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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

121–130 of 436 posts

Re: Have a personal web site

#121

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…

Not true. I can give the counter point. When you Google the name of my better half you get a "fact card" with reference to her website. The first "regular" search result is again her website. The second result is her Facebook page.

As the algorithm is hidden it is hard to say why. But should I guess then I think embedded microdata is an important weight (https://schema.org).

For the record: She has no Wikipedia page (as most notable people would have) which typically rank very high.

Re: Have a personal web site

#122

"how to design web sites that respect the notch on iPhone X and friends" i'm a notch disrespecter

So is Microsoft and are many people, after all of his homophobic, transphobic, and racist remarks. https://mashable.com/article/minecraft-removes-notch-referen... https://twitter.com/Nya_Flrs/status/881522593353809920/photo... https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/minecraft-notch-transpho... https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr... https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-exclu...

The evidence presented in those links is pretty poor. Especially:

https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr...

WTF, you cannot say that it's OK to be white? Seems to me that there are racists on Twitter, but it's not Notch.

Re: Have a personal web site

#123
post #73

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.

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.

Indeed. We should not make it something mandatory or a reason to deduct points from the dev if they don't have those but it would definitely be a good help if they do have it.

Re: Have a personal web site

#124

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…

You don't need the SEO for your name in particular. Here is why:

1. People who know you have your url.

2. People you meet have a business card or SMS from you with the URL

3. People searching for you can find you on social media, but most social media allows you to link to the site.

4. People searching for the keywords you use in your posts will find you if they are unique enough.

Re: Have a personal web site

#125
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is Microsoft and are many people, after all of his homophobic, transphobic, and racist remarks. https://mashable.com/article/minecraft-removes-notch-referen... https://twitter.com/Nya_Flrs/status/881522593353809920/photo... https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/minecraft-notch-transpho... https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr... https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-exclu...

The evidence presented in those links is pretty poor. Especially: https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr... WTF, you cannot say that it's OK to be white? Seems to me that there are racists on Twitter, but it's not Notch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_OK_to_be_white

> The slogan has been spread by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and racist groups including neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

> A report by the ADL states that the phrase itself has a history within the white supremacist movement going back to 2001 when it was used as the title of a song by a white power music group called Aggressive Force as well as fliers with the phrase being spotted in 2005 and the slogan being used by a member of the United Klans of America.

Sure, you can say it's ok to be white but perhaps if you pick a fairly well known white supremacist dog whistle, you should expect people to (fairly) tar you with the same brush.

Re: Have a personal web site

#126

>“You were a complete ghost online.”, they said Okay, so what? Is it a blogger or promoter position? Otherwise, why should you have any visible online presence? The whole thing is about one guy who decided to make a personal website and how he made it, that's fine. But why call it "You should have a personal website" without any reasoning/examples for others? I don't get it.

Read the article the whole article.

The author was the interviewer, and the comment came from a candidate that wanted to research his interviewer as preparation for the interview.

The reasoning why he thinks one should have a personal website follows in the paragraphs "Practice" and "Learning".

Re: Have a personal web site

#127
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.

I feel super fortunate that I have a relatively common first and last name, and you pretty much cannot find me through search engines. I have several name-doppelgängers out there that do ample SEO for themselves. Plus we have the rapper now. I have close to zero presence on social media. You would be hard pressed to find a single photo of me by doing basic name and location searches. Really didn’t have to do any scrubbing or “reputation management.” I consider it a real, rare blessing in this world where online privacy is disappearing.

I have no doubt a highly motivated and technical individual (or nation state adversary) could find and dox me, but the average curious HR person or run-of-the-mill stalker will likely not have much luck.

Re: Have a personal web site

#128
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?

> firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous

I'm not sure why that would be seen as pompous. It is your site, why not have it associated with your name?

I'm lucky enough to have got . many years ago as my surname isn't that common (though common enough that .com was already gone). Not that I currently have anything hosted on it (I had a personal site with photos and such, but that long since fell to bit rot as life got busy) but it is still handy for email. I have plans to resurrect it for a small amount of "about me" stuff (on .. maybe aliased as ... to) and to hang some techie/professional projects off (..) when I get of my lazy arse and actually implement some of them instead of just thinking about it all.

Unfortunately, for most people . is very much no longer an option though. For many . is most likely already gone too. If not to an actual person using the domain, or holding it for future use, then to someone who wants to sell it to you with a 900% markup.

> Create an unrelated but brand-able name

This works. It doesn't even need to be meaningful given that most of the time people aren't really aware of URLs the way they used to be, and many brand names are not meaningful beyond being brand names anyway. Your content matters much more than the name, as long as the name isn't in some way inappropriate to the content. Heck, if you don't need the name for branding purposes just pick a couple of random words from the dictionary until you find a pair/triplet/other that scans nicely, and use that.

Re: Have a personal web site

#129
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'm lucky enough to have a quite rare name, at least in that specific orthography. There are probably a few dozens of us around, and I have a remote idea of who everybody is.

So I manage to get my name.TLD quite easily (one of them was owned by a distant cousin until recently). I think firstname@name.TLD is pretty much the cleanest email address you could have. And I can spin other addresses for members of my family if needed.

Re: Have a personal web site

#130

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.

I feel super fortunate that I have a relatively common first and last name, and you pretty much cannot find me through search engines. I have several name-doppelgängers out there that do ample SEO for themselves. Plus we have the rapper now. I have close to zero presence on social media. You would be hard pressed to find a single photo of me by doing basic name and location searches. Really didn’t have to do any scru…

Same here. It also makes it harder to find you in gigantic password db dumps.

It's an interesting consideration in naming a child.

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