A Love Letter to Personal Websites • Hacker News Board

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#21

Post by verisimilitudes » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

I agree with the general idea, but dislike the WWW. I find it fundamentally poor from the start. I'd rather make the comparison to having one's own node on the Internet.

I rent a server and I rent several DNS names. Unfortunately, neither of these things are protected in a way that would prevent them from being taken from me, but it's not happened yet. Through this, I'm able to host a website, a Gopher hole, a Finger service, my own email, and I'll host FTP, IRC, and other things as I want to. There's not much of a limit. This is nice and freeing. I decide how everything's presented and done; I use my own server software in some instances.

I can agree that having one's own website is an introduction to this manner of freedom, though.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#22

Post by boobePhuu7iet7i » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

Loving the irony of having links to Instagram and Twitter in the footer of that post :P

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#23

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:35 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #11

One of the downsides to having a personal site, as a developer, is that some people will expect it to be a professional portfolio and showcase. So, there's pressure to keep updating it, to at least hint at your use of the latest Web frameworks, awareness of SEO/promotion, etc. My own personal site's current look is pretty much an early CSS approximation of my old `table`-based layout, and is now mainly to preserve UR…

> One of the downsides to having a personal site, as a developer, is that some people will expect it to be a professional portfolio and showcase.

I avoid that by not using my real name on my personal site.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#24

Post by crustacean » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

Can anyone give advice about how you built your personal website(s?) while having strong professional interests in multiple areas? I’d be really grateful to see an example.

I have a career in tech and also a career in music. My professional networks in these areas don’t overlap. I don’t think everyone responds positively to the dual career thing, although some definitely do.

Just make two sites and don’t link them? Get a stage name vs a tech name? Create a unified portfolio as a creative technologist?

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#25

Post by umvi » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:38 PM UTC

crustacean wrote: post #24

Can anyone give advice about how you built your personal website(s?) while having strong professional interests in multiple areas? I’d be really grateful to see an example. I have a career in tech and also a career in music. My professional networks in these areas don’t overlap. I don’t think everyone responds positively to the dual career thing, although some definitely do. Just make two sites and don’t link them? G…

I use a static site generator called Hugo. All my web pages are markdown and Hugo turns them into HTML and applies a theme I chose. Great for if the content on your site is all static.

umvirate.com

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#26

Post by shantly » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #15

kylek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot and (and some sick midi tunes)

You forgot and (and some sick midi tunes) Thanks to CSS animations, you can recreate and . I use it to recreate the Amiga's Guru Meditation Error when I'm debugging web sites.

I had a legit use for a marquee a few months ago and couldn't find a jank-free way to actually re-create all of its features. You can get the basics but even that sucks compared to just using (heavier, more code).

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#27

Post by ryacko » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

crustacean wrote: post #24

Can anyone give advice about how you built your personal website(s?) while having strong professional interests in multiple areas? I’d be really grateful to see an example. I have a career in tech and also a career in music. My professional networks in these areas don’t overlap. I don’t think everyone responds positively to the dual career thing, although some definitely do. Just make two sites and don’t link them? G…

Only if you want your professional interests to be separate.

Just have one web page dedicated to your tech portfolio, and another web page dedicated to music. Or even a whole section of your website.

Or have two separate websites hosted on the same IP address or not.

Personally I prefer PHP and using includes for menus, footers, or sidebars.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#28

Post by bradley_taunt » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #11

One of the downsides to having a personal site, as a developer, is that some people will expect it to be a professional portfolio and showcase. So, there's pressure to keep updating it, to at least hint at your use of the latest Web frameworks, awareness of SEO/promotion, etc. My own personal site's current look is pretty much an early CSS approximation of my old `table`-based layout, and is now mainly to preserve UR…

I think your site is pretty great. Clean and too the point. No garbage fluff I need to read through.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#29

Post by ewams » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

crustacean wrote: post #24

Can anyone give advice about how you built your personal website(s?) while having strong professional interests in multiple areas? I’d be really grateful to see an example. I have a career in tech and also a career in music. My professional networks in these areas don’t overlap. I don’t think everyone responds positively to the dual career thing, although some definitely do. Just make two sites and don’t link them? G…

I wrote my own in php years ago... ewams.net

Most of the things I post are not directly tied to my current job but more of things I am interested in, like the cpu sizing tool I wrote http://ewams.net/specintd/ or web scraping, security, data integrity, etc. Just something to store my research in really.

Just get started!

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#30

Post by movedx » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #20

movedx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now all the eyes are on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can't pry them away. This is very true. I've got a YouTube channel and I'm developing premium training solutions on the side of it in Podia... video is king. People want high value (to learn something) wrapped in high quality and compacted into a 5-10 (max) minute video. And they want it for free... sigh. Remember, though, that Google is the #1 search…

It sounds like you're talking about one specific kind of content: educational material. That's not what I make or have any interest in making. And there is no way I'd get on camera even if I wanted to do video. I do not believe video will come to dominate such that text and audio won't still have a place. I personally can't get much out of most non-fiction videos, and I know I'm not alone. I didn't even watch more th…

> It sounds like you're talking about one specific kind of content: educational material

I personally make educational videos, but that's not what dominates on YouTube :-)

> I do not believe video will come to dominate such that text and audio won't still have a place.

They will have a place, for sure. Podcasts are still rising in popularity - they're a great platform for transferring knowledge and value and also debating.

> I personally can't get much out of most non-fiction videos, and I know I'm not alone.

People learn in different ways. Most people are visual, however, and video/interaction/workshops are the most popular means of learning for an incredibly large portion of the population. Source: married to a teacher.