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What Do You Do With a Personal Domain?
bmerr71 writes "I bought my own domain name to use as a self-promotion tool. I use a subdomain, 'profile.mydomain.com', which I selectively put on my email signatures to link to my linkedin profile. I also loaded up Google Apps to use for email. But when you go directly to my domain name, there is nothing there. I didn't want GoDaddy getting ad revenue off my name (and it doesn't look very professional), so I killed the ad page, but it seems like I should be able to put something up on my main page. But, I am not interesting in blogging, I do not want too much personal information up there, and I do not want to spend a lot of money (none, if possible). Are there any free apps that I can load up on my domain to fill the blank space? What do non-bloggers do with their personal domains?"
But, I am not interesting in blogging, I do not want too much personal information up there, and I do not want to spend a lot of money (none, if possible).
I think you should go with a really well thought out image that speaks to your audience with no words needed. Ok, stay with me on this one, ok? Picture this: your head ... superimposed on Chuck Norris' body ... punching Clippy ... into the fires of Mount Doom.
WHAT? How can you not like that?
What do non-bloggers do with their personal domains?
Something really interesting and original ... which kind of puts the ball back in your court. If you have any work you can showcase, do it ... otherwise I would suggest you actually take sometime to make it personal. Otherwise just make a portal to sites you like or profiles on social networking sites with a theme that you enjoy (you could do this easily with nvu, blufish, etc or any WISYWIG open source editor out there).
My work here is dung.
Why don't you post a copy of your resume and redirect all hits to your domain to that page?
Be master of your domain.
If you have nothing to say, perhaps it's foolish.
http://www.hae.com/
I use my personal domain for my "good" email address and also to host personal stuff like photo albums, avatars, bookmarks and such.
Call me old fashioned, but I like to keep my private stuff away from corporations, so I try to avoid photobucket, flickr etc.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
What exactly are you trying to promote about yourself? What do you do? Do you want visitors to learn something about you, or are you just filling your corner of the internet with random web apps?
We can't help you if we don't know what you're trying to accomplish.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Maybe he wanted to protect the name from abuse by his many enemies?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The fact that you have nothing to post on your site tells me you probably don't need one. Not trying to be snarky, but why grope around for stuff to post? If there's anything you really want to say to the world you'll probably think of it. Until then why merely fill space?
That's the most professional course of action. Particularly if you have questionable photos posted.
-- r . m o s q u i t o --
Some pictures uploaded from my cellphone, some tecnical details I would like to remember, some pictures of stuff I put on ebay, my "real" email, and just a server I use for experiments like configuring virtual hosts with apace, trying out mutual ssl authentication, setting up a mail server and piping the mails to a script that scrapes the attachments from the mail and puts them in the gallery online... stuff like this.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
I say he should have a web interface for his MythTV machine, so the public can choose what he watches each night. :)
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
BAD BAD BAD.
mydomain.com is a privately owned domain. When demonstrating a domain, you use profile.example.com!
MABASPLOOM!
I'm in a similar situation as the submitter of this story, and I think you're dumb to take offense or have so little imagination.
First, just because I don't have much to put up on the main page doesn't mean that there's nothing there at all. I have some photos hosted and stuff and you just need to know the URL to get to them.
The main thing I use it for is email, which I think is a perfectly reasonable reason to have a domain name. Gosh, that sounds just like the submitter.
If your domain doesn't have a logical target audience given its name, ie. it isn't something like "itsallaboutcars.com" then for the love of God don't put random stuff up there just to fill space. The best that could happen is it gets indexed by search engines and people looking for something specific end up on your page randomly which contains no unique content. Similar to database design, if its redundant it doesn't need to exist. If your domain name does have an obvious relavent market, how about finding someone that has that interest that is willing to share the costs of hosting with you?
I registered fuckthenavy.net because .com and .org were taken.
You think the navy might be interested?
Everybody has an open-source personality in that they tend to pick and choose the aspects and mannerisms they like and discard those they don't like. Personalities aren't born, they're made.
I think you should ask what a personal domain actually is. In my opinion, it's a website about YOU. Not just who you are, but also your interest, hobbies, likes and dislikes. When someone goes to you.com, they are intentionally interested in YOU.
Boiling it down to what you asked, I think the question then becomes "What do I want to share with the world?" And it is truly the world. As you've said, you don't want too much personal information out there, but a website about you doesn't have to be just the facts about you.
I've thought about this recently for my own site. I don't care to be a blogger either. Here are some things I can think of that might spur on your creativity:
1) Articles - write articles on things you like. These aren't blog entries per say, although they could be. But if you find yourself interested in some topic, and would like to write your ideas down, an article could be a good avenue for that.
2) Works/Portfolio - if you have a hobby or career involving something that you can show off or demo, put it up there. If you are a photobug, put your favorites pics up, or if you craft things out of wood, take pictures and put them on your site, etc, etc. Find out what you like to do and/or are good at and share it with us!
3) Personal Photos/Videos - photos and videos say a lot, but they don't necessarily give away your information. Pictures of yourself, friends, family, co-workers, places you go, things you eat. Anything.
4) Resume - an easy one. Could also expand it to include links to companies you've worked for previously or links to works you've done.
5) Profit!! - Hope you enjoyed that oblig. slashdotters. Ok, snap out of it, this isn't a step-by-step thing. But seriously though, if you have a lot of junk in your house you need to get rid of, you could use your site as real estate for selling things. Not really a long term idea -you might run out of stuff to sell- but it could work.
Remember what web pages are: text, images, videos, sounds, colors, interactive media.
Take what you like to do and want to share and apply it over those mediums.
It's a personal domain, so make a personal site! When I go to you.com, I want to know about YOU!
Hope I helped.
When I had the money for hosting I just put up a page where you could post comments.
Nothing special, took about 10 minutes in Perl and anyone could leave a comment!
So for someone who doesn't want to code, would you recommend phpBB or MediaWiki or something else?
What do you with your domain? Anything you damned well please.
Check out http://jwsmythe.com
I have an redacted copy of my resume, some tools I use on a regular basis, my portfolio of some of the more unique and complex work I've done (and some lame stuff to fill space).
Under my site, if you know the directory names, you'll find work I did for particular customers that I wanted to make available, some personal projects, and other crap. My full resume is also hidden under an unlinked subdirectory, so I can give out the specific link to the full resume with my full name, address, companies I've worked for, etc. Sometimes I just need to move a file from point A to point B, where I can't FTP or SCP to either one, so it's a good transit point for me. Copy it over, and scp it down.
My site takes up 30Gb, even though the visible part is maybe (just maybe) a few Mb.
So, what do I do with my site? Anything I want. I don't have a blog on there yet, but I'm writing one from scratch. I've picked up a few new paying customers since I was laid off from my full time job, the paying customers take priority over anything I want to do for myself. Since I advertise myself as a sysadmin/programmer/network engineer/security engineer/DBA/etc, it would be silly to put a pre-packaged blog software on there. :) It also has my rate sheet, so if someone asks me, "Can you do this for me?", I can point them directly to it, so they can reference it any time they want.
My other domains, I put whatever is appropriate on them. You'll find my news site linked from my personal site. That makes a little money. You'll also find my cryptography site. It doesn't make any money, but it gets a lot of traffic from various places including universities and government/military facilities. I have to assume some have integrated my open source software into their own applications. It would be nice if they told me, but no one ever does.
I have a couple dozen other domains. Some are almost completely dormant (with Google or Amazon ads). Some got a good Google PR, so I keep them around to help raise my rank on other projects. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Why do you gotta be a dick? Have you never asked someone for advice? What's your advice to people who ask technical questions? "A brain - you need one."?
For others of us, while we may know some HTML, and perhaps can even do some php and database programming, we just don't have the time to build a web presence from scratch. The guy even stated he's looking for a free app to help him out. He is experiencing a TIME issue, not a PERSONALITY issue. If you ask me, refactored (260886) is the one with a personality problem.
Just you wait until you get sued for personality infringement. :)
"I bought my own canvas to use as a self-promotion tool. I removed the plastic wrapper. I also nailed some tacks into the sides to strengthen it. But when you go to look at it, there is nothing there. I didn't want Joe's Art Supplies getting ad revenue off my name (and it doesn't look very professional), so I sanded off the logo, but it seems like I should be able to put something on the canvas itself. But, I am not interesting in painting, I do not want too much personal information on it, and I do not want to spend a lot of money on paints, charcoals, or pastels(none, if possible). Are there any things that I can put on my canvas to fill the blank space? What do non-painters do with their personal canvases?"
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
"Web designers" keep not wanting to know the most critical single factor in Google's original success ... no clutter.
I've got way too many placeholder pages which vary from one liners, to blatant lies about "coming soon", to a single link to some other discussion of the site's intended topic.
Lately, with bandwidth being cheap and no shortage of photos to choose from, I've been tending to add a single image which speaks for itself.
(Was going to also add the parent's exact suggestion so replied rather than duplicating.)
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Put a big picture of Summer Glau on the page.
What more do you need?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You come up with a neat idea, then discover that someone more famous than you had a similar idea, and spend the rest of your life being called a copy cat :(
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I bought a personal domain not long ago intending to set up a family site so my parents/siblings can keep in touch as we are all across the country. After trying out stuffy like gallery2, wordpress, etc etc, i decided I didnt want everything piecemeal. I evenually landed on familycms.com which is an open source cms geared directly at what I was trying to do. Ive been playing with it ever since, learning php as I go to modify it to what I want.
Not really a direct answer for something on your main domain, but I thought Id throw it out there anyway as another use for a subdomain.