply
This is my idea of the personal web.
[+] [-] dzuc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazyfanatic|3 years ago|reply
Technology is so circular, old becomes new, over and over again.
"Join our network!" at the end reminded me of them.
[+] [-] 5amdotis|3 years ago|reply
`<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS feed" href="undefined/writing/rss">`
[+] [-] DustinBrett|3 years ago|reply
https://dustinbrett.com/
[+] [-] distcs|3 years ago|reply
But still the independent websites continue to run and stay alive. Some of them have quality content too and appear on HN many times.
Is there a community/forum/channel of these independent website owners somewhere? Would love to hang out there.
[+] [-] falcolas|3 years ago|reply
https://imgur.com/a/0ilhUAw
[+] [-] philipwhiuk|3 years ago|reply
Okay.. so someone copied Brian Lovin's blog platform and is proud of themselves.
[+] [-] ripsawridge|3 years ago|reply
I wouldn't know any other way to live. Old ideas are often gold.
[+] [-] poszlem|3 years ago|reply
Comparing it with the internet of today it makes me think of the difference between a high street in a small city, full of different shops and cafes vs. a shopping mall, where everything looks the same, is loud, smelly, and obnoxious. (Of course the early internet had a lot of loud, smell, and obnoxious places, but those were much easier to avoid).
I also like the idea of people hosting their own sites. It was IMO much easier to talk about the free speech if you were hosting your own website and didn't have a "connection broker" (Twitter, Facebook) between you and your readers. The whole argument of "it's a private bussines, therefore it can just kick you out" goes out the window (unless you want to go and moles the ISP, but it's easier to argue that they are just an utility provider).
[+] [-] nickthegreek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] preommr|3 years ago|reply
If you're slightly technical that should be $1/year for hosting + $10 for domain name registration.
I don't know what the best way is now, but a few years ago I set up an s3 bucket that where I basically got charged nothing because the site was < 10mb, and I had that behind cloudflare's cdn which doesn't charge for bandwith. S3 lets you serve static files if the bucket name is the same as the domain name - so no webserver or anything needed.
I am pretty sure for a very small static site there's probably a handful of options that are basically free. One of gitpages, cloudflare pages, I think have free bandwith, not sure about vercel, or netlify.
[+] [-] mxuribe|3 years ago|reply
I use digital ocean, but their cost actualy rose a tad bit over the last year, and i have heard that hetzner has better pricing, though i have not yet used them. Again, just take a look at the above site, and can search for a low cost hosting provider. Others leverage github pages, etc...for free, but that seems antithetical to this greater topic of self-host your own. Good luck!
[+] [-] inasmuch|3 years ago|reply
I used to use nearlyfreespeech.net for my own site and it was even cheaper, but a little more complicated to get up and running.
[+] [-] walterbell|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sodimel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5amdotis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terminal_d|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a9h74j|3 years ago|reply
Estimate $3/month w/o the custom domain.
[+] [-] treesknees|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://support.google.com/sites/answer/9068867?hl=en
[+] [-] 2b3a51|3 years ago|reply
https://www.mythic-beasts.com/hosting
You would add your CMS of choice (Wordpress running on the shared server or rsync up a local set of static files)
I'm assuming companies like this must be ten a penny in USA.
[+] [-] renewiltord|3 years ago|reply
But if you're okay with a git style flow, then you can use Cloudflare Pages. That's what I use. It's free and fast. But it's not spouse-friendly.
[+] [-] agambrahma|3 years ago|reply
The fun of late-90s website-making is real though, but I don't see a turn towards that for the vast majority of people.
One nice corner of optimism is projects like Glitch [1], which give just enough space to explore, go wild, and quickly host what you make.
[1]: https://glitch.com
[+] [-] _jcrossley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codepoet80|3 years ago|reply