Why Personal Websites Matter 436
latif writes "Lately personal websites have fallen out of fashion. Some term them as vanity sites, and others are scared of privacy concerns. The article Why Personal Websites Matter discusses some reasons as to why they have to be embraced to stay competitive." I see the personal website as the virtual equivalent of the front of one's home, except that most virtual homes have large signs in the front yard that give a running play-by-play of the inhabitants. Just like one's home, it may be prone to vandalism, but it's far easier to make one's website be an expression of oneself, than to put up large signs outside!
So thats why.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh and... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is the most ignorant and stupid phrase I've read this month. It's *almost* like saying "unorganized, lazy, and stupid people want to hide these qualities by <put random activity here>". Tech gusy like this one are one of the reasons programmers are tought by some people to be great jackasses....
PS: And of course this is a definitely helpful argument when trying to convince someone of the advantage
Re:So thats why.. (Score:4, Funny)
hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
And its no less acceptable now. The net gives you the freedom to do what you like and say what you like, so if you want to publish a page on a Geoshitties website full of animated christmas tree decorations and talk about your pet rabbit then I think that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Responses, statistics, and a confession (Score:5, Informative)
All times are GMT:
I posted my first comment at 10:46
11:00 -> 12:00 : 51 hits
12:00 -> 13:00 : 86 hits
13:00 -> 14:00 : 172 hits
14:00 -> 15:00 : 174 hits
15:00 -> 16:00 : 64 hits
16:00 -> 16:48 : 33 hits
My comment started at score:2 because I have Excellent karma. It was quickly modded Flamebait, but this had no noticeble affect on hits. It was then modded repeatedly and waivered between score:2 and score:4, always "Funny". I think the surge of hits i received from 13:00 -> 15:00GMT was from America waking up and this this story being near the top of the slashdot front page. Hit are slowing now, I suppose fewer new people are reading the story. In total, my post was modded Funny at least 8 times, Overrated at least 4 times, and Flamebait at least 3 times.
My confession is that the first "Anonymous Coward" that replied to my post was in fact me. After my post was modded flamebait, I thought I'd try social engineering. Could I make people think my post was funny simply by saying so? It appears the answer is yes. (or maybe my post really was funny.) Note that I don't have any ads on my page, so hits were not getting me cash or anything.
All very interesting to me.
Re:Responses, statistics, and a confession (Score:3, Informative)
We're a lot bigger than that now, so the "slashdot bump" isn't all that noticeable anymore. Still, a highly recommended way at shameless self-promotion.
Re:Updated stats, and some other unusual details (Score:3, Funny)
I've never noticed a traffic spike when I post on
I also just realized I never visited your main site page, just the links you provided...
Re:ah, I thought it was funny (Score:2, Interesting)
Just out of interest, since I posted that comment, I've gotten just under one hit per minute (51 hits in 56 minutes). I'm still laughing.
Re:Interesting, this statement: (Score:5, Funny)
Keep dreaming - I've been beating off for decades and haven't made dime one from it.
-72
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I happen to think that a personal web page has rather more point than a personalized number plate, but you don't see those going out of fashion, do you? Who the heck cares that the Beemer in front of them is driven by someone whose initials are apparently JRP? Or they try to get clever and advertise, so you see they're an EYE DOC. Brilliant -- I wonder how many more eye docs there are in my vicinity and how on earth I'm supposed to find the one with the flash number plate on his Mercedes?
At least a personal web site gives people the chance to hone their HTML skills (if they so desire), share their opinions (in a far more passive environment than if they're standing on a street corner yelling -- I can easily navigate away from an annoying web page), and maybe provide some obscure information that just might come up on a Google hit one day and make the day for someone searching for that obscure information. I've had this happen a few times -- the piece of information I was looking for was nowhere to be found except on someone's personal web page.
If you think personal web pages are pointless, then ask yourself how many times some poor user's web page has bitten the big one after succumbing to the
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
I have yet to come across a blog of any value. Except once I found one with some compilation parameters for a program that I could use.
Most people writing these things, thinks they have something interesting to say when most often, they do not.
Reading about, to me, random people's thoughts and opinions are a complete waste of time, at most it can be amusing and if you have a closed mind, it may be able to open it to the world.
However reading
Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's PC to have a specialized label for every fricking thing under the sun, but...
a Blog IS a personal website.
You can call it whatever you want, I suppose, and it sure sounds, I suppose, much cooler, but calling a cat a flea transportation system doesn't change the fact that its a cat.
BTW, Freenet is Fixed, but FROST is fried.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
The big thing is that people who write them concentrate their minds. One of the areas I must post some things on (when I get some more time) is local foods to my area. I buy a lot of locally produced, high quality foods (often organic) and often tell people about new discoveries. I want to be able to tell those people that they can just check my blog and get the latest from there (or use RSS).
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Just over a year ago, I got some kind of bug bite (or at least that's the assumption). A big red spot developed around it which kept growing so I went to the doctor. The doc gave me a shot and an assortment of pills to stop the itching/inflammation.
So, what's that got to do with blogs? Well, later that night I got the hiccups. After maybe an hour, they went away. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with hiccups again and couldn't get rid of them. Since I couldn't sleep, I decided to do some googling and found another person talking about this side effect of the drug on their blog. My doctor of course thought I was a nut when I asked her about it even after I found a write up from the company that makes the drug listing hiccups as a possible side effect.
This person's blog was just about their life and battle with some disease. While I wouldn't have found it all too exciting under normal circumstances, I appreciate the fact that I was able to get useful information from it when the need was there.
As for my doctor, well I won't be going back there. I don't really care to have a doctor that blows me off when I tell them there's something wrong with me after they just shot me full of drugs.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
But those are just a reflection of the personality of the website's owner. It takes all kinds to make up the real world. Likewise, it takes all kinds of websites to make up the online world.
The analogy of a website being the online home of a person is very valid. You'll see so many garishly decorated homes in real life... while a few tastefully done, organized and neat houses. That does not mean one should go around criticizing the unorganized, tackily decorated ones. Its a matter of personal taste. After all, thats why they're referred to as personal websites.
Smartness has very little to do with taste!
Blogs, on the other hand, are like standing on the porch and talking aloud... airing views... sharing news.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody cares about your opinions. Well, maybe your mom, but really nobody else. Your friends only check your blog because you bother them about it.
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:2)
The obscure have hopes, dreams, and all those other things that make us valuable as individuals.
Please explain how you having hopes and dreams makes you in any way valuable to me. Unless I know that you are going to benefit me in some way, you are presently worthless to me.
Look at pets. Most people that have pets believe that their pet loves them, and that's why the pet behaves the way they do for them. In reality, most of the time the pet just wants to be fed.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Informative)
I leave food in the bowls, and the bag of cat food could be tipped over. So, they don't need me to actively feed them. I leave a window open, so they can come and go as they please. But, when I come home, they both come and meet me at the door. One of them, even with a full food dish, likes to crawl on me as I watch movies and have me pet hi
Re:hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
In the beginning everyone just copied from each other and didn't know what else to put on there.. the net then wasn't really interesting or useful.. was just a way to put some documentation online. Some people started to make a homepage and others copied this.
I too had a 'homepage' which said who I was and what I liked and even listed my cd collection.. (and of course the links to homepages of irc friends)(aaargh I can't believe I admit this)
Worst
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Yes. I have a website on fortunecity that I made in highschool and I lost the password/username/email for it. I've asked them to take it down, hell, I even had a lawyer send them a letter, but they've just ignored me every time. Any ideas what I can do?
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Say what you like, I got my first job after graduating simply because I had published my resume online and an employee of the company had found it in a web search. I had never heard of the company and would otherwise probably never made contact with them. Self advertising is not necessarily egotistical - we all do it sometimes.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
So I disagree with your assertion that there are "far too many" of them...except in the "in a perfect world, there wouldn't be any stupid people with nothing worthwhile to say" sense. "Far too many" implies that the presence of bad homepages somehow diminishes the rest of the net, or at least places some sort of measurable drain on a scarce resource. It doesn't.
In my more hopeful moods, I sometimes take the risk of supposing that a lot of those uninteresting home pages are built by people as a learning exercise. (In reality it's certainly a small percentage of the total...on the other hand, what _good_ webmaster _didn't_ build a few uninteresting pages during their learning process?)
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
WHAT?!
Most blogs have entries like "I saw Timmy last night. We talked about, you know, that thing
we did. I was really upset... bla bla fucking bla".
IMHO Blogs are the almost sole domain of the self-absorbed and emotionally immature.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The amazing thing about weblogs and personal homepages is that it allows people to broadcast to groups of people. Usually that group tends to be the author's social group, and so if you don't care about what's going on in that group it'll come off as boring and self indulgent.
You probably don't care about my recently born nephew, but when I post to my LiveJournal or family weblog about him it provides useful information and news to friends and family members. Luckily, I'm not writing it in hopes that EverDense on Slashdot will approve of what I have to say on the subject.
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
That's my corner of the web, I bought the
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't write blogs, have read enough of them to know they are -- when viewed from the outside -- pretty vapid and silly sounding. However, most of them are really nothing more than open letters to their friends.
To me that's good. At one time it looked like phones were going to kill the fine art of letter writing, blogs appear to be the infancy of a new style of letter.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are able to look at the referrer logs from your web server, those questions would be answered. It can be pretty amusing, by the way.
When I was at Cornell, my web page mentioned that I lived in "beautiful Ithaca, NY", and that I worked on "mathematical models in biology". I found that some people ended up at my home page after searching for "beautiful models".
I also wrote a children's story about a monkey, and had some info about it on my web page, along with pictures of a magazine it was published in. By far the most popular way people found my web pages was via searching for "monkey pictures", it's mind-boggling how many people were searching for that. But this was my favorite. You know how with some search engines you can search for some terms, but exclude others? Well, one person found my web page after doing a search for "monkey pictures", but excluding "sex"! It really made me wonder what they had found before, that caused them to add that exclusion term...
There have been many disappointed people coming to my web pages over the years (yeah yeah, 'cause my web pages are crappy, right?)
there are useless commerical and pr0n sites too (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
that isn't the problem.... the problem is that ther are way too many personal webpages with at least 60-70 animated gif's, midi music on each page, and aniumated gif's to make the BLINK tag come back again..
then we have those that cant code HTML so they use frontpage, and we have banners, page transition effects and everything else than causes a large number of viewers to puke from overload.
BAD TASTE far outweighs any ego problem.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
A better way to put it is this:
* Most people don't have anything new to say.
* What most people put on their homepage has little value to you.
It's a little arrogant and eg
On personal websites and ego (Score:2)
The -thing- about personal websites is they aren't supposed to be geared towards any audience other than the author (and possibly the author's friends). If you come across a personal website you think is bland and boring, you're not the audience. If you find one you find amazingly interesting [kk.org], you might jive with the author.
I think what you propose, while the ideal, is idealistic and probably a bit unrealistic
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Your sig, for example, points to a site that is analogous to other sites that try to prove that man has never walked on the moon.
Knowing some of the doctors that first discovered the HIV virus and seeing the mircle of antiretrovirals work--I, of course, do not agree with your site in the least little bit.
However, I agree that you have a right to write those things. The web and personally owned pages allow you to stay such things... and gives me the right to disagree.
Automated or not -- personal websites support freedom of speech... and that's a good thing.
I'm not all that surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but work is a large part of my life. Seems that the corporate control of the net has kicked in once again...
--
Rate Naked People [fuckmeter.com] (Not work-safe)
Re:I'm not all that surprised (Score:2, Interesting)
I take it you must have seen a picture of a penis when you clicked-through (as I did, and rated it a 1 before I got to girlie pics). But is a penis "disgusting shit?" I have one, so I don't think so.
Subjectivity is one of the most compelling things about personal home pages, and your comment is an interesting proof of the parent's point. While the link isn't really a home page of sorts, you've formed an opinion about it, and a negative opinion at that; much as we
Re:I'm not all that surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
It is up the "victim" to prove that your opinions are in fact harmful (and untrue). This attitude that you are some sort of "slave" to your employer is part of what is wrong with today's society. (Especially coupled with the anti-union sentiment.)
Just because employers act this way doesn't make it right - or even legal.
finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:finally... (Score:2)
Another stick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another stick (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Another stick (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet, companies seem kind of reluctant to openly post "we support government X that randomly kills thousands at a whim" kind of information on their website, while personal websites might contain such shamefully incriminating nuggets as "I like Dilbert" or "I'm a X denomination Y believer".
Did you know that in some countries, employers can't ask applicants to supply a picture with their resume? That's to prevent employees from only inviting white folks to interviews. Any idea where that came from? Because it happened.
And yes, every slashdot post is potential incriminating material.. "He once said Foo about company Bar, and they're a client of ours".. "He made a Pointy Haired Boss joke!".. Etc. etc.
So yes, I have a bland website. Just as bland as any corporation's website.
Re:Another stick (Score:2, Informative)
Oh C'mon! I do the same thing back with my interviewer. I put his name into Google, and often get his work history. And then I put the companies name into Google and research as much as I can. Usually, I can learn more about the company then they ca
Re:Another stick (Score:3, Interesting)
I think about 10 - 20% of the candidates that we've seen have had their own sites, and I can say that on the whole it doesn't help them at all.
You can tell quite a bit about a person (particularly in the ubiqutous "My Pictures" section that every site seems to have) - and there have been a couple of candidates whose "extracuricular" activities have made me decide against interviewing them.
For e
Re:Another stick (Score:2)
One more way for a prospective employee to be disqualified.
Applying for a job is just about the most pointless, meaningless exercise in complete futility in all of business. It is the worst possible agreement. There is nothing of value for the employee beyond the current number of hours worked.
There is more actual value in a one week rental of a late model Buick than the average job, and the average job probably couldn't pay for the rental either.
And they said "go to school!
Re:Another stick (Score:2)
Re:Another stick (Score:2)
Re:Another stick (Score:2)
Don't you tend to put your name on your resume?
And you posted this AC because...
Re:Another stick (Score:2)
Re:Another stick (Score:2)
Family members appreciate having the contact. That is what matters. People will have the same opinions of you on the street. Why should you care what individuals on the internet say?
Hell, I even put some of those embarrasing childhood photos online.
WHO CARES?
If you want to see some of those embarassing pics, woods.us/leah
The problem with personal websites (Score:5, Insightful)
now, if you would just look at the mountains of shit you'd have to sift through to make a site (try webmonkey.com), it's unreal! Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
And what I mean by respectable is that - on average, websites have became much more feature rich, the graphics much better, the content more frequently updated, etc. That little website you used to use as a homepage that's hacked up in an afternoon looks by today's standards simply pathetic - and people know this. They fudge around with building a site and then find out, man this is a lot of work and not worth it.
Besides, there are millions of places online where you can do exactly what you would have be doing on your own site anyway - I keep my journal on slashdot; I get a whole comment feedback system without having had to muck with CGI code / HTML / site design / debugging / server troubleshooting, and so on. Now, eventually I would like to port it to something myself just to have a little more control over it, but really, even if I think about it now, it's not worth the trouble - and keeping a blog online would be exactly the same thing I'd be doing if I had my website, so this simply removes a lot of the hassle.
So, similarly as people don't all do the painting / maintenance of their home by themselves, website I think comes the same way - it's the tradeoff between convenience of something prepackaged (weblog sites, say) vs something custom, and the amount of effort needed for that little custom isn't always worthwhile in all cases.
Re:The problem with personal websites (Score:2)
Who says you have to learn all those to make a respectable site? Simple HTML-based webpages can be good looking and effective. In fact I hate those websites with Flash, animated gif, and background music.
It takes a creative mind and sense of good design in order to create a good website, not stupid tricks.
defining "respectable" (Score:2)
What I mean is that - take for example, a simple javascript menu system that doesn't look like every other yahoo-storefront; everybody knows such a feature exists in uncountable websites on the web. So, if you are buliding a site, you'd probably think about putting one in there, and if you are looking at somebody's site, you'd feel kinda weird if they didn't have some something that catchy that happens onMouseOver.
So, actually the STANDARD to which we judge webs
Re:defining "respectable" (Score:2)
Thanks and I'm glad you bring that up. Yes it takes a lot of work to make a website comparable to the others. I think it really depends on the intended audience, if the personal web site is to be viewed by friends and family only, perhaps you need not care whether it is comparable to the other web sites.
Re:The problem with personal websites (Score:5, Informative)
oh cripes... you sound like the webdesigners at work why they HAVE to use frontpage and other WYSIWYG web tools...
here's a tip for you.... you dont HAVE to use every single HTML tag. you can make a killer webpage that looks fantastic with HTML3.0 only.
if your excuse to not make a page is because HTML has too many functions now, then you're just making excuses.
there's a webdesigner at work that codes html by hand and sticks as close as possible to HTML 3.0 unless what he is trying to do needs CSS or 4.0 features. his pages look better than the dreamweaver drivers and are always 40-70% smaller so they load faster.
Content is still King. (Score:3, Informative)
This is not necessarily true. In fact, some of the best personal websites I've bookmarked don't use tables, PHP, CGI or any of that. But I've bookmarked them because they've got really good content on them.
I've been trying to come up with a format to create my own personal site for a while now, and have found that the single best site-style that I enjoy reading is just text wi
Disclaimers on web sites (Score:3, Interesting)
My web page has this big disclaimer at the top:
Please excuse this page, it is really old, and a lot of the stuff here is pretty lame. Sue me, I am not a web developer.
I use my personal web space for, well, personal stuff. I use it to post pictures, so I can email friends/family a URL instead of sending them a 15MB zip file of pictures. I get a few hits
Better than some things (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of PWSs, obviously there is often vanity or some form of craziness, but equally often people use them to keep geographically distant relatives up to date on the growth of children etc., or on whatever activity might be of common interest.
And even in the craziest of implementations, it could be reasonably said that at least it takes a bit more intelligence to design a web page than it does to plunk down $3000 for fancy wheels and tires for a car.
Of course the guy with the car generally gains some ancillary benefits woefully unavailable to the guy who sits in his room coding HTML.
"Damn, Paris, why do you have to stop doing that to answer your cell phone? Get back to work so I can finish my post on Slashdot!"
Blogs (Score:4, Insightful)
Blogs are an interesting thing really - a published diary - in realtime.
I don't really see them as important though. It is like my preference of topic-oriented discussion vs. person-oriented discussion - so it is natural for me to prefer a site dedicated to a certain topic.
Re:Blogs (Score:5, Funny)
I couldn't help but think of this story at The Onion [theonion.com].
Mom Finds Out About Blog [theonion.com]
Yeah, well... (Score:5, Funny)
I see the personal website as kind of like a mountain of mashed potatoes, except with a set of Three Stooges action figures on the top, and except the potatoes are those weird blue kind so the whole thing looks freaky. And there's, like, some kind of cheerleading squad doing a dance all around, except that the virtual cheerleaders are really monkeys. Evil monkeys, that is, except that they really have hearts of gold once you get to know them! But it's far easier to just put up a website than build a mountain of mashed potatoes!
Important pieces of information ... (Score:2, Funny)
Google's Pagerank is to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal websites are at a disadvantage under Google's Pagerank system. A new page isn't going to have many other pages linking to it, and for the most part, personal webpages won't end up with many other pages linking to them unless the content is very popular. Google has created a kind of catch-22 situation... You have to already be popular to get a good Pageranking. The system is great for indexing an existing web of sites, but poor for allowing new sites to get exposure.
I just remember running into personal webpages far more often back in the days when AltaVista, and Infoseek ruled, before the spam sites started abusing keywords. I'm sure Google didn't intend to turn the Internet into a popularity contest, but it would be interesting if they added user-adjustable features like Slashdot's moderation modifiers so you could give a higher (or lower) bias towards personal webpages.
Re:Google's Pagerank is to blame (Score:4, Interesting)
To be honest I must say that I thank them for this. When I use google, or any other search engine, the last thing I wish to find are personal websites with unpopular content. While creating sites and sharing them with the world is something everyone can do, making good sites with good content is not. I can only see an advantage with this system as a site now needs to struggle more to remain popular.
Diego Rey
Re:Google's Pagerank is to blame (Score:2)
It's called survival of the fittest.
Re:Google's Pagerank is to blame (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. I think you need to have meaningful content in order to get a good PageRank. I've built up a website to 88,000 hits in 6 months by doing three things: writing content, writing lots of it, and making sure it stays on topic. By the next GoogleDance, my site was within the top 5 for many relevant queries. No advertising, no incoming
Re:Google's Pagerank is to blame (Score:3, Informative)
Personal websites for who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now my site has taken a new edge to it, it no longer related to anybody but those who know me and live around me. Some people would concider my site to be of any marketable or even personal value anymore, but it doesn't matter. The only people who matter are the people who you want it to matter to (seriously, how many of you think that people in a fridge or road cones on buildings matter?).
Isn't this a rehash of 1996? (Score:2)
I'm reminded of this site [webpagesthatsuck.com] when I recall all the personal websites I've seen.
Personal Websites? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the net is great for writing about your intrests and perhaps form a community around it such as CG, Legos or Evil Dead movie series. However having personal info on the web is usually extreamly dangerous and can at times be annoying. I remeber how I at one time had a collection of 50 poems on my site but took it down after a peer decided that half of it was about her and started to complain to me about how she though I was a dick for bitching at her indirectly.
Now adays my old personal website is technicly amazing but I post no content on it. I guess live and learn.
Re:Personal Websites? (Score:2)
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm. Exactaly what does the ending tell about the person? Is Stallman an entire organization? Is Graham a commercial operation? What does a dot net say about me [colingregorypalmer.net]?
Re:What? (Score:2)
I quote Howard of Howard's Homepage [bedazzled.org]: "For it is said in the book of Tao that it is better to .org than .com"
Of course, I happen to agree [eruvia.org]...
Cheers,
Ian
Why personal websites matter (Score:5, Insightful)
But I think many people have missed the point of personal websites. Just because they're on the Word Wide Web it doesn't mean your audience should be everybody in the world. Many people set up websites intended to be viewed by a small group of people (such as family photo albums who nobody but family or close friends would be interested in).
Also, how many people who design websites for a living today started off by knocking up a basic website? Most likely it was the equivalent of a "Hello World!" example, and the most readily available content was most likely all about you. Now, unless you were particularly eccentric its unlikely you ever intended this to be seen by thousands of people, but it was still a necessary stage in your learning process.
So stop being website snobs - there's enough room on the net for everyone!
Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
A semi-static[0] personal web page, if written correctly, provides the best solution. It can include everything people might want to know about you, including your opinions and views; it's low-maintenance (you only need add articles every now and again, when there is important stuff that needs adding) and people are far more likely to read one or two thoughtful, well-written[1] articles written on such a site than the reams of semi-literate journal entries most blogs seem to consist of.
As you might guess, I'm not the world's biggest blog fan
[0] Updated, but only infrequently and with important stuff, not how you're pissed at rasterman today because enlightenment crashed on you.
[1] If you only add an article every now and then you can afford to spend some time and write it well.
Re:Bah (Score:2)
Freedom to express yourself (Score:4, Interesting)
The world is our village. People all over the world communicate with each other. How to better share views, information and the occasional picture with your (potential) friends than with a personal website. Personal websites show initiative and fill the need/right of every person to express himself/herself. Sure there are other means of doing that! And most people do! Not only nerds have personal websites. It is an online extention of your opinions, your way of living. When I meet someone in the real world, I tend to look for a personal website when I come home at night.
On the issue that most personal websites suck (technically speaking), I can only say that I prefer old-fashioned HTML4/XHTML standard based website, above any corporate full-of-fancy-animations expensive marketing tool. Websites should be build to last. This is not accomplished using ever changing proprietary plug-ins, etc... You can make a *very* nice webpages without all this. (I'm one of those people who refuses to install the plug-ins I'm talking about.)
Don't forget the Internet [was/is] all about sharing information!
Re:Freedom to express yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
Another benefit of _strict_ standards that have to be adhered to is that you actually have to _think_ about what you want to put on the web. I personally don't care about bad HTML (although it's always a source for a quick laugh) and I know designing a webpage requires a lot of efford, esp. if you want it to look good. I don't pretend to be a decent webdesigne
Why do we need personal websites? (Score:2)
Mac.com gets it (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, they've recreated the homepage as an extension of your desktop, laptop or iPod.
This also helps productivity. One of the projects I am a member of uses iCal synching between developers via a
The direct integration between the OS and your
Ultimately, I would not be surprised to see
<wishful_thinking>
Perhaps an extension of the music store is in order to beeef up
Apple opened the door for industry wide licensing without getting sued, perhaps they can now convince them that streaming already purchased music as a form of fair use on the users behalf can work too.
The major difference being that iTMS/Apple would act as the middle man, there by providing oversite to the system as a whole, something Kazaa/Morpheus et al fail to do.
</wishful_thinking>
It's The Content, Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of personal websites suck. This is a fact. The ones that don't suck are really only useful to a handful of people.
When was the last time you wandered through Google results for "personal website" [google.com]? If I had to venture a guess, not until you clicked through to that link. Yet when was the last time you visited someone's personal website? Again, this is only a guess, but probably within the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours. This is because the content on that site was, at some point, useful to you-- even if you were the one who created it.
I use my personal website (here [thefurryone.net], if you dare) primarily as a collection of links that I use daily and also as a way to get my PHP and HTML work out there, on exhibit. I have, probably, ten consistent viewers world-wide. Three of them are my mom, dad, and sister. And this is fine for me! Because I know that the content on my site (with the exception of maybe one or two areas explicitly for display) is of relevance to absolutely nobody.
People here are talking about how in the old days of the Internet (which can't be that damned old if I remember them), personal websites contained a diverse variety of information on just about anything, and that these websites formed the backbone of how people did research; some scientist in Alameda's paper on nuclear vessels, posted on his website, was just as valuable as, say, a fan-page devoted to Evangelion by some kid from Buffalo. Nowadays, everything has a website. You can get any information you want about anything straight from the manufacturer, and personal sites be damned; they're only opinions.
Both points are valid. In the "old days" the information you got was still people's opinions, which meant you had to find three or four correlating opinions before you could really judge. Now, personal websites allow us to cut through marketing and P.R. bullcrap, but we still need three or four correlating opinions before we can really judge.
I'm straying from my point. Does anyone here follow anime? Stupid question, right? How do you learn about new releases in Japan? Sure, if you know Japanese, you can check out TV Tokyo [tv-tokyo.co.jp] or TBS [tbs.co.jp]'s websites and get the info from them. But odds are you don't (and this is not a slander against those of you who do-- statistically, however, you're in the minority, OK?). So how would you know about releases like (and I'm dating myself here, as the only reference I have handy is a copy of Newtype that's about three months old*) Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Scrapped Princess, or Sora no Stellvia? Personal sites do allow "niche" sectors like anime (ha ha) and, I dunno, latex doll painters a way to spread information. The personal site is the next step in "word of mouth".
(* Newtype USA is only a year old. Hardly enough basis to say that anime is mainstream now; but that's not what's at issue here. You could just as easily do a google search on latex doll painters and find out more than you ever wanted to know. The point is that Newtype is only one source of information. The internet, and personal websites, provide about fifty zillion other points of view.)
Just to state it clearly here: Less need for personal websites != no need for personal websites.
A Writer Writes (Score:3, Interesting)
In the 18 or so months that I've been keeping a blog, I've written more than 100,000 words on everything, from TV and album reviews, to political scandals and "popular science".
The point, in my case, is not really the content: it's the visible improvement in my writing skills that is being translated to other offline projects. I work in a building housing people from all across Europe, and I get English spelling, grammar and usage queries several times a day, every day. Who was it who said "the point of a journey is not to arrive"? (I know it was Neil Peart, but he was quoting someone else, I think.) I write to learn more about writing, so I have a sharp pen if I see a sword coming my way!
what if they die (Score:2, Insightful)
Andy Warhol... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the web era that translates to: we can all be famous for 15 people.
Indeed, that's about as many as look at my personal web site (www.mvw.net), and I am happy with that. I get to hone my web design and sysadmin skills, my mother gets to see what I am up to, and a few people like to engage in debate which is fine.
And the most important : old friends can find me! My name comes up very early in Google as a result of the personal web sites. Web sites are a bit like business cards in that respect - people don't look at them in a lot of detail but without them you're lost.
Michael
Kinda split on the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, I cannot help but notice how running into the wrong person [politically correct employer, boy/girlfriend, football coach, bad cop, etc.] with excellent Googling skills, can easily manage to ruin your life completely, by marginalizing you out of existence, to the extent that nobody wants to hire or date you and where even your old highschool pals fake not recognizing you on the street, because whatever you posted on your website went against the grain.
This leaves open the question of whether freedom of speech and democracy really mean anything anymore.
The game used to be played along this famous French writer's motto that "I might vehemently disagree with what you are saying, but I'll die to preserve your right to say it." Likewise, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once told his son (quoted at the funeral) to "Never attack someone personally. You can publicly attack their ideas, but never touch their dignity as a human being."
Unfortunately, in a world where anything you say can and will be used against you at some point, before you have been accused of anything, even whenever you have not broken any law, simply because people fear the stigma of guilt by association, it appears that we have reached a point where those old standards of respect are no longer true.
This being said, lately, I've been asking myself why I even bother maintaining a diminutive website:
I haven't created much in terms of music, photography or ever writings in ages, which already puts a big question mark over whatever content might qualify for publication. Then, already, I've had a few employers actually mention having a problem with me stating boldly on my About My CV... page that "I am quite competent in Windows 3.11/95/98/NT/2000 administration and in Office 95/97/2000 usage, but flatly refuse to use any Microsoft product."
[of course, in a world where the majority thinks that getting a job should be the only priority anyone ever had, and where companies can fire anyone for the most laughable excuses, standing up for your beleifs and values, by refusing to work in certain fields or within a certain framework, has become suicidal, but that's another issue entirely - then again, it says a lot about how little freedom capitalism actually offers: choose freedom or money, but you cannot have both unless what you think is whatever the Ministry of Disinformation has rubber-stamped]
Given the combined current lack of content and problem in stating preferences for anything non-mainstream, I'm starting to think that the only thing left to put on a website is a politically bleached version of my CV and a generic photo to recycle with job applications and such. Then again, might as well upload the damn thing to Monster's CV repository and start using throw-away e-mail accounts for anything, at which point nobody needs an ISP or personal website anymore. *sigh*
Damn! I beleive I just created a second dot-com doomsday scenario... Sorry to all startups who will close shop as a result! :P
A personal website story (Score:5, Funny)
So one day I put up a post where I reminisced about my high school days (Over 15 Years ago), and I mentioned my first crush and how she shot me down. Mentioning her by first name only.
A few hours later I got an e-mail. From Her!. Asking me to remove the post from my website. 15 years, after my last contact with her and I get an email from her almost immediately after submitting a post with her first name. I guess the thought of her name associated with mine is to much to bear.
Anyways, now the only thing on my site is the local temperature.
Hahahah (Score:3, Funny)
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
Congradulations, CowboyNeal. You win the first anual Autopr0n.com torturued Analogy award. To wit, WTF?
websites (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone's personal homepage mentions a certain hobby in detail, chances are other people will pick up on it and visit that website to see someone else's experience.
I love the homegrown websites about hobbies and cool stuff. It's the corporate websites that have choked the life out of the Internet by making giant sites that cover everything mildly, so I can never find the real content -- from the people!
Re:ugh (Score:2)
Re:ugh (Score:2)
What's a Wo/man (as opposed to "Woman"; I'm not trying to be funny, just wondering what the '/' character is for)?
Re:ugh (Score:2)
English isn't my native language, that's probably why I didn't get it
Re:The real problem is.... (Score:2)
Personal websites don't matter...sure they do (Score:3, Informative)
Many personal sites have potential.
Also, fan sites sometimes have unique perspectives or pictures. Most fan sites are personal sites.
My brother uses his personal site to display pics of his daughter, which otherwise, I'd never see.
Re:Very bad idea (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, there are lots of details you don't need to and shouldn't bring up, but leaving out all personal details from your CV and not discussing it where it would be natural during job interviews will just make you seem cold, anti-social and