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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

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Re: Have a personal web site

#301

Post by dwheeler »

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anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date.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 I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date.

I think it's a good idea to have a personal web site. If someone wants to find out more about you, they have a chance of hearing your side of the story: what's interesting to you, what you've shared with the world, and so on. If you only post on Facebook, Twitter, etc., then when those sites disappear or change their terms of service your information doesn't disappear. Do you want those companies in complete control of what others learn about you, or do you want to have some control? There are many former powerhouses of social interaction that have since disappeared, including MySpace, AOL, Google+. But if you own your own web site, you decide if it will remain available, not someone else, and what it will say.

You don't need to be "interesting". Everyone is probably interesting to someone anyway, and I think that's the wrong thing to strive for. Instead, think of things that you could share that might be useful to someone else, and share them. If you've helped someone else, then you've provided value to the world, and that's all anyone can ask for.

There's no requirement that you keep everything "up to date". Put a date on what you release, modify it if you update, and that's that. If it was released 20 years ago, it'll make the time clear. And really old stuff can still be really useful.

I just Googled myself, and my home page returns the top rank to me. Sure, it might not to others, but clearly it's possible to be easily findable even with a somewhat common name.

Regarding "enough interesting content"... you don't need to have a lot of interesting content. Post at least one thing that you believe helps at least one other person. Now your site has value to someone else. To me, that's enough.

Re: Have a personal web site

#302

Post by leftyted »

thameera wrote: post #295
leftyted wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, some people definitely do not care about "showing-off" when they put something up online. If you don't care about showing off then you won't publish anything. People who are actually altruistic won't tell you about their altruism. This isn't cynicism. The hunger for respect, admiration and recognition is not a bad thing. But it is necessary for people to understand what motivates them. And it is necessary for…

> If you don't care about showing off then you won't publish anything I want to agree, but how can we explain near-anonymous StackOverflow profiles who have brilliant answers in them, but no way to identify who the actual person they are?

Anonymity doesn't change the equation. No one on hackernews knows who I am but I still want the recognition of my peers (upvotes) which is why I'm posting here.

The fact that everyone ultimately wants peer-approval means we need to create participatory structures in which people are rewarded (with approval) for doing useful things. Stackoverflow is a perfect example of this. People gain karma by answering questions that other people ask.

"Everyone should have a blog" is the opposite of this. It's feel-good nonsense along the lines of "everyone has their own subjective truth and all truths are equal". If we tell everyone to publish it will become near-impossible to find voices worth hearing. It's like saying you should answer every question on stackoverflow whether or not you know the answer.

Re: Have a personal web site

#303

Post by jeremyjh »

Veen wrote: post #209
jeremyjh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a ten year old personal website that does not appear to be indexed by google at all anymore. There was an article about this that made the front page, that some old websites are being dropped from the index. If you search my name from duck duck go its the first hit.

Your website is indexed by Google. You can see whether it's indexed by running a site specific search. Put "site:" before the domain name. But that site has three pages, one of which is a blog listing with no content. It's not ranked because there's nothing worth ranking.

If you are searching for information about me, it is the best source online. Ideally the best sources are listed first. DDG does that, and Google doesn't list it even in the first half-dozen pages. Is it really a worse website than all the spam white-page sites?

Re: Have a personal web site

#304

Post by awj »

lettergram wrote: post #201
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 recently wrote a blog about “Dutch Oven Fried Chicken”[1], 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. Blogging for me isn’t about popularity. It’s about being able to share ones ideas and document your interests. I send links to my blog all the time, because I wrote about topics I found challenging / fun. I don…

Yep.

I took a deep dive at one point into understanding concurrent transaction behavior in MySQL and its ramifications. Probably go back and reference that post about once a month...

Re: Have a personal web site

#305

Post by madhadron »

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…

> go out of date

Pause for a moment on this one. Why would it go out of date?

The oldest content currently listed on the front page of my website is from 2005. What is in it has not gone out of date in the slightest. In fact, nothing from the intervening fourteen years has gone out of date. I could probably dig back through archive.org and pick out some more from sites I had back in the 1990's that would still be perfectly good, up to date content today.

If what you're writing is substantive, not gossip, there is no reason to think about it going out of date. Just don't wrap it in a blog format where the structure of the site makes it look like it's going out of date.

Re: Have a personal web site

#306

Post by mxuribe »

exlurker wrote: post #27

In addition, there should be a search site that only indexes personal web sites.

As much as i would like this...taken to a logical conclusion, not sure if it would help. Walk with me a bit, and see if this makes any sense (or not)...

1. A new search engine appears and focuses on "personal presence" sites - however a personal presence would be defined.

2. Google, bing, etc. begin crawling this new search engine, and its index of sites.

3. Users by default simply use google, bing, etc. to search for people...but how would google, bing, and other search engines resolve the conflicts of "which is the correct John Doe site?" between the results they've captured (such as on silos/walled gardens) vs results from this new personal site search engine?

Well, if its google, i suppose they'll use some signal like relevance. And, as i recall google uses link authority (big boys pointing to YOU gives you authority, which leads to "relevance" in the eyes of google)...which would suck because the big boy silos likely have a bit more "authority" by way of quantity of links, no? Unless i'm missing something, having another search engine - focused on personal sites - may not help the layperson find your personal site any more than current environment. Please someone correct me if my logic is flawed here, because my scenario is quite depressing.

(Let me caveat that I'm very much a proud supporter of personal websites, and would love having a new/additional "personal site-focused" search engine...I'm just not hopeful that it helps much.)

Re: Have a personal web site

#307

Post by username223 »

jcadam wrote: post #196
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 you're passionate about a subject, you're going to have strong opinions about said subject. If you voice/publish those opinions, some people are going to hate you. Perhaps a potential employer was set to hire you until they read your blog post in which you were eloquently critical about offshoring, for example. Or worse, you expressed an off-hand opinion about some social issue back in 2006 in an otherwise technic…

> I would love to write more, but censoring myself for the sake of future employers, psychos, etc. tends to make anything I do produce come off as bland and uninteresting.

Just write about your favorite hobby. When I started my personal blog a decade ago (yikes...), I chose a topic and made a rule that I would stick to it. No politics, no tech, no personal drama. I still enjoy writing about it, and have almost always stuck to the rule, so I don't think an employer could take offense at any of the several hundred thousand words I wrote.

Re: Have a personal web site

#308

Post by stronglikedan »

r3bl wrote: post #131
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…

My full name is very common. I share it with an actor, a photographer, two designers, and one basketball player. Three of us have personal websites and one of us has a Wikipedia page. I've adopted the alias "r3bl" to counter that, so that there's something easy to remember and somewhat unique that others could type into a search engine. ".com" was of course squatted, but as far as I could tell, it was pretty unique (…

I hope I share a name with someone who's online presence will become valuable, so I can sell them my {my.name}.com domain!

Re: Have a personal web site

#309

Post by awj »

ben_w wrote: post #108
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

I have a more minor issue, in that my mum once mistook a SciFi/horror film director for me, because of his website. I also share a name with a Victorian era author. As I’m now writing a novel, I’m going to have to publish with a pen name.

People accuse me of playing Baseball, Football, and Guitar for the band TOOL.

Re: Have a personal web site

#310

Post by username223 »

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…

That works for me. I'm not famous enough to merit a Wikipedia page, and I don't really care if I'm on the first page of a search for my name. (Some other person with the same name does.) Most of the traffic to my personal site comes from searches, but those people are searching for what I write about, not who I am.
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