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!

Comments

hmm

[nepheles]

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.

Re:hmm

[wiggys]

That was maybe acceptable in the infancy of the internet

And its no less acceptable now. The net gives you the freedom to do what you like and say what you like, so if you want to publish a page on a Geoshitties website full of animated christmas tree decorations and talk about your pet rabbit then I think that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

Re:hmm

[jonbrewer]

Blogs are better because they give what people care about -- your opinions and knowledge -- without the self-advertising.

Nobody cares about your opinions. Well, maybe your mom, but really nobody else. Your friends only check your blog because you bother them about it.

Re:hmm

[paganizer]

..Something I've been having trouble with for several years now.
I know it's PC to have a specialized label for every fricking thing under the sun, but...
a Blog IS a personal website.
You can call it whatever you want, I suppose, and it sure sounds, I suppose, much cooler, but calling a cat a flea transportation system doesn't change the fact that its a cat.

BTW, Freenet is Fixed, but FROST is fried.

Re:hmm

[themusicgod1]

ever consider how many " useless, egotistical " people there are? and furthermore who the hell do you think you are to tell the rest of us what we should and should not do with our home computers connected to the internet? if you don't like personal websites theres an easy solution : don't go to them. if you wind up on one, either click the "back" part of your home browser or enter in some random url, like for example http://www.slashdot.org. i don't CARE what other people care about. the internet allows freedom of expresson, and freedom of thought, and to constrain this in the straightjacket of public morals and thought is self defeating. 'to care about what other people think of you is to be controlled by them'-voltaire

I'm not all that surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Some term them as vanity sites, and others are scared of privacy concerns.

Can you blame them? Now that people are getting fired over what they post in their blogs, I'd say that has a bit of a "chilling effect" on the topics many would be willing to discuss on their personal homepages. Or what about having a coworker discover your personal site, only to discern that you're [insert something the boss doesn't like]? If you can't talk about work, or if you're afraid of being fired when a coworker surfs by... Why bother with a homepage or blog at all?

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)

Another stick

[OP_Boot]

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.

Better than some things

[tintruder]

Any time an individual does something to get attention, somebody makes fun of them.

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!"

Why personal websites matter

[wiggys]

Well the article mentions Paul Graham and Richard Stallman's personal websites... they obviously matter because they are huge icons in this industry, and they are also smart people with interesting ideas.

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!

Bah

[adrianbaugh]

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.