A Love Letter to Personal Websites • Hacker News Board

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#71

Post by jimktrains2 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

Ive found myself spending a bit more time on YouTube recently and I've been curious as to why. I've come to the conclusion that I much enjoy consuming something that someone, or at least small group of people, care about and find that a lot of good information can be shared. (It also helps in that regard that I've been watching wood ajd metal working channels.)

So, why not websites and just ddg or Google subjects? The more I thought about it and paid attention, the more I realized that top results are all large sites with next to no content and finding those personal websites, those labous of love filled with information is neigh impossible.

I miss being able to find those smaller sites organically.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#72

Post by p4bl0 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

I love my website too, and personal websites in general. Mine is also handcrafted (well, I have a few scripts to help me but all the HTML and CSS are written by hand). I also maintain and host a little service that allow my friends and friends of friends to have and easily manage a personal website, in particular for those in academia (but outside CS).

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#73

Post by tyingq » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:45 AM UTC

mandarg wrote: post #40

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…

For what one person's opinion is worth, I quite like the look of old-style text-and-hyperlink websites, so long as there's something interesting to read on them. A canonical example: http://bactra.org/

Not a personal website, but the text and hyperlink homepage of Berkshire Hathaway is unique. Don't think you'll find another multi-billion dollar company homepage like this: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#74

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 10:48 AM UTC

a3n wrote: post #47

Kye wrote: post #13

Something even more pernicious about social media: if you build an audience there, you're trapped. You can easily convince yourself a lot of people care about what you say right up until you link to something more substantial off the silo. The ActivityPub fediverse is a lot better about this, but even there I might get one visit to a linked page for every ten boosts. Getting people to look at a website in 2019 is har…

Rather than focusing on how many views you get, you could think of a personal website as serving two purposes: 1) A place where people who know you can keep up or catch up when they feel like it, or when/if you ping them, and 2) A place where people who just met or became aware of you can get to know you better. With those two purposes in mind, just write, when you feel like it.

[deleted]

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#75

Post by 100-xyz » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 11:59 AM UTC

Rafuino wrote: post #3

Finally bought myself a personal domain but am now currently agonizing over how to design the damn thing, let alone what to actually put on there!

Once its ready, I'll be happy to add it to our platform. It lets one find and connect with people nearby. https://its-near.me

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#76

Post by 100-xyz » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

If you would like to be easily found by people geographically near you, you can add yourself to its-near.me We are currently looking for personal websites to add. Let me know if you have any questions. https://its-near.me

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#77

Post by tenaciousDaniel » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 12:10 PM UTC

scandinavegan wrote: post #67

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent years rebuilding my site several times over, trying to appear as professional and modern as possible. A while back I got fed up, spent about 15-20 minutes writing some basic html, and came up with a simple page. I haven't looked back since. https://danielvaughn.github.io/info/

I get a scary-looking warning in Firefox when I click that link. It says: "Someone could be trying to impersonate the site and you should not continue. Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust danielvaughn.github.io because its certificate issuer is unknown, the certificate is self-signed, or the server is not sending the correct intermediate certificates. Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_I…

Hm, it's just a Github Page, I'm not self hosting. Maybe something went wrong with github's cert.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#78

Post by scandinavegan » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #77

scandinavegan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a scary-looking warning in Firefox when I click that link. It says: "Someone could be trying to impersonate the site and you should not continue. Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust danielvaughn.github.io because its certificate issuer is unknown, the certificate is self-signed, or the server is not sending the correct intermediate certificates. Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_I…

Hm, it's just a Github Page, I'm not self hosting. Maybe something went wrong with github's cert.

Could be, or I have an over-protective Firefox. I still have the same issue with the link.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#79

Post by timw4mail » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

movedx wrote: post #17

Kye wrote: post #13

Something even more pernicious about social media: if you build an audience there, you're trapped. You can easily convince yourself a lot of people care about what you say right up until you link to something more substantial off the silo. The ActivityPub fediverse is a lot better about this, but even there I might get one visit to a linked page for every ten boosts. Getting people to look at a website in 2019 is har…

> 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…

I loathe video for learning.

And most of the time when I'm web browsing, I do not want anything with sound.

Re: A Love Letter to Personal Websites

#80

Post by maverick2007 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

kevingrahl wrote: post #53

maverick2007 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something a similar except instead of music I'm a huge theme park fan and wanted a portion of my personal site to be dedicated to my trips (instead of hosting the pictures on Facebook or the like) so I decided to separate out the roller coaster portion of my persona and put it at a subdomain of my personal site ( https://coasters.joshimbriani.com for those curious) whereas my main site remains mostly tech focus…

Hey Josh! Did you realize that your feed.xml seems to only link to http://localhost:4000/ instead of linking to your website like it should?

Thanks for the heads up! I thought I had fixed that problem but I guess it regressed somewhere along the way but it should be fixed now (minus some Cloudfront cache updating). Thanks!!