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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

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Re: Have a personal web site

#381

Post by CM30 »

prennert wrote: post #189
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…

Maybe someone should build a seach engine that only indexes pages without ads. That would mainly be private blogs and wikipedia, I guess.

That'd certainly be an interesting idea, and it'd probably find quite a few intriguing sites and pages.

That said, it also wouldn't be perfect, since quite a few small and personal sites do have ads for whatever reason. Usually because the author thinks hey, even a 0.5% chance someone clicks on an ad will pay better than no ads/a donation link.

Re: Have a personal web site

#382

Post by JohnFen »

wolco wrote: post #283
jcadam wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suggest doing under a generic domain. You want to maintain a certain image for employers and that restricts your freedom to rant.

There's that.

I don't point potential employers to my personal website (which I also don't associate with my real name). It's just none of their business. When I want to share work that I've done, I put it into a standalone presentation that I provide on a memory stick.

Re: Have a personal web site

#383

Post by JohnFen »

jeremyjh wrote: post #152
hnarayanan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can provide a counter example to this. Searching for my full name (and for many years my first name) has always resulted in my personal website being the top link. It's not SEO, it's just age. I am an old man with an old school website that's happened to have been up for a long time.

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.

Google is really terrible for searches like that.

Re: Have a personal web site

#384

Post by JohnFen »

neilv wrote: post #91

I started running a vanity domain name around 2000, for email and Web, and have a few thoughts based on that... Hosting chronology something like: home Linux box on ADSL, 2 different shared hosters, 1U in a colo facility, back to earlier shared hoster. For my real-name vanity domain, I went with a `.org`, since I didn't want to be a `.com` in personal life, though today I'd prefer `.net`. (The longer story behind thi…

> For my real-name vanity domain, I went with a `.org`, since I didn't want to be a `.com` in personal life, though today I'd prefer `.net`.

I have all three (but my personal domain is not my name). I use them each for different purposes. The .com is my public-facing, general purpose website. The .org is a site I use to provide tools and coordination with my friends (sortof like a private social media thing). The .net I use for servers that are intended just for me (sortof like a gateway to a private cloud).

Re: Have a personal web site

#385

Post by droithomme »

maddening wrote: post #219
intertextuality wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unbelievable attitude. "Oh so you call yourself a mechanic, huh? Well you aren't blogging about cars and mechanic-related things in your free time, so I'm suspicious". "Oh, an architect, huh? You don't have an online presence, which is worrying". I'm baffled as to why people expect programmers to spend most of their time behind a computer, and to make social git commits or blog about it on top of that. I p…

Before I go to a mechanic I am checking their review online. Before I hire an artist that would make some graphics for me I would ask for a portfolio. Nobody in graphic industry is surprised when someone asks to show some of their works. Same with IT, you would try to do some background checking. See if there was some recommendations from person's past employers or some sort of porfolio. Should it be everything I wou…

> Before I go to a mechanic I am checking their review online.

I've tried that but it's very unreliable. Online reviews are heavily gamed. Bad mechanics have many good reviews. Good mechanics have some bad reviews, or no reviews at all because they are a tiny two-man shop.

How I found a good mechanic was to first take to all the places people recommended. All these were bad. Then I went to a place I saw in my neighborhood run off of a guy's property. Wow, they were great. Went there for years. Then they retired and closed.

Tried a few other places with small jobs. No luck. Tried online reviews. No luck. Saw a hole in the wall on the side of the road in a bad area. Tried taking it there. They are great. They not only have absolutely no online presence, the business doesn't have a name, and they only accept cash. But they always fix my car right.

> Before I hire an artist that would make some graphics for me I would ask for a portfolio. Nobody in graphic industry is surprised when someone asks to show some of their works.

That is very reasonable. But if you ignored their portfolio, and asked them to spend 4 to 50 hours doing a custom project for you at no charge to prove they were good enough, after which you plan on ghosting them, do you think they would be within reason to tell you no thanks? What I just described is the "standard technical interview" in our field.

Myself I have an established reputation and don't apply to jobs any more, unsolicited job offers come to me. Nearly all which I ignore. Anyone asking for work samples should just look around at work I have done during my career. I don't do custom work for free. However I will do such work if I am interested and paid my standard consulting rate.

Re: Have a personal web site

#386

Post by CM30 »

A personal site is certainly something I've considered a few times. I do like the idea of a space for your own work away from corporate platforms, and having something that comes up when you search for your own name to show potential employers/contacts.

However, I've then always considered against it because:

1. I'm never happy with anything simple, so any new project like this would inevitably become ten times more complicated than it arguably needs to be. Before too long, it'd end up being a tech demo for the ten new programming languages I was interested in learning that week.

May as well put the effort into things with an audience.

2. I genuinely like having some semblance of privacy, and think fondly about the old days when people were encouraged not to share so much information about themselves online. It's why I basically have no pictures of myself on any social media platform, have only about two, maybe three voice recordings online ever, etc. Also feels a bit safer, especially given the ease in which mobs/witch hunts seem to developer over 'controversial' comments and political views.

Having a personal sites seem like it'd lose that, and increase the level of risk in general.

Re: Have a personal web site

#387

Post by namarie »

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…

Well, there's this search engine: https://wiby.me/

Re: Have a personal web site

#388

Post by atentaten »

istjohn wrote: post #375
atentaten wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>.. we'd be living in huts. As someone who has actually lived in a hut, I would like you to know that living in huts should not be used as a derogatory example. In fact hut living was the best time of my life and I long to replicate the simplicity and freedom it afforded.

Care to share more about this? Eg, when, where, why?

As a kid in the 80s born and lived in a traditional Yoruba village established within a forest in the South Carolina lowcountry.

Re: Have a personal web site

#390

Post by danaris »

wongarsu wrote: post #222
danaris wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to write an interesting comment in response to a particular topic that frustrates you is not at all the same thing as having spontaneous interesting thoughts about enough topics to make a personal website/blog about it.

Plenty of blogs are nothing but interesting comments on topics that frustrate the author. Even some of the most well known writings in computer science are just that, like the short article by some guy frustrated with everyone using goto instead of functions/while/for/etc (the article that inspired countless "... considered harmful" headlines).

I agree—and some of the RSS feeds I follow are in fact almost entirely that.

However, there's also a big difference between leaving a comment/reply on an existing discussion site about a particular frustrating topic, and posting it on a personal blog that doesn't have a significant readership. Sure, maybe someday it'll gain such a readership—but until and unless it does, everything you post tends to feel like masturbatory shouting into the void. And while some people may like that, I suppose, I certainly wouldn't. (Which is why, despite thinking about it several times and having my own domain running a web server, I've never actually put anything you could reasonably call a "personal web site" there.)

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