Slashdot Mirror
Why Personal Websites Matter
latif writes "Lately personal websites have fallen out of fashion. Some term them as vanity sites, and others are scared of privacy concerns. The article Why Personal Websites Matter discusses some reasons as to why they have to be embraced to stay competitive." I see the personal website as the virtual equivalent of the front of one's home, except that most virtual homes have large signs in the front yard that give a running play-by-play of the inhabitants. Just like one's home, it may be prone to vandalism, but it's far easier to make one's website be an expression of oneself, than to put up large signs outside!
"Of course unorganized, lazy, and stupid people want to hide these qualities by not having a website" So that is why I have been having a hard time getting hired.. and here I thought it was the economy. Thank god all I have to do is create a snappy website!
Paint.NET, a Free Image Editor, with Source Code Available!
Personal websites are a good idea, in theory -- but, in practice, there are far too many useless, egotistical homepages. That was maybe acceptable in the infancy of the internet, but people are getting smarter now. Blogs are better because they give what people care about -- your opinions and knowledge -- without the self-advertising.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
I don't know about you, but work is a large part of my life. Seems that the corporate control of the net has kicked in once again...
--
Rate Naked People (Not work-safe)
Does this mean we'll start to see a reduction in the number of sites withe neon text on a black background, animated GIFs and "under construction" signs? It's a sad day for the 'net I tell you.
for prospective employers to beat you with. When a cv comes in, do a Google for the person's name, check them out, their hobbies, their faith, their habits..... Result: Interviewer knows more about the interviewee than the interviewee knows about the company.
I think personal websites are cool back in the day when... well, HTML isn't so complicated, and the average website is a few tables with a few pictures.
now, if you would just look at the mountains of shit you'd have to sift through to make a site (try webmonkey.com), it's unreal! Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
And what I mean by respectable is that - on average, websites have became much more feature rich, the graphics much better, the content more frequently updated, etc. That little website you used to use as a homepage that's hacked up in an afternoon looks by today's standards simply pathetic - and people know this. They fudge around with building a site and then find out, man this is a lot of work and not worth it.
Besides, there are millions of places online where you can do exactly what you would have be doing on your own site anyway - I keep my journal on slashdot; I get a whole comment feedback system without having had to muck with CGI code / HTML / site design / debugging / server troubleshooting, and so on. Now, eventually I would like to port it to something myself just to have a little more control over it, but really, even if I think about it now, it's not worth the trouble - and keeping a blog online would be exactly the same thing I'd be doing if I had my website, so this simply removes a lot of the hassle.
So, similarly as people don't all do the painting / maintenance of their home by themselves, website I think comes the same way - it's the tradeoff between convenience of something prepackaged (weblog sites, say) vs something custom, and the amount of effort needed for that little custom isn't always worthwhile in all cases.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
In the case of PWSs, obviously there is often vanity or some form of craziness, but equally often people use them to keep geographically distant relatives up to date on the growth of children etc., or on whatever activity might be of common interest.
And even in the craziest of implementations, it could be reasonably said that at least it takes a bit more intelligence to design a web page than it does to plunk down $3000 for fancy wheels and tires for a car.
Of course the guy with the car generally gains some ancillary benefits woefully unavailable to the guy who sits in his room coding HTML.
"Damn, Paris, why do you have to stop doing that to answer your cell phone? Get back to work so I can finish my post on Slashdot!"
Personal websites seem to be taking off - as blogs.
Blogs are an interesting thing really - a published diary - in realtime.
I don't really see them as important though. It is like my preference of topic-oriented discussion vs. person-oriented discussion - so it is natural for me to prefer a site dedicated to a certain topic.
There's a reason why people won't go browsing through certain areas, and that's because those homes are in the fucking ghetto. Most people don't like the ghetto.
Want to make those sites popular again? Move them out of the ghetto. Move 'em up out of da hood and inta da good, B.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
I see the personal website as the virtual equivalent of the front of one's home, except that most virtual homes have large signs in the front yard that give a running play-by-play of the inhabitants.
I see the personal website as kind of like a mountain of mashed potatoes, except with a set of Three Stooges action figures on the top, and except the potatoes are those weird blue kind so the whole thing looks freaky. And there's, like, some kind of cheerleading squad doing a dance all around, except that the virtual cheerleaders are really monkeys. Evil monkeys, that is, except that they really have hearts of gold once you get to know them! But it's far easier to just put up a website than build a mountain of mashed potatoes!
I have learned much of what I know about computing and other technological-related subjects from web sites, usually personal ones.
To repay this benefit, I think it's important that I provide information where:
My cases in point are my HTML tutorial and my guitar chord tutorial, both of which address their subject matter in a way not found on (many) other sites. These tutorials have (from my logs) proved to be very popular.
How can I tell people how wonderful I am if I do not have a personal web site? I think it is wrong to call them 'vanity sites' when I am simply relaying important information about how brilliant I am.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I actually had a discussion about this with one of my friends awhile back. It seemed back around '97 or so you could make a web page, submit it to AltaVista, Infoseek, and HotBot and be almost certain of a steady trickle of hits. For example, my younger brother made a web page about all his pets, and then later added pictures of his wristwatch collection. It used to be just having matching keywords was enough to get your page noticed. Pretty much in the same period of time Google became popular, the hits on his site ground to a halt.
Personal websites are at a disadvantage under Google's Pagerank system. A new page isn't going to have many other pages linking to it, and for the most part, personal webpages won't end up with many other pages linking to them unless the content is very popular. Google has created a kind of catch-22 situation... You have to already be popular to get a good Pageranking. The system is great for indexing an existing web of sites, but poor for allowing new sites to get exposure.
I just remember running into personal webpages far more often back in the days when AltaVista, and Infoseek ruled, before the spam sites started abusing keywords. I'm sure Google didn't intend to turn the Internet into a popularity contest, but it would be interesting if they added user-adjustable features like Slashdot's moderation modifiers so you could give a higher (or lower) bias towards personal webpages.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I originally created my website to share my ideas and opinions on the world, but I realised that there is already too much out there (the blog-boom?) and I didn't need to be an endless source of flames.
Now my site has taken a new edge to it, it no longer related to anybody but those who know me and live around me. Some people would concider my site to be of any marketable or even personal value anymore, but it doesn't matter. The only people who matter are the people who you want it to matter to (seriously, how many of you think that people in a fridge or road cones on buildings matter?).
...when Bill Gates didn't say "content is king", or something like that.
I'm reminded of this site when I recall all the personal websites I've seen.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I think there is no more room on the net for "personal" websites. How many people here have run a blog or any other storehouse of personal info and at one point in time has it been used against you? For me it was about 6 times. Three with my school/university and 3 due to friends reading something and assuming it was them.
I think the net is great for writing about your intrests and perhaps form a community around it such as CG, Legos or Evil Dead movie series. However having personal info on the web is usually extreamly dangerous and can at times be annoying. I remeber how I at one time had a collection of 50 poems on my site but took it down after a peer decided that half of it was about her and started to complain to me about how she though I was a dick for bitching at her indirectly.
Now adays my old personal website is technicly amazing but I post no content on it. I guess live and learn.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
Now go visit my blog. I'm trying to break the ten regular readers mark: www.chillmost.com
--Residential Interior Design
PaulGraham.Com and Stallman.Org are websites of two well-known individuals in the computing industry. The two websites make very different statements about the respective individuals. Paul Graham's site is neat, and organized. Richard M. Stallman's site has lots of information and links related to his idealogies. Even the choice of the domain name reflects something about their personalities. Paul Graham has chosen a dot com, while Stallman prefers a dot org.
Ummm. Exactaly what does the ending tell about the person? Is Stallman an entire organization? Is Graham a commercial operation? What does a dot net say about me?
But I think many people have missed the point of personal websites. Just because they're on the Word Wide Web it doesn't mean your audience should be everybody in the world. Many people set up websites intended to be viewed by a small group of people (such as family photo albums who nobody but family or close friends would be interested in).
Also, how many people who design websites for a living today started off by knocking up a basic website? Most likely it was the equivalent of a "Hello World!" example, and the most readily available content was most likely all about you. Now, unless you were particularly eccentric its unlikely you ever intended this to be seen by thousands of people, but it was still a necessary stage in your learning process.
So stop being website snobs - there's enough room on the net for everyone!
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Just as there were tedious people writing cruddy webpages there are tedious people writing drivel in their blogs. At least their godawful webpages tended not to clog up google so badly.
;-)
A semi-static[0] personal web page, if written correctly, provides the best solution. It can include everything people might want to know about you, including your opinions and views; it's low-maintenance (you only need add articles every now and again, when there is important stuff that needs adding) and people are far more likely to read one or two thoughtful, well-written[1] articles written on such a site than the reams of semi-literate journal entries most blogs seem to consist of.
As you might guess, I'm not the world's biggest blog fan
[0] Updated, but only infrequently and with important stuff, not how you're pissed at rasterman today because enlightenment crashed on you.
[1] If you only add an article every now and then you can afford to spend some time and write it well.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
There is cetainly a lot of usefull content out there; I've read entire novels (such as The Human Memoirs) on them. However, there's little point in putting up websites which just detail ones personal information.
What I really want to see is a virtual world like the VIS in Reality Check. Then there would actually be a point in building a virtual home in Internet...
Wouldn't mind about the cat girl online, either ;)
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The world is our village. People all over the world communicate with each other. How to better share views, information and the occasional picture with your (potential) friends than with a personal website. Personal websites show initiative and fill the need/right of every person to express himself/herself. Sure there are other means of doing that! And most people do! Not only nerds have personal websites. It is an online extention of your opinions, your way of living. When I meet someone in the real world, I tend to look for a personal website when I come home at night.
On the issue that most personal websites suck (technically speaking), I can only say that I prefer old-fashioned HTML4/XHTML standard based website, above any corporate full-of-fancy-animations expensive marketing tool. Websites should be build to last. This is not accomplished using ever changing proprietary plug-ins, etc... You can make a *very* nice webpages without all this. (I'm one of those people who refuses to install the plug-ins I'm talking about.)
Don't forget the Internet [was/is] all about sharing information!
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
Isn't having a slashdot journal enough?
Peace and love, y'all
Apple has recognized that all it's spiffy user apps are not complete without a distribution channel. .mac account. Of all the features I've seen, this has to be the greatest and most usefull.
.mac account makes file updating easy, you don't even need an FTP client, it's quite seamless as the .mac account management interface is built into the OS.
.mac ripped off in MS's Longhorn, but that will be in 2006. Apple has 2 years to cram their service full of features to keep a leg up.
.mac as well as iPod/iTMS. Allowing users to compile playlists that are actually streamed by iTMS rather than the user account.
Basically, they've recreated the homepage as an extension of your desktop, laptop or iPod.
This also helps productivity. One of the projects I am a member of uses iCal synching between developers via a
The direct integration between the OS and your
Ultimately, I would not be surprised to see
<wishful_thinking>
Perhaps an extension of the music store is in order to beeef up
Apple opened the door for industry wide licensing without getting sued, perhaps they can now convince them that streaming already purchased music as a form of fair use on the users behalf can work too.
The major difference being that iTMS/Apple would act as the middle man, there by providing oversite to the system as a whole, something Kazaa/Morpheus et al fail to do.
</wishful_thinking>
This is such a good idea I think I'll publicise my own website :)
My web domain.
and no one forces you to look at them, just don't click if you don't care.
This home page has been around for a while. Worth a look. At the very least, seeing it may change one's opinions on one or two few things, home pages among them.
Hey, I am a wo/man, you insensitive clod!
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
...to paraphrase.
The vast majority of personal websites suck. This is a fact. The ones that don't suck are really only useful to a handful of people.
When was the last time you wandered through Google results for "personal website"? If I had to venture a guess, not until you clicked through to that link. Yet when was the last time you visited someone's personal website? Again, this is only a guess, but probably within the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours. This is because the content on that site was, at some point, useful to you-- even if you were the one who created it.
I use my personal website (here, if you dare) primarily as a collection of links that I use daily and also as a way to get my PHP and HTML work out there, on exhibit. I have, probably, ten consistent viewers world-wide. Three of them are my mom, dad, and sister. And this is fine for me! Because I know that the content on my site (with the exception of maybe one or two areas explicitly for display) is of relevance to absolutely nobody.
People here are talking about how in the old days of the Internet (which can't be that damned old if I remember them), personal websites contained a diverse variety of information on just about anything, and that these websites formed the backbone of how people did research; some scientist in Alameda's paper on nuclear vessels, posted on his website, was just as valuable as, say, a fan-page devoted to Evangelion by some kid from Buffalo. Nowadays, everything has a website. You can get any information you want about anything straight from the manufacturer, and personal sites be damned; they're only opinions.
Both points are valid. In the "old days" the information you got was still people's opinions, which meant you had to find three or four correlating opinions before you could really judge. Now, personal websites allow us to cut through marketing and P.R. bullcrap, but we still need three or four correlating opinions before we can really judge.
I'm straying from my point. Does anyone here follow anime? Stupid question, right? How do you learn about new releases in Japan? Sure, if you know Japanese, you can check out TV Tokyo or TBS's websites and get the info from them. But odds are you don't (and this is not a slander against those of you who do-- statistically, however, you're in the minority, OK?). So how would you know about releases like (and I'm dating myself here, as the only reference I have handy is a copy of Newtype that's about three months old*) Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Scrapped Princess, or Sora no Stellvia? Personal sites do allow "niche" sectors like anime (ha ha) and, I dunno, latex doll painters a way to spread information. The personal site is the next step in "word of mouth".
(* Newtype USA is only a year old. Hardly enough basis to say that anime is mainstream now; but that's not what's at issue here. You could just as easily do a google search on latex doll painters and find out more than you ever wanted to know. The point is that Newtype is only one source of information. The internet, and personal websites, provide about fifty zillion other points of view.)
Just to state it clearly here: Less need for personal websites != no need for personal websites.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Is the most ignorant and stupid phrase I've read this month. It's *almost* like saying "unorganized, lazy, and stupid people want to hide these qualities by <put random activity here>". Tech gusy like this one are one of the reasons programmers are tought by some people to be great jackasses....
PS: And of course this is a definitely helpful argument when trying to convince someone of the advantages of a personal website...
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Sure, maybe it was a ruse. Or maybe, just maybe, CowboyNeal posted it because he thought the question of "Do personal websites matter?" deserved some amount of discussion and examination.
Christ, you people bitch when the editors post duplicates, and now you bitch when they post new stuff. Go back to Usenet, troll.
if it were me, i'd vote funny; since the original topic was begging for this
This post is under contruction. Please come back later.
[Image of a small roadworker digging a hole]
Hey, I am a wo/man, you insensitive clod!
What's a Wo/man (as opposed to "Woman"; I'm not trying to be funny, just wondering what the '/' character is for)?
hmm... thought somebody would bring that up.
What I mean is that - take for example, a simple javascript menu system that doesn't look like every other yahoo-storefront; everybody knows such a feature exists in uncountable websites on the web. So, if you are buliding a site, you'd probably think about putting one in there, and if you are looking at somebody's site, you'd feel kinda weird if they didn't have some something that catchy that happens onMouseOver.
So, actually the STANDARD to which we judge websites have gone up; a lot - and to make your site look comparable to all the others that have millions invested into them is a herculian task. And nasty animated gifs and bg music won't really fix this; creating original graphic is time consuming, and creating good ones are near impossible especially if you are a newcomer. Integrating your graphics into some custom javascript menus and then debugging it in three browsers? well shit, that's a month work right there.
So, yes, creative mind is cool and good, but to carry out all these creative designing, a whole lot of HTML hacking* has to take place, because a gopher-style page just isn't quite up to the standard of being respectable anymore - of course unless you have lots of information that's really the driving force. But now, we are talking about personal sites, your cats are only so interesting compared to every other cat with pictures online.
*probably also some (lots of?) perl / javascript / php / lisp if you are really fond of parentecies hacking if you want anything that would be sorta kinda dynamic.
not. worth. the. trouble.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Thanks guys :)
Just out of interest, since I posted that comment, I've gotten just under one hit per minute (51 hits in 56 minutes). I'm still laughing.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Microsoft is always hiring. ;)
Er, sorry. I was trying to be funny -
If "he" refers to a man and "she" refers to a woman, then "s/he" (see great-grandparent) must refer to a "wo/man".
It was my way of agreeing with CGP re. the silliness of the term "s/he".
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
>[Image of a small roadworker digging a hole]
Doesn't this count as ASCII-goatse ?
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
do you remember this woman renamed herself to her domain name? my last name starts with a D, my nick is Mister.de, but i don't post pics or more personal things everywhere, so is it a unpersonal website with a personal domain name? =]
In the 18 or so months that I've been keeping a blog, I've written more than 100,000 words on everything, from TV and album reviews, to political scandals and "popular science".
The point, in my case, is not really the content: it's the visible improvement in my writing skills that is being translated to other offline projects. I work in a building housing people from all across Europe, and I get English spelling, grammar and usage queries several times a day, every day. Who was it who said "the point of a journey is not to arrive"? (I know it was Neil Peart, but he was quoting someone else, I think.) I write to learn more about writing, so I have a sharp pen if I see a sword coming my way!
(this is not a
I am sad my ISP dropped their home page support...
http://homepages.dsl.ca
As evidenced on another page of his site:
"I don't have a permanent job and am looking for paid work."
...asymmetrical bandwidth.
I'd have a real useful website if I could support the traffic on my aDSL line. As it is, my ping goes to hell every time my mom feels like looking at the new pictures of her grandchild.
There is no way I could post or mirror anything that would be usefull to more people. I'd have to host the site elsewhere and pay more money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
charade/?pr? ?firm? hypenosys, & still waiting to read about anything that matters?
best keep IT to wonLIEners, & total irrelevance, unless you want to wind dupe on robbIE's enemIEs list?
More trailer trash web sites, THATS what we need.
karma: Marianas Trench (mostly blub blub)
> Without some form of income, I'll soon have to cut back
> my work on Free Software to work on flipping burgers.
At the moment, I volunteer ~50 hours a week to Free Software projects. Occasionally I get paid to update Free manuals or to give talks about Free Software.
I had a full time job until about 2 months ago, but I suddenly quit without much of a safety net. I figure if I work hard enough, I will get paid to do what I love.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
... I've posted this before
My page about sharp electronics
I know that I've connected with at least 10 other people that had a similar problem with their TV as well as persuaded many others not to buy Sharp products due to my site. I also have seen other pages like mine that have done the same for me with other products. Some pages matter...and some are self-indulging fluff. I think having the ability to voice opinions...inform others...share information through the use of personal pages is great.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
What is weird is visiting the web site of someone who has died. Often, their ISP leaves their sites up for years later. It seems strange and sad to learn about their family, pets, sporting activities and plans when you know how things turned out in the end. I believe people often think they will live longer than they do. And I think of the time wasted putting these sites together when they could have been spending the time enjoying themselves in the pub! Nobody ever said on there death bed 'gosh, I wish I'd used a different background for my personal web site'.
I stole this
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention weblogs. Blogs are pretty much everything that people who used to make personal websites wanted. Although I don't have anything to back this up, I reckon that there's been a migration from personal websites to blogs. The only problem that there used to be with site services such as Geocities was that you had to do (albeit very minimal) HTML - with blog services like Blogger there's not even any need for that, if you don't want to do anything fancy. It's more convenient, it's more readable (as a standard format)... just a shame that vanity publishing eliminates that vital editorial quality control ;)
All there needs to be is a "random page" button, that returns one of the matching pages (within the appropriate Google sub-domain if necessary) randomly, or from all indexed pages if no search terms sre entered. Alternatively, you could have some continuum between "Random matching page" and "I'm feeling lucky".
The reason for my homepage is only to make my old friends can find me with Google.
I keep wondering what is the reason for most of the homepages I bump into. Mostly full of unimportant stuff. And the same goes for the BLOGs. There are not many of us to have interesting and important things to publish DAILY !
Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
This is not necessarily true. In fact, some of the best personal websites I've bookmarked don't use tables, PHP, CGI or any of that. But I've bookmarked them because they've got really good content on them.
I've been trying to come up with a format to create my own personal site for a while now, and have found that the single best site-style that I enjoy reading is just text with some pictures in the middle of it. That's it. No styles, no fonts, nada. I like that when I resize my browser window the text gets reformatted. I like that I'm not constrained by some asinine user interface that's impossibly artistic at the cost of usability.
There's a reason that newspapers (for example) have the consistant layout that they do. The evolution of columns and font sizes have resulted in a generalized format that is not only easy to read, but over time has become accepted. Once people accept a certain way of doing something, it becomes the best way by merit of its ubiquitousness alone. Ir's the same reason why KDE and Gnome mimic the "START" button. You don't have to reinvent the wheel for your personal website just because some assclown says you have to use every technology available for your site to be good. The key is to just get started. Write some stuff down, upload some pictures... the site will grow over time and the "best" layout and tools will make themselves known.
The -thing- about personal websites is they aren't supposed to be geared towards any audience other than the author (and possibly the author's friends). If you come across a personal website you think is bland and boring, you're not the audience. If you find one you find amazingly interesting, you might jive with the author.
I think what you propose, while the ideal, is idealistic and probably a bit unrealistic. Asking people to write about their lives without focusing on themselves is a bit of a contradiction.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
:) ... I C ...
:)
English isn't my native language, that's probably why I didn't get it
granted maybe the question requires discussion.
/. to his search for work... wake up and smell the cross promotion.
BUT i don't find any of the comments in the PageRank whore's article particularly stimulating for discussion.
It's just a big scam to get a link from
As i said, I bet this isn't the first time he tried to post one of his "articles" as a story.
..said we could all be famous for 15 minutes.
In the web era that translates to: we can all be famous for 15 people.
Indeed, that's about as many as look at my personal web site (www.mvw.net), and I am happy with that. I get to hone my web design and sysadmin skills, my mother gets to see what I am up to, and a few people like to engage in debate which is fine.
And the most important : old friends can find me! My name comes up very early in Google as a result of the personal web sites. Web sites are a bit like business cards in that respect - people don't look at them in a lot of detail but without them you're lost.
Michael
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BDOS ERR ON A:>
So putting a link of your personal website on Slashdot, is like committing suicide?
We are the people our parents warned us about.
I think it's all well and good as practice for web publishing, if it is using HTML/XML, JavaScript, Java, PHP, etc. (!VB.NET) But I have not seen many of that kind. All I see are these stupid WYSIWYG wastes of server space.
I love NetHack.
"Web" is from "World Wide Web" and "site" is another word. Therefore, it is "Web site" and not "Website." "Website" is also not in the Webster's dictionary...yet. However, "website" is documented at Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com notes that the words "Web site" have evolved to "Website" and then "website" Still, that doesn't mean "website" is correct. Ahh! Evolution due to human error and laziness--gotta love it.
Step up to the next level with a $5 donation, and a personal homepage can hire a web designer skilled enough to use the blink tag.
$10 can buy scripts capable of giving your mouse 'cool' trails, scrolling the window title text, and disabling the right mouse button.
And for $20 a month, you can 'adopt' your own personal homepage, allowing it the funds to be moved away from the popup hell of Geocities hosting!
Please guys, there are personal homepages out there that can't even afford to use animated gifts... we need your donations TODAY!
They are great until Mom finds out
In Zen philosophy, there are teachings concerning "big mind, small mind," and "big me, small me." "Bigness" is the experience of realizing what we are relative to all that surrounds us. While one might think s/he is very small compared to all that exists, in reality, every person is another expression of the universe, just as an orange is an expression of the tree, the ground it is rooted in, and so on. We are all part of the whole and, as such, are infinite in any dimension that matters. "Smallness" is the experience of thinking that we are each singular - - that we matter most as individual packages of thoughts feelings, and so on. It seems that the desire to have a blog, a personal web page, etc., is an expression of "small mind" and "small me." Our tiny individual thoughts and experiences seem comical when vented through such things as web pages, don't they? Why do we spend so much time hoping that others might share in our smallness?
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
I don't know, guys, but I'm pretty sure we can trust the companies to put useful stuff on the web for us. I mean, if it wasn't useful it wouldn't be there, right? They are looking out for your best interest, and trying to derail their plans by putting up alot of tomfoolery just lowers the signal to noise ratio of the web.
I don't want to know about your rabbit... I want to know what I can buy, where I can buy it, and whose ass did the US kick today. Period. The rest is fluff bullshit.
On the other hand, I cannot help but notice how running into the wrong person [politically correct employer, boy/girlfriend, football coach, bad cop, etc.] with excellent Googling skills, can easily manage to ruin your life completely, by marginalizing you out of existence, to the extent that nobody wants to hire or date you and where even your old highschool pals fake not recognizing you on the street, because whatever you posted on your website went against the grain.
This leaves open the question of whether freedom of speech and democracy really mean anything anymore.
The game used to be played along this famous French writer's motto that "I might vehemently disagree with what you are saying, but I'll die to preserve your right to say it." Likewise, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once told his son (quoted at the funeral) to "Never attack someone personally. You can publicly attack their ideas, but never touch their dignity as a human being."
Unfortunately, in a world where anything you say can and will be used against you at some point, before you have been accused of anything, even whenever you have not broken any law, simply because people fear the stigma of guilt by association, it appears that we have reached a point where those old standards of respect are no longer true.
This being said, lately, I've been asking myself why I even bother maintaining a diminutive website:
I haven't created much in terms of music, photography or ever writings in ages, which already puts a big question mark over whatever content might qualify for publication. Then, already, I've had a few employers actually mention having a problem with me stating boldly on my About My CV... page that "I am quite competent in Windows 3.11/95/98/NT/2000 administration and in Office 95/97/2000 usage, but flatly refuse to use any Microsoft product."
[of course, in a world where the majority thinks that getting a job should be the only priority anyone ever had, and where companies can fire anyone for the most laughable excuses, standing up for your beleifs and values, by refusing to work in certain fields or within a certain framework, has become suicidal, but that's another issue entirely - then again, it says a lot about how little freedom capitalism actually offers: choose freedom or money, but you cannot have both unless what you think is whatever the Ministry of Disinformation has rubber-stamped]
Given the combined current lack of content and problem in stating preferences for anything non-mainstream, I'm starting to think that the only thing left to put on a website is a politically bleached version of my CV and a generic photo to recycle with job applications and such. Then again, might as well upload the damn thing to Monster's CV repository and start using throw-away e-mail accounts for anything, at which point nobody needs an ISP or personal website anymore. *sigh*
Damn! I beleive I just created a second dot-com doomsday scenario... Sorry to all startups who will close shop as a result! :P
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
I've had my own website for a few years now. I loved posting little stories about myself and keeping in touch with some old friends back home. I was pretty comfortable posting just about anything because I was certain that only a few people where reading the site, and that I knew who they where.
So one day I put up a post where I reminisced about my high school days (Over 15 Years ago), and I mentioned my first crush and how she shot me down. Mentioning her by first name only.
A few hours later I got an e-mail. From Her!. Asking me to remove the post from my website. 15 years, after my last contact with her and I get an email from her almost immediately after submitting a post with her first name. I guess the thought of her name associated with mine is to much to bear.
Anyways, now the only thing on my site is the local temperature.
Favorite line from the article: "It is much harder to fool people with a website." If only that were true.
Personally I think personal websites are a great idea. I use mine to keep in touch with my friends and family as well as a place to archive all of my worthwhile works. It's also a great place to keep a journal if you don't mind others reading it. I found an interesting article here that deals specifically with this topic.
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
One thing missing from all the other discussions on this topic is the primary reason to have a personal home page / web site. That is to collect together all the web resources you use regularly and make them accessible in one place from any computer that has a connection to the internet.
My personal website has a bunch of links that I use regularly and a few other handy tidbits that I find make my personal surfing experience better. I can access from my home machine, my work machine, the internet cafe, my friends house, even from my PDA via wifi if the connectivity is around.
I don't spout opinions there, nor do I have pictures of any pets/loved ones that I may or may not have.
To me this is the whole purpose of my web site and one that is as important to me as the issues raised by the original author.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
"A resume can contain false information. It is much harder to fool people with a website."
I should have stopped reading at that point...
for being unbelievably trite? I think it was.
I am so glad I found someone else who shares that opinion with me. I simply cannot believe how easily people support the concept of termination simply because a business didn't like what you said.
If you get fired for something that impacts the business, it's fine. But when someone fires you for saying 'George Bush sucks', or 'Linux sucks', or 'Environmental policy x sucks', it's going over the line. It's amazing how these same people don't say anything when CEOs resign (with benefits, golden parachute, etc) for their lying, cheating and stealing. Yet if you say 'the world sucks', you are sure to be fired.
I know the masses think we lost the war and that everyone will be a corporate slave...but please: support the resistance!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
My web page has this big disclaimer at the top:
Please excuse this page, it is really old, and a lot of the stuff here is pretty lame. Sue me, I am not a web developer.
I use my personal web space for, well, personal stuff. I use it to post pictures, so I can email friends/family a URL instead of sending them a 15MB zip file of pictures. I get a few hits here and there for various things I host. There is nothing exciting about my website, but I have had one up since 07-26-1996. I still have those pages, kind of as a nostalgia piece. I still edit my pages by hand, simple HTML.
I used to be very active in the martial arts, and before search engines were useful, I had one of the most visited sites related to martial arts. It was a page of links that I maintained. I frequented rec.martial-arts, and people would email me pages they wanted added. I did it all by hand, and eventually that caught up to me. I had about a hundred requests in my inbox, and I didn't have the time to maintain it. I "retired" the page when AltaVista made it possible to find just about anything on the net anyway. Maintaining a link page didn't make sense anymore. Hey, my personal website was featured in the September 1996 issue of Boardwatch magazine. Lame now, but at the time I thought "this is pretty cool".
I think the beauty of personal websites is that they can be as little or as much as you want them to be. It is expression. You can be a droning, self-involved egomaniac and run a blog where you prattle on about your daily activities, or you can just post pictures for your family. You can do whatever you want, that is the point.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I am somewhat concerned about privacy with my own web site, but here are a few things you can do to help:
1. Don't post personal information/your address.
2. Use a script (if you can) for e-mail instead of posting your e-mail address. Then you can choose who has your address and who doesn't. example
3. Use WHOIS protection services like those offered by RegisterFly and Go Daddy. RegisterFly only charges $2.50/year for this protection.
ya bastard (but thanks for reading to the end of the page)
(note to others: link pointed out a now-fixed incorrect spelling)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I have used this to my advantage.
There is a lot of content on my personal site. So much that people usually don't read the stuff, they just say "Wow, if his personal site is this good he must really be a good developer".
My 3 most recent employers (including my current one) have all seen my website before we have met. The flip side of this is that since I only give them my CV (resume) via the website, I know every time they look at it and can guage their interest. Pretty good trade off if you ask me.
-Jackson
I spent $800 on a pure-bred cat, and you are darn well going to see his picture!
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
1) 'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt' - Lincoln
2) If you don't write it down, it can't be subpoenaed. - The "I can't recall/remember" defense works every time.
Leave PWS and Blogs to those arrogant enough to think that other people actually care about the color of their cat's last furball.
Looks to me it is an advertisment for off-shore programmers.
This story was intresting and relatable. Having run and hosted my own site for almost a full year now, I empathize with many of tech users sentiments.
Mr. Malba, you have a knack for story selection.
While I agree that a lot of personal websites are horrid, I have one under my own domain name for the following reasons.
/. readers. They are for sharing with family and friends. Wait until you have grandkids - you'll understand.
It's for family and friends to keep in touch. There's a calendar there to remind them of family events and birthdays. Kinda like Central Headquarters for my family.
There's a page for my high school's alumni to stay in touch without going to classmates.com.
As long as I pay the bill, I have a permanent email address. And I can add/remove/change email addresses at will.
Yes, there are family photos there. They are not there for
I also have genealogical information on the site. Personal websites are invaluable for researching your family tree. If you knew my name, you could google it to find out who my great-great-great-great-grandfather was. I've found relatives I didn't know I had from all over the country.
It may truly suck bigtime in the eyes of some, but it's my site and I'll design it the way I want. I'm not stupid enough to post the url here. Who wants to be slashdotted?
Many people, including me, have a personal website because we want to change people's thinking or behavior, and not because we gain directly from our personal sites.
Let me give specific examples. I've been frustrated that many developers don't know how to write secure programs, so I give away a free book telling people how to write secure programs (particularly for Linux/Unix). I was interested in open source software / Free software, and was frustrated when I discovered that quantitative information existed but it was hard to find - so I collected quantitative data about open source software / Free software so others could benefit from my search, and so that people would start thinking quantitatively about such things. In a similar vein, I was curious about how much source code was in GNU/Linux, and wanted people in general to think about quantitatively analyzing these systems, so I posted my paper on the number of source lines of code in a GNU/Linux distribution ("More than a Gigabuck").
Reputation-building and getting stuff (like money and free things) is nice, and I certainly don't mind those side-effects. Have I made money from reputation, and gotten free stuff? Yes to both questions, but I better not quit my day job :-).
But that wasn't my point. My goal was to
give useful information to a set of other
people, to influence behavior and thinking.
I get a lot of visits, and I've received a
number of emails suggesting that my material
has changed the thinking or behavior of
some people, so I think I'm
very much meeting my goals.
I think people should be able to create a personal website for whatever reason, and then enjoy it if it meets their goals. If you want a lot of people to visit your personal website, you need to provide something on your website that others might want. A blog declaring what you ate last night isn't going to get a lot of visits. But if it's meeting your goals, go to it! If your goal is to change thinking and behavior, then you must create content that could do so.
I haven't had the problem of being "hidden"; my personal website's content ranks quite high on Google when you enter keywords relevant to my content. Why? Because I've worked hard to create content that at least some people actually want.
The stuff about needing an expert to create fancy graphics is just nonsense. Nonsense! LOTS of people visit my site, without the fancy graphics. When people are searching for information, they'll use search engines which can't even decipher the graphics. As the author says, simple works quite well.
It's not that the author is wrong - if your goal is reputation-building and free stuff, a personal website could do it. But there are many other motivations besides those two.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
English IS my native lanquage and I still didn't get it
It actually helps people to communicate. I have personal web site that speaks a bit about eczema, so it is neat to get email from people who have the same problem & are willing to share non-private information. I just have to update it every now & then.
Who knows, maybe we'll find a cure 1 day.
Personal web sites are comparable to conversations in a restaurant where they may not be interesting to everybody, but they are probably interesting to the participants.
Take care...
I see the personal website as the virtual equivalent of the front of one's home, except that most virtual homes have large signs in the front yard that give a running play-by-play of the inhabitants. Just like one's home, it may be prone to vandalism, but it's far easier to make one's website be an expression of oneself, than to put up large signs outside!
Congradulations, CowboyNeal. You win the first anual Autopr0n.com torturued Analogy award. To wit, WTF?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
IMHO. With the invent of them, more and more computer illiterate people can share their goofy and crack pot ideas on a rather redundant template. Blogs are killing the allure of personal sites. If blogs were harder to manage, and say more like a personal site where you had to do some coding yourself, people might not be doing them as much.
I would much rather visit a hand coded site than a blog any day of the week. At least, in those sites, no matter how crappy they look, you know the person at least tried to put some effort into it. With a blog, you need to put in next to no effort.
>"...why they have to be embraced to stay competitive."
During a job interview I would never mention my hobbies, my family or any of my personal or recreational activities. In fact, in most states it's illegal for an employer to ask such questions because the answers are not germane to employment -- you put yourself at risk of discrimination.
Sure, a personal site could be an asset in some situations, but it's ALWAYS an employability risk. I'd rather not take that gamble.
My website (http://www.gonzo.org) pretty much got me the job I have today. I remember after going to the interview, I realized that I had as a "what's new" item a PhotoShopped pic of Hilary Clinton's head on a man's body. And I thought, OMG! How dumb was that? But I still got the job, so perhaps my old manager was greatly amused :-)
What kind of wanker goes to London and doesn't even know about Guy Fawks day!? And what kind of pussy is scared of people setting off fireworks!? Certainly no red-blooded 4th of July celebrating American!
Also, you have the writing skills of a 5th grader.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Musicians swapping tapes is actually a good example of people exchanging ideas. Most innovators thrive in an environment filled with other people pursuing the same interest. While Mozart was clearly a musical prodigy, I'm sure he would never have been as well known if his father hadn't brought him to Vienna, a city filled with musicians and composers from around the world.
Clearly, a lot of personal home pages are failed experiments. However, the value of the successes far outweighs the failures. Also, software like Google and Slashdot allows people to find the diamonds in the trash.
I refuse to create a personal website for essentially the same reason that I refuse to have a blog: none of the information that shows up in a typical blog or personal website is anyone's business anyway. I suppose I could put together a private-access-only site for family members, but we've already got a mailing list that takes care of our communication needs, so what would be the point?
On the other hand, I do run a personal web server. Not to host my own site -- remember, I don't have one -- but to host the sites of a couple of organizations that I volunteer with, and to provide myself with a convenient but non-indexed repository of important utilities that I might need when working on some random computer somewhere -- a Windows port of vi, for instance.
I've never liked that word either. I understand the derivation, ("web log" --> "we blog, yes we do"), but it's just an ugly word.
What other words sound like "blog"? Almost all negative things. To me it always sounds like an amalgam of "blah" and "bog".
Rhyming words, on the negative side:
slog
hog
cog (each bump on a gear is a cog; also slang for a mindless corporate worker)
frog (the amphibian, also a slur meaning French person)
bog
wog (an old brit racial slur)
log (various meanings, including scatalogical slang)
snog (brit slang for kissing/cuddling, which isn't a bad thing, but I learned it from a movie in which the girl suggesting the snogging was not exactly snog-worthy, so I still have bad associations)
More positive -og words:
dog
See what I mean?
Of course, it's much too late to change the word now....
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
The only reason why personal web pages were ever "in favor" is because there was nothing else on the net.
witold.org
Though in a little bit of self-depreceation I even posted my first website on the web again (this time under my personal domain), you can see it here in all it's Strongbad glory, though Strongbad wasn't around, when I posted the first version of it on the net. In fact nor was Google.
Many personal sites have potential.
Also, fan sites sometimes have unique perspectives or pictures. Most fan sites are personal sites.
My brother uses his personal site to display pics of his daughter, which otherwise, I'd never see.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
If someone's personal homepage mentions a certain hobby in detail, chances are other people will pick up on it and visit that website to see someone else's experience.
I love the homegrown websites about hobbies and cool stuff. It's the corporate websites that have choked the life out of the Internet by making giant sites that cover everything mildly, so I can never find the real content -- from the people!
Okay, it's been a good morning. My site usually gets 20 unique hits per day but in the 6 hours since I posted that comment, I've received 586 unique hits.
All times are GMT:
I posted my first comment at 10:46
11:00 -> 12:00 : 51 hits
12:00 -> 13:00 : 86 hits
13:00 -> 14:00 : 172 hits
14:00 -> 15:00 : 174 hits
15:00 -> 16:00 : 64 hits
16:00 -> 16:48 : 33 hits
My comment started at score:2 because I have Excellent karma. It was quickly modded Flamebait, but this had no noticeble affect on hits. It was then modded repeatedly and waivered between score:2 and score:4, always "Funny". I think the surge of hits i received from 13:00 -> 15:00GMT was from America waking up and this this story being near the top of the slashdot front page. Hit are slowing now, I suppose fewer new people are reading the story. In total, my post was modded Funny at least 8 times, Overrated at least 4 times, and Flamebait at least 3 times.
My confession is that the first "Anonymous Coward" that replied to my post was in fact me. After my post was modded flamebait, I thought I'd try social engineering. Could I make people think my post was funny simply by saying so? It appears the answer is yes. (or maybe my post really was funny.) Note that I don't have any ads on my page, so hits were not getting me cash or anything.
All very interesting to me.
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There is an upside to this, of course. If your Website is honest and informative you might find yourself in jobs where your employer respects you above and beyond what you're able to accomplish for him/her. Example, I'm an artist. My last (science/tech) employer not only tolerated this (hiring me half time which was somewhat rare in my field), but took an avid interest in my work (several coworkers attended shows and bought artwork). If I go into a job interview and say, "I'm an artist," they may roll their eyes and write me off, but if they see I have a professional attitude about both my work for them and as an artist as well, it may help. And if it hurts, well, I don't want to work for them.
EOT
"Why Personal Websites Matter"
:)
Because the best pr0n pages ARE personal websites
____
nico
Nico-Live
YOU DON'T FAIL IT!
I think the main reason for avoiding CSS is that it is not easy to figure out, mainly due to the lack of error messages and feedback from browsers. It took me a long time to embrace CSS for that reason, although I have finally converted the front page of my personal site to it. Unfortunately, I have thousands of pages in the old style, developed over ten years of having a web site, and I have to say the task of even thinking of how to reorganize them is just overwhelming.
In order to convert my pages, I would have to say:
<a href = "http://www.amazing.com/">amazing.com<a>
instead of
<a href = http://www.amazing.com/>amazing.com<a>
I find that if I'm creating HTML through programs, the latter produces much more readable programs than the former, since I don't need to escape any quotes.
Especially with something like this:
<img src = "foo.gif" height = "100" width = "50">
Why should I have to say someting like:
print("<img src = \"foo.gif\" height = \"100\" width = \"50\">\n");
instead of
print("<img src = foo.gif height = 100 width = 50>");
What earthly purpose does quoting numbers serve? There is no programming language that I know of that requires, or even allows, quoted numbers as numeric values.
Now, I know in certain cases, omiting quotes doesn't work, but for properly encoded URLs it's completely safe as far as I can tell, since spaces are not allowed.
So why quote URLs when it makes programming harder? What higher purpose is served by that?
I find the religious attitude of strict HTML purists a little silly. If it's no harder to code a browser so omitting quotes works, why force them on people, when in many ways the old style was far more readable?
D
They are essientially an extention of the constantly-running yapping mouths of the people that set them up. If you meet them in person, don't be suprised if you find that their endless blather about things interesting only to them makes you want to slap them over the head.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Welcome to the "at will" aspect of work. Now why are you working for someone who "at will" can fire you because they don't like what you said? Framing it under "libel" and "slander" doesn't make the employer any more desirous to work for, and the "at will" aspect makes it easy to walk away from.
The plain and simple fact of the matter is more and more personal homepages are flooding its users with pop-ups and banners, not to mention crappy webspace and upload tools. Plus, with the emergence of php, mysql, asp, and other advanced scripting languages are making it difficult for the average person to make a simple homepage as HTML and XHTML tags are being quickly "deprecated" by the W3C.
<a href = http://www.amazing.com/>amazing.com<a>
Are you sure that was ever correct?
print("<img src = \"foo.gif\" height = \"100\" width = \"50\">\n");
That's still wrong (unless you didn't mean for that spacing to be in there), how about this:
print("<img src='foo.gif' height='100' width='50'>\n")
What earthly purpose does quoting numbers serve?
It makes it consistent. To XML, it's just an attribute with a name and a value. The values can have spaces. What's the point of making specific HTML tags a special case?
There is no programming language that I know of that requires, or even allows, quoted numbers as numeric values.
There are a lot of programming languages out there (HTML isn't one of them). Many of them allow quoted numbers. sh, perl and tcl off the top of my head (not that I particularly like programming in any of those, but they meet your requirements). As far as requiring it, there's probably one of those out there, too.
I find the religious attitude of strict HTML purists a little silly. If it's no harder to code a browser so omitting quotes works, why force them on people, when in many ways the old style was far more readable?
Because the standards say it shouldn't work that way. If we all decide which parts of the standards we feel we should honor, we end up with the HTML of 1996 or so. Things really are better now (even though there still are decaying browsers around that people who use that don't support CSS properly just yet).
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
The other reason to use CSS even on small sites is that: one's site may grow. Better to do it right the first time. And second it's good to learn the correct way right off the bat, instead of waiting until later to learn how to do it right.
A few months ago, I read about www.nearlyfreespeech.net on slashdot, so I am "returning the favor" by this review. www.xpane.com *IS* a "personal website" at this time, since it is at the very least least several months away from shipping, and it IS personal ( I am the only one working on it ). The thing I liked most about the NFSN approach is the "pay-as-you-go". I had encountered the occasional horror-story about over-bandwidth charges, and I could not manage to get a straight answer from my previous (nameless) hosting provider about what would happen if I got slashdotted. While of course this post won't get much reading, it if DID, the worst-case would be that my less-than-$20.00 balance at NFSN would be exhausted, and then I could re-fund the "bandwidth account" sometime later. This is SO brilliant. I am SICK of "unlimited pricing plans", where most of the time I pay for what I'm not using, and then in the event of a spike it would be insufficient. So mostly I only pay two-cents-per-day for DNS, which with the no-upper-bound-pay-as-you-go like I say seems brilliant.
A personal website can also be a technical tour de force. Showcasing the latest in a specific field, pushing boundaries. Sematic web, XML to the max, SVG and SMIL that makes people think they've hit a Flash site. The latest in artistic expression. Science explained simply. The next in social communications.
I use the webspace allowed me from Earthlink as a place to keep my Bookmark List. Then whether in my office, or home, or elsewhere, it's always available. (I am not looking for any hits other than my own and those of my immediate family).
Ok. It's exactly 8 hours since my original post. I've looked at the logs a bit more. First an update, then some funny things I've noticed.
I've now received 792 hits since my first post. Latest:
16:00 -> 17:00 : 54 hits
17:00 -> 18:00 : 109 hits
18:00 -> 18:46 : 75 hits
So hits are increasing again, not sure why. Might be because my post is now score:4.
I have three documents linked from near the top of my webpage. Of the 792 people that visited my site today:
110 people decided to look at my photo of me (which isn't a photo).
12 people looked at the french translation of my site (which isn't in french)
17 people looked at my FAQ (which doesn't contain any questions that are frequently asked).
I find the number of people looking at my photo pretty strange.
Anyway, I live in the GMT timezone and it's pint o'clock. So I'm out of here.
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It used to be that sites you'd find about something were maintained by a fan/amateur/etc...
Now everything is a corporate site. True...if you dig, you may be able to find a fan site about x, or a end-user site about some company product.
But it seems everyone wants to litigate to make sure the only info out there is what they want.
How many DMCA or other things do we see to shut down a site because perhaps someone said product y was a little better?
Or how many times do you hear about getting notified because your fan site uses a copyrighted image...such as a simpson's character on a simpsons fan site?
It's like the RIAA - lets shoot our customers over trying to be good loyal customers.
Or as others have said, the search engines are geared towards showing the commercial sites. It used to be you could search and find some info about a product. Now if you type it in, all you find is 500 sites that want to see you the product...the same 500 sites that will sell you the "xyzzy" product as well.
I don't know about correct, but it's worked for the decade or so I've been coding web pages.
For some reason I've been under the impression that not all browsers supported single quotes, but that probably shows my age more than anything else.
The rules as I knew them were that you don't have to quote anything unless it contains characters that appear to be spaces. That's not something specific to a list of HTML tags, it's a general rule that always works. So you would need to quote "The Great Foo" in this example:
<img src = foo.gif alt = "The Great Foo">
but not the name foo.gif itself, no matter what tag was involved.
If you take this literally - and the standards check things are as literal as things come - you have:
<input name = "variable_name" type = "text" size = "30">
As someone not used to quoting variable names, this is pretty jarring. I have always said
<input name = variable_name type = text size = 30>
without a problem.
I think what annoys me is the Rule Nazis basically say THEIR WAY is the One True HTML, and anyone who wants to code some other way is MORALLY WRONG. The older style is a lot easier on the eyes, at least for me, and I don't see why I have to be branded as an incompetent through their validation tools just because I'd rather write HTML the way I have for a decade. (amazing.com: Since 1994, and my web roots go even deeper).
I'm not a total reactionary - Cascading Style Sheets have value, because they let me simplify a page, create much better looking pages, and be more creative than I have been in the past. This is great, even if the syntax is convoluted and commands are sufficiently changed as to require a huge body of additional memorization. I'll conform like that when I see real and substantial benefits.
But I don't see how putting quotes where I used to omit them benefits anybody. I don't understand the moralistic attitude, which sneeringly implies that I'm killing kittens or poisoning the web by simply writing HTML which works in every browser that I've ever used.
Let me give you another example.
According to various references, the <center> tag is immoral. Instead, they want you to say <div align = "center">. They tell us that, in some abstract universe, this is easier to understand.
Certainly nobody outside the W3C can say that <div align = "center"> is easier for human beings to read or understand than <center>.
I code in a way that makes it easiest for me (and hopefully other humans) to read. So I still use <center>. If you talk to HTML purists about this tag, they would stare at you as though you're killing babies in the cradle.
Why? What's wrong with keeping HTML a language that's easy for humans to read, maintain and understand?
D
Google with its "peer review" (one link is one vote) kind of ranking system helped personal homepages. The good ones can sometimes be found even higher than fat commercial sites. I remember a time when the only way you would find good homepages was by browsing the bookmarks pages of someone you trusted to have good taste.
And googling really is a skill, that you learn to perfect with time. I've refined my skills with tons of time searching for obscure technical information, that I've gotten pretty good at it. And having helped others track down old acquaitances, and find great deals on apartments and pet care, I have been labeled "Google Master".
I HAVE THE POWER!
An entity like a corporation is obviously far more powerful, but I'm much more motivated to look up information on them, then they are on me. And matched 1 v 1 versus some corporate slave working without passion, I'm sure I can outduel them.
Besides to them, I am just a piece of paper in a stack of resumes, an email in a flooded inbox, or the interuption between somebody's smoking break but if I am preparing for an interview, they are the focus on my current energies.
Like you, I have a very unique name. But I just don't care to put in slashdot.
"Vanity sites" are a perfect term; only people who feel a useless need to brag about themselves would want one.
Blogs, at least, usually discuss ideas (which are infinitely more important).
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
apparently it hasn't occured to you that slashdot.org is essentially a personal web page of rob malda and gang.
the point that's being made is, people with interests should publish them in an open fashion so that people with similar interests would congregate. Improve the internet culture.
If you're doing something cool (building a robot, maybe), put up some information on it. we might want to see it, and google will find it for us. My impression is that it applies more accurately to geeks than to anyone else... I mean, we're the ones that can pretty much effortlessly make the things, afterall.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I did like the picture though. I was just waiting for the midi "I Dudditz!" to come on....
re: Just the center tag
The argument against using the center tag is pretty straight forward (and goes straight to the core of why CSS ought be used). Center is a layout tag, and not a markup tag. There is no reason to block the data inside the tag center, it's superfluous to the data. This is why it's depricated.
A more logical solution would be "why do I want this part centered? Is it because it's a heading? Maybe I should use a heading tag and style those headings align: center;". Or course if it's a special paragraph that needs to be centered class='special' and style it.
To move the discussion forward: One day we'll all be using xml anyhow, so these arguments will be moot. We'll be writing stylesheets or xslt's no matter what. At which point we won't be arguing about which browser is 'decaying' but about what sites we don't visit because they don't parse. (oh and all that whitespace in your examples is unncessary if we are talking about being loose with the code :-)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
People try to make up for having a crap site by bloating it with "features."
Maddox just speaks his mind, purposfully uses large obnoxious text with terrible graphics, etc and get more visitors than most corporate sites. All without spending a penny on advertising.
With my site, content comes first. Then I worry about making it pretty. Most people go the other way.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I could be a coward. :-p ^_^
I see a lot of people posting about how it is so dangerous to post your opinions online in a personal page, because maybe your mom will read it or your buddies will shun you or something. Or maybe your employer/potential employer will find out about your secret personal life and drop you like a hot potato. Maybe someone will crush your feelings by saying you have an ugly self-centered 1993 looking tacky page. Maybe I'm out of touch or something, but this seems pretty lame.
How about proudly being who you are and not giving a fuck? Your friends are shunning you and you can't get a date? Fuck 'em. Really. Do you really want to have to censor yourself all of the time, for the rest of your life, because your friends, employer, and potential mate would ditch you if they really knew what you thought? If they really knew who you were?
Maybe I'm being harsh, but it all sounds weak. Some kind of fearfull low self-esteem thing...
The point being that personal sites are going to start mattering more than they have in the past.
/charles
For some reason I've been under the impression that not all browsers supported single quotes, but that probably shows my age more than anything else.
It was valid in HTML 2.0, and I assume it still is. You're getting closer to the point, though...
I think what annoys me is the Rule Nazis basically say THEIR WAY is the One True HTML
HTML is a specification available to anyone who wants to read it, implement something that reads HTML, or write HTML him/herself. Ambiguity is *not* helpful in standards. I believe HTML 2.0 did allow you to sometimes omit quotes in attributes, but not always. There were specific characters that might cause your attribute to break. This gets even worse in auto-generated stuff where you might just end up with one of those things in a tag somewhere and suddenly your page doesn't render.
So things got easier. If an element has an attribute, you quote it. No exceptions. Parsers are easier and more reliable and people can worry about the harder problems.
If you break the rules, and do things that are not valid according to the specifications, you should expect things to break.
According to various references, the <center> tag is immoral. Instead, they want you to say <div align = "center">. They tell us that, in some abstract universe, this is easier to understand.
(do you really space out your elements like that? I've never seen that done)
``align'' is no longer a valid attribute of div for the same reason that ``center'' is no longer a valid element of HTML. It's layout. HTML didn't start out as a fancy layout language, just another markup language. Once people started using it for layout, it was realized that it's *really* bad at it, and documents could no longer be maintained. It's now broken into two parts:
HTML is for document structure (this is a header for this paragraph, etc...).
CSS is for layout (headers look like this, paragraphs look like that, etc...)
Why? What's wrong with keeping HTML a language that's easy for humans to read, maintain and understand?
Exactly! I've got *pages* of HTML in my editor that produce a single, small bit of content just in the right spot on the screen. Nested tables in nested tables with every other row and column stretching a 1pixel image to give *just* the right layout. We go in there and try to add a column and suddenly it's not even on the screen. I've replaced a lot of this kind of thing with the most simple possible HTML and CSS that can rearrange it *outside* of the document itself.
This is really important for things like the product search engine internal to my company. I can perform a search and get the results on my screen in pretty much plain HTML format, then pop open the CSS editor in firebird and manipulate it until it looks exactly right. Then I just put that css in the file this thing includes and nobody can tell the difference...
except the programmer/html guy who has to go in there next time we need to add a column or something.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Yes, it matters...if it's ever linked into your /. thread or forum post!
For all of those who are having trouble identifying fruit, may I suggest the mighty fruit perceptron.
I hate Blacks. I like Whites. Got a problem with it? I don't care. Go fuck yourself.
Google for the person's name, check them out, their hobbies, their faith, their habits....
...
This is one of the reasons that, on my home page, I've included a list of links to other people with the same name as mine. Yeah, this is basically silly. But people do make this sort of stupid mistake. You can have a bit of fun with them by including such a frivolous list, and making them think a bit before they decide that they really have found your web site. With a bit of thought, you can design your site so that they're never quite sure.
And sometimes you meet someone with your name who you really like.
Some years back, I got into a music festival free by telling the folks at the gate my name. Another fellow with the same name was a performer, so they just waved me in. I found him and told him about it, and he thought it was pretty funny. It turned out that we both had very similar collections of instruments in our cars. We ended up on stage together
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I have a personal website (have had one for quite awhile) and while I do have to put up with a certain degree of harassment, I don't really mind it. For one, putting up with people's opinions (especially those people that I do not know, or care to know) is easy. They don't know me and simply feel like venting or flaming me -- who cares. On the other hand, having a personal website is a great way to keep in touch with busy friends or keep people up to date. I have a personal journal on mine (searchable, and viewable for any dat since I started it in October of 2000), as well as an online photo gallery of over 5600 pictures. I used to have a business section on it as well, but I have since migrated that to a new domain. Overall though, I enjoy having a personal website, and I think my friends would agree.
Personal websites went out when "'Blogs" entered the scene. I used to keep a domain and my personal website, but I also got a weblog, and when the domain lapsed, I didn't renew it. No biggie, I still have my place on the web. which is why personal websites came into existence.
-bZj
.sig
this was a RANDOM url. i could have picked another one, like slashdot.org, or goatse.cx, or msdn.ca but i chose that one. and MY favorite site on the internet is most definitely mine(which is offline atm :/ )...but also jems such as deviantcontrol.com and of course thekult.net ...really hold my attention as well.
in the meanwhile +5 insightful? what the fuck...???
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
> Emacs? *Everyone* knows that vi is the one true editor
You will out grow vi.
After 24 hours, hits are almost back to their normal rate. For the 24 hour period, here's the final totals:
1333 hits: homepage.
256 hits: photo of me.
62 hits: my FAQ.
56 hits: french translation.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I have both a personal website http://life.katzstein.com and a family website http://katzstein.com. They are not fancy, but both have a story to tell. As the story said content is king! And yes, I admit it, I'm using FrontPage - having yet to learn ccs.