Have a personal web site • Hacker News Board

Re: Have a personal web site

#271

Post by eitland » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #225

eitland wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think it’s particularly interesting and anyone can do it. However, now I can send a link to a friend and go back and make the recipe myself. I used to have a blog or two back in the day and two things I noted back then was: 1. If I figured something out that I hadn't found a solution to elsewhere on the net people would find their way to my site. No further SEO necessary. (I don't know if this would work an…

You're actually touching on the reason why SEO is an anti-pattern for society. Search engines (ideally) eventually find the best source of information for a query. SEO artificially skews these results.

Agree, which is why I think we (random people with technical skills who like to hang around the web) could do something good and useful just by creating genuine websites for no other reason than the art, fun and knowledge sharing.

If we all did we could soon have something really awesome going on.

If there ever was a good time to do this again it seems to be now.

Re: Have a personal web site

#272

Post by saltminer » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

keerthiko wrote: post #114

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 t…

I find it interesting how if I Google my name, the results are Facebook (search results for ), Facebook (profile of someone else with my name), my LinkedIn, my website, and then a bunch of shady background check and voter info websites. It used to be that my GitLab was result 4 on page 1 and my website was on page 2, now they've switched places. I haven't done any SEO (or if I have, it was not intentional).

Re: Have a personal web site

#273

Post by gricardo99 » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

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…

You should take this comment and use it as your personal web page. It shows how grounded you are and how much you know yourself and can recognize your own limitations. It’s a breath of fresh air where there does seem to be a lot of pomp and over selling.

Re: Have a personal web site

#274

Post by teddyh » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #170

raffomania wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When I give people a link they can't click on […]

Try giving them a QR code instead.

Re: Have a personal web site

#275

Post by teddyh » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #109

dvt wrote: post #11

Completely agree with the article. I think it's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose. I've been told several times that I was Googled prior to interviews/meetings and have heard great things about my website, my online presence, my books (I have an "author" card when people Google me),…

> I think it's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose. A logical consequence is that you compete with other vain people online who might choose to stretch the truth a bit more than you do. At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have?

> At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have?

Since… forever?

Re: Have a personal web site

#276

Post by mikeg8 » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #231

I've been reading the comments for a few hours, and am actually amazed that this is still at the top of HN, so here goes: I've kept a blog ( https://taoofmac.com ) for over 15 years, and I've derived satisfaction from it on three main counts: I like to write in general (and keep notes, and the site actually started out as a Wiki of notes covering my migration to the Mac), I like to tweak the code behind it (although…

Just checked out your site and wanted to say I really like the visual design. Not sure if you do all your own CSS but it has a great feel/balance on desktop. Well done

Re: Have a personal web site

#277

Post by yoz-y » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

A side note:

Author mentions but as far as I know (and after searching for it too) this element does not actually exist. Modern browsers fallback to rendering for anything they don't know but it's not exactly semantic web either.

Re: Have a personal web site

#278

Post by loblollyboy » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

darekkay wrote: post #160

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…

> 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. The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But…

thats what stack overflow is for

Re: Have a personal web site

#279

Post by jkeuhlen » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #213

bloopernova wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My goal was to contribute back the same way. YES! So much of our computing-related triumphs come from documentation that other people wrote. Even super basic stuff that no senior developer or sysadmin would dream of asking, that stuff still needs to be written down by someone. I have a dozen or so Markdown documents of varying sizes that I need to finish, proof and polish before putting them online. I sorely lackin…

My quotes file recently reached 1MB of plain text, 160,257 words. I started this file 17 years ago! This is enough to fill three average sized novels! One day... I might have a go at weaving a narrative through it.

What do you mean by quotes file?

Re: Have a personal web site

#280

Post by sl1ck731 » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

darekkay wrote: post #160

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…

> 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. The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But…

I tried doing what the OP described, become some interesting blogger person, but threw in a 2 or 3 line article about some mundane error I had with a tool one day mixed in with all the other wordfluff.

Surprisingly the error code drew a ton of traffic compared to anything interesting I could have possibly thought about writing.