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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

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Re: Have a personal web site

#161

Post by messo »

tigerlily wrote: post #112
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.

I would use this.

Re: Have a personal web site

#163

Post by goddtriffin »

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 went with firstlast, except with the .me domain extension rather than the .com (too expensive).

https://www.toddgriffin.me/

Re: Have a personal web site

#164

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

molteanu wrote: post #52
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I see, that's a fair point. Perhaps in your case it makes sense to have some presence when you know that people may you look you up. Although, I would still argue that should not be reason enough - unless that it is, you actually want to have a personal website and enjoy writing. In my case, I often feel like my opinions are so asinine and generally not worth sharing that I just don't feel the urge to set them in…

Except that, you just did. :)

Exactly, where's that delete comment button...

Re: Have a personal web site

#165

Post by Phenix88be »

caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

Most of my website is my personal documentation. I write on my blog because I want to save something or archiving stuff.

I don't write for anyone, or because I think I'm an interesting person. If it help someone, good, but the main purpose is to help myself. I don't really write a lot and I don't think I should write on regular basis. I just write when I need it.

Of course you might not feel the need of doing that, but having that tool helped me a lot personnaly and professionnaly.

Re: Have a personal web site

#166

Post by Spare_account »

thjan wrote: post #111
Spare_account wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm lucky that I share a first and last name with someone who is a successful Social Media influencer, also with a professional photographer, a journalist and and an amateur model (Haha, I wonder if that is enough for an Internet detective to work out my name!). This helps because they all have very searchable content online.

I've tried to strike a balance between anonymity and retaining 'placeholder' accounts with my name. I can't rule out a change of heart in the future.

I removed all data from facebook manually by using Social Book Posts Manager. Clunky but it works. It took about a week of different sessions to allow it to work through all of my facebook content. My FB account still exists but is effectively private, all the settings are as locked down as I can make them.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...

I deleted all my tweets manually and set my account to private where possible.

I stripped my LinkedIn profile back to basics manually because I didn't really use it anyway. I don't need it, I have a job I'm happy with that pays the mortgage, I don't feel the need to network myself.

I removed the content from my website (.co.uk). I left it displaying my domain registrar's holding page because I figured Google would down-rate that. It appears to have worked because it never appears in search results for either or both of my names.

My domain is a .co.uk so I've taken advantage of Nominet's anonymity service and no details are visible via public WHOIS.

I haven't asked Archive.org to remove the archived versions of my site, if someone knows about it, they could look there. At present I don't actually have any publicly accessible storage to place the robots.txt so I keep procrastinating about it.

I submitted a removal request to 192.com which is a site that publishes UK telephone directory data. They honour removal requests.

I occasionally google myself (especially from new devices and new locations/IP addresses to see if Google is presenting different results for different searchers) to check.

Re: Have a personal web site

#167

Post by darekkay »

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've started blogging on firstlast.com (using my online alias), but by now I've turned it into my de-facto online portfolio. Most of what I publish goes to firstlast.com/project or project.firstlast.com. I don't think there is anything wrong with this approach: I'm not the subject, but it is my project after all.

The only issue I've had with my domain name was chosing my default email address: I did not like first@firstlast.com, so I went for hello@firstlast.com instead.

Re: Have a personal web site

#168

Post by johnisgood »

Spare_account wrote: post #166
thjan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm lucky that I share a first and last name with someone who is a successful Social Media influencer, also with a professional photographer, a journalist and and an amateur model (Haha, I wonder if that is enough for an Internet detective to work out my name!). This helps because they all have very searchable content online. I've tried to strike a balance between anonymity and retaining 'placeholder' accounts with m…

Be careful. You might leave a trace of yourself by searching for yourself on new, and perhaps even non-trusted devices.

Streisand effect came to mind, too.

Re: Have a personal web site

#169

Post by eertami »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #79
stormbeard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why a student should be measured differently when the developers with full-time jobs are excused with "maybe they just have a life". Some students have jobs outside of school or obligations/hobbies that take precedence over coding projects. I just think everyone should be held to the same bar, even students.

Well, the developers have full time jobs programming. Students don’t. At best they get a few CS classes that provide hands on, real world programming (albeit usually outdated). I agree that there are certainly students who have time commitments which prohibit them from doing extracurriculars. But I’m not talking about a huge commitment (heh) here. 50 commits over a year is like a few weekends worth of work. If you wo…

When I was at University all my spare time was taken up by running a student media outlet, playing sports, and volunteering my time to student run services.

I would argue that all of these things have been much more helpful when finding work and interviewing than having Github commits.

And when I'm the interviewer, I certainly don't care how many Github commits someone has. If a new grad can't show me that they have experience working in a team of some description then it isn't going to work out.

Re: Have a personal web site

#170

Post by loup-vaillant »

raffomania wrote: post #92
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…

You make it sound like a big audience is the only thing that matters. The linked post talks about a personal website as a digital identity. Giving people a link so they can find you online is a good reason to have a website, even today. Besides that, making your own website is rewarding in many other ways - Being creative, getting thoughts out of your head, pinning down certain arguments you tend to repeat, etc.

> Giving people a link so they can find you online…

…does not always work. When I give people a link they can't click on, they type it in the search bar. And not even in full, they tend to strip the http://www and .com ends. And you can't click on a piece of paper, which is where my CV typically ends up on.

Last week, I interviewed with someone who said he googled me. All he found was a "little GitHub page". My full name ranks my personal web site first or second on every search engine I've tried, yet he couldn't find it. Is the Google bubble that strong?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Loup+Vaillant

https://www.google.com/search?q=Loup%20Vaillant

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Loup+Vaillant

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