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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!
It's happened several times, but the most memorable was when I fell in love with a girl who was totally out of my league. For a brief time I had the lyrics of "U2 - All I want is You" as the content of my homepage. It's a generic romantic sort of song, nothing in the lyrics that would hint at a particular girl.
I wasn't trying to send a message to anyone, other than to tell everyone "hey I'm kinda in love over here." Wouldn't you know it, a girl I had no interest in decided that my page was surely dedicated to her. It resulted in no end of phone calls I had to ditch, and the eventual blocking of several
Moral of the story? Before posting lovey dovey lyrics on your personal homepage, firewall out any ugly girls who like you.
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!
oh cripes... you sound like the webdesigners at work why they HAVE to use frontpage and other WYSIWYG web tools...
here's a tip for you.... you dont HAVE to use every single HTML tag. you can make a killer webpage that looks fantastic with HTML3.0 only.
if your excuse to not make a page is because HTML has too many functions now, then you're just making excuses.
there's a webdesigner at work that codes html by hand and sticks as close as possible to HTML 3.0 unless what he is trying to do needs CSS or 4.0 features. his pages look better than the dreamweaver drivers and are always 40-70% smaller so they load faster.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My personal website gets a fair number of hits, about 300 entries per day in the access log since I started on this host. How many entries per hit is not something I really know, but that's still a fair amount. Of course, it helps that I actually have things people want to look at on my site; pictures that at least some people find interesting and a bit of software that some people like. In all honesy, if your younger brother's page has info about his pets and some pictures of his watch collection, of course he's not going to get any hits! Nobody cares. You're not seeing some evil side-effect of Google's searching algorithm. You were seeing the result of crappy search engines, which often directed people to pages that didn't have anything relevant to their search on them. Now Google lets you find what you want, so visits to pages that don't have anything people want drop off, of course.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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.
I don't agree with you regarding pets. I'm not saying my cats love me, because that can't be proven. But I do believe they prefer being around me rather than not.
I leave food in the bowls, and the bag of cat food could be tipped over. So, they don't need me to actively feed them. I leave a window open, so they can come and go as they please. But, when I come home, they both come and meet me at the door. One of them, even with a full food dish, likes to crawl on me as I watch movies and have me pet him. He could just as easily hang out on his own or with the other cat.
You mention animals spending time together with no benefit whatsoever. But I think rather that it is a symbiosis of sorts. I provide a comfortable, safe, well-fed environment, and they provide at least a synthetic companionship. It's good for both of us. They live well, and I feel needed and "loved". There's even evidence that taking care of a pet can help people live longer.
My guess is that it's probably based on evolution. We humans have triggers that make us feel loved and wanted, which makes us happy. Cats learned how to access those triggers, ensuring safe, well-fed environments in which to prosper and procreate. Too bad my cats are fixed...
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.
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
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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Sure, there are lots of details you don't need to and shouldn't bring up, but leaving out all personal details from your CV and not discussing it where it would be natural during job interviews will just make you seem cold, anti-social and unfriendly.
Pure skills are rarely the most important aspect of a prospective employee - someone that don't fit into the team may end up being a liability regardless of skill level.
In past jobs I've turned away plenty of candidates that had great skills because it was obvious that they would be a bad fit with the rest of the team, and several times hired people that were weaker technically.
Sure, if your interests are just plain weird, don't start talking about them (unless they're weird in a way that you think the interviewers will find cool and interesting), but if you're active in sports (especially teams) or participate in uncontroversial organizations (in other words, if you're a member of the local chess club, a drama group, book group or similar, cool, but if you're a member of a political party or a political pressure group, be VERY careful, even if you think the interviewer sympathise with your views), or play an instrument, or work with animals in your spare time, etc. etc. you a) may be lucky and find something the interviewer is interested in, and b) might show skills or personality traits that the interviewer will think fits well in the team.
That doesn't mean you should start blabbering about it unless it comes naturally, but if you're asked about organizational skills, and you haven't managed any team at work, but have organized camping trips for homeless children, or spent your spare time on some other challenging tasks that require the same skill set they have asked for, many interviewers will like that you think outside the box, that you've done something socially worthwhile that also demonstrate the skills they asked about, and that you are open about what you do.
If you do bring up your personal life though, make sure that you point out how it relates to the position unless it is blindingly obvious - the person interviewing you might not know what is involved in your specific hobbies or social activities.
The point being that personal sites are going to start mattering more than they have in the past.
/charles