Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 436 posts

Re: Have a personal web site

#111

Post by thjan »

Spare_account wrote: post #78
RenRav wrote: post #20

I would consider being an online ghost as a great compliment with how everything has been lately. There is way too much public information being pumped out for no reason at all.

This was my sentiment while reading the article. Two years ago I went through a process of completely stripping away my online presence. I'm now unsearchable by name, name and company, name and home town. The author's reasons for having an online presence don't appeal to me personally. I can practise skills that I will find useful and I can learn, all without publishing evidence of it online.

How did you achieve that and what about sites like archive.org?

Also, have you considered going a "middle path" where you are searchable but no info comes up besides your name and face? With how things seem to be evolving I lean torwards a "grey man" strategy because some day you will be suspicious by not being searchable online. At least that's what I kinda fear.

Re: Have a personal web site

#112

Post by tigerlily »

jaabe wrote: post #13

Some of the most interesting things online are people writing about things they are passionate about, for the sake of writing about them. At least in my opinion, so it’s fair to say that I agree with the author. I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though. I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down, almost as though the journaling is me thinking out lo…

> If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs.

Hmm, I wonder if there's a search engine tailored to this sort of thing? As in search all the blogs for human knowledge and experience.

Re: Have a personal web site

#113

Post by twhb »

What are people’s thoughts on an ideal personal domain name?

firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous when used for things you’re the author of but not the subject of, like “andrewredford.com/my-js-library” or “andrewredford.com/notepad”.

fml.com (initials), if you can score a good TLD? flast.com? Create an unrelated but brand-able name like vegandev.com?

Re: Have a personal web site

#114

Post by keerthiko »

The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company you worked for, or any news outlet article where your name is mentioned will rank first and ahead of any personal website.

I understand if one's full name combination is too common to show every personal website, but I feel like if a unique name is googled, or there's one or two decidedly well known person(s) of that name, and that person has authored a personal site, search engines should prioritize that on the first page, if not the very first result(s).

Try googling for John Carmack, Barack Obama, or (op) Mark Christian. What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine?

Re: Have a personal web site

#115

Post by comprev »

thirdsun wrote: post #93
Matty1992 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite problem, I share the name with someone else working in the tech field who is academically and professionally my senior. I frequently get emails and phone calls from recruiters offering positions with a salary up to 200k more than I'm expecting at my level because they think I teach at Stanford

Did you ever try to bullshit your way into one of these positions? Obviously it's a bad idea, but I'm only half joking since it might be an interesting experiment to see how people rate and value you if their mind may have already been made up.

On a similar note, there was a TV series about faking it. (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/faking-it/episode-guide)

Re: Have a personal web site

#116

Post by janvdberg »

twhb wrote: post #113

What are people’s thoughts on an ideal personal domain name? firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous when used for things you’re the author of but not the subject of, like “andrewredford.com/my-js-library” or “andrewredford.com/notepad”. fml.com (initials), if you can score a good TLD? flast.com? Create an unrelated but brand-able name like vegandev.com?

I think I get the best of both worlds. Because my domain name is a numeronym of my name. So yes, it is my name (in a sense) and personal, but if you don't know me or care it can be anything. Also, it is really short, which I like. (j11g.com).

Re: Have a personal web site

#117

Post by keerthiko »

twhb wrote: post #113

What are people’s thoughts on an ideal personal domain name? firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous when used for things you’re the author of but not the subject of, like “andrewredford.com/my-js-library” or “andrewredford.com/notepad”. fml.com (initials), if you can score a good TLD? flast.com? Create an unrelated but brand-able name like vegandev.com?

I don't think there's an ideal, but your tld is a big part of your brand in the long-run. I don't think it has to be based around your name, but basing it on your universal online handle is also a pretty good way to go about it.

Re: Have a personal web site

#118

Post by JacKTrocinskI »

scottishfiction wrote: post #97
paxys wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to judge someone for having other obligations/jobs/hobbies or whatever else, but if I find a candidate with lots of great blog posts and GitHub projects/contributions in the area I'm hiring them for, I'm definitely going to factor that into my hiring decision vs someone who has none of those.

Well then you're likely missing out on good candidates - and those good candidates you're missing out on are likely to be under-represented. Parents, carers etc. - possibly very competent developers, who just have other commitments. I smell affinity bias.

@scottishfiction absolutely agree.

Re: Have a personal web site

#119

Post by Cthulhu_ »

stakhanov wrote: post #77

A lot of commentary around recent development on the web kind of falls into a common theme of "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to do WWW like it was 1997 again?" The thing that makes a personal webpage now different from a personal webpage in 1997 is this: Back then you could expect to immediately rank #1 on your own name, and you would even have a decent chance of ranking for some keywords related to content…

I think the main thing you should have in mind when you make a personal website is to not have any expectations. Nobody cares, nobody will read your words, etc - until they do, until you're suddenly discovered, and people go back through your years of posts and find a lot of gold stuff.

I think that was the core of the "old" 97 websites - I mean Google didn't exist back then, so finding a page when you search for a name was neither here nor there. Instead you found a webpage through word of mouth, and unlike today, you'd sit down and spend the time to have a good browse through the site.

On that last note, personal websites are often still manageable - that is, if you sit down for a couple hours, you can consume a lot of the content that one person created in the span of an X amount of years. Not so much with a lot of the bigger websites nowadays; Medium.com is a rabbithole and you'll quickly end up going to another author's posts. News and moreso social media sites are an infinite torrent of rapid fire blurbs, all tugging you one way then the other in terms of subjects, political sides, and in ways to try and sell something to you.

Re: Have a personal web site

#120

Post by Phenix88be »

lugg wrote: post #103
thirdsun wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever try to bullshit your way into one of these positions? Obviously it's a bad idea, but I'm only half joking since it might be an interesting experiment to see how people rate and value you if their mind may have already been made up.

Why is that a bad idea? If you can pass the interview stages and the only difference is perception then I say go for it.

Stealing someone identity is, by definition, a bad idea.
Post reply on HN