
Have a personal web site - markchristian
https://writing.markchristian.org/2019/04/29/personal-web-sites/?c=1
======
caymanjim
I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and
I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three
big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have
anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of
date.

Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run
into you at the pub, I'll talk your ear off about the places I've been and the
things I've done, but if I'm objective about it, none of it is particularly
praiseworthy, and it's hardly going to make me stand out to a potential
employer. Any attempt to dramatize my life or skills is going to reek of
pomposity, even the rare bits that are somewhat unique.

I'm not a designer. I'm not a visual person. Any attempt to fashionably
describe myself is going to backfire. My resume is a good overview of my
skills and experience, but if I try to turn that into an online portfolio,
it's not going to be any more impressive. If I don't keep it up to date, and
remodel it constantly to keep up with contemporary fashions, it's going to
make me look old and out of touch.

I have an exceedingly common first and last name, so I'm hard for employers to
find online. I'm happy about this. I don't want employers scrutinizing my
social media presence, as benign as it is. I would never give a potential
employer any of my online IDs if they asked.

If you've got something to say or show and you want your own home page, go for
it. I don't think most people actually have enough interesting content to
warrant it, though, and I'm pretty sure that I don't.

~~~
darekkay
> I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably
> it'll either become a chore or go out of date.

The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I
do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I
managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the
time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But it's about
those 5% that I find a blog post which really helps me. My goal was to
contribute back the same way.

If you don't like to actively maintain a blog, just set up a GitHub repo +
GitHub Pages (or even go for plain GitHub Gists). As long as the information
can be found via a search engine, it's good enough.

Finally - don't create a blog just because you feel obliged to. It's totally
fine as a developer not to have a blog.

~~~
leftyted
> The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off

That's what they all say.

Humans are social creatures and the main motivator for anyone to do anything
in public is to "show off" or "be interesting". "All is vanity".

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Without a desire to compete, impress,
prove our worth and so on we'd be living in huts. But it's something to be
aware of and something that should be tempered.

I think the pendulum is swinging away from modesty plus self-reflection and
towards "people documenting their lives in public".

~~~
atentaten
>.. 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.

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

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

------
jaabe
Some of the most interesting things online are people writing about things
they are passionate about, for the sake of writing about them. At least in my
opinion, so it’s fair to say that I agree with the author.

I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though.
I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down,
almost as though the journaling is me thinking out loud on something. I could
certainly do this in an old fashioned journal, or keep things to myself, but
in my experience, I’ve learned a lot about something by having to write about
it in a way that anyone could read. Which includes explaining things that are
obvious to me, but not to you.

I know it’s not for everyone, and I respect that, but if you do think out
loud, then do us all a favour and share the things that are most important to
you. I think it’ll help keep the internet much more interesting in the age of
social media.

If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs.

~~~
loosetypes
Agreed. I'm a bit jealous of his (Mostly) food truck name ideas,
[https://writing.markchristian.org/name-
ideas/](https://writing.markchristian.org/name-ideas/).

Once, in the functional programming rabbit-hole, a coworker advocated for a
hypothetical Indian food truck named Haskell's Curry.

And when I was studying propositional logic I certainly wouldn't have said no
to a side of De Morgan's ColesLaw.

~~~
gen220
The best one we've come up with is a Russian-American fusion truck named
"Collusion", serving (alcohol-free) cocktails named after all the major
players / plot points in the "Russia investigation".

It's an endless source of entertaining ideas. "Moscow Mueller", "Manafort on
the Rocks", "Cohen Kvass". Or you can go for drinks that are flavored after
their namesakes: dry, sweet, bitter, sour.

Park it in front of Trump Tower on central park, and Instagram fame would be
instantaneous! Feel free to steal my idea.

~~~
DrScump
Or "Otto's Collusion Repair"

------
neilv
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 this is that, early in dotcoms, I very quickly got tired of being
at social parties of grad students, with MBA students always wanting to talk
to me for startup reasons. Also, CS departments and culture were changing due
to the gold rush. Going "non-profit" was an idealistic youth reaction.)

The reasons I keep the vanity domain and hosting include:

(1) I'm not signing over rights to some snooping companies to snoop on my
email, nor will I implicitly endorse that practice. (IMHO, the current
practice of corporate snooping on everyone's private communications is a bad
for society. All this time, we techies have been shirking our responsibility
to advise people about what they're signing away, and why that's an
undesirable direction. I haven't done my part, but I'll try not to make it
worse.)

(2) The vanity domain name gives me flexibility for where&how I host, and
doesn't lock me into anyone. (Though I'll remain loyal to a hoster who's
worked well, even if that means my site is not a showcase for a currently
popular service. I've done novel things on AWS professionally, and I shouldn't
have to prove anything with my quaint little personal site.)

(3) I've run the canonical Web pages for various niche open source projects,
and there's never been an obviously good third-party permanent home for them.
(I did almost move those projects to a `git`-centric third-party service,
fairly recently, but then my first choice service was acquired by a very
different corporate culture, and this also raised the question of how my
second choice is going to change (due to competition, or presumably being
courted for acquisition). Moving is a lot of trouble to go to, for a situation
that might make me want to move again soon after that, so I stick with my
ancient site design and hoster.)

I have mixed feelings about the Web site's dated visual design, and I think
this is a consideration for anyone who makes a Web presence that will last for
years... Mine has looked almost identical for ages, and now feels personally
"genuine" to me, compared to better but generic modern looks. While the look
stayed the same, the implementation has moved from `table`, to CSS that
mimiced the `table` look, to CSS that's responsive while still respecting
user's preferred font size. In parallel, there was also a move from HTML4-ish,
to XHTML, to HTML5. Along the way, I dropped some unnecessary features that
were flashy when I did them, like code syntax coloring (for which I rigged up
Emacs into site generation).

I suppose a dated-looking site filters out job opportunities from people who
insist that one's personal Web site showcase their best frontend practices. It
could stand another look, at tweaks or makeover or complete rethinking, but
I'd rather invest unpaid time in contributing to an open source project or
techie community, than futzing around with the vanity domain.

You might keep updating your own site, but at some point you might have better
things to do, so try to leave it in a style you won't mind being frozen at for
years.

~~~
jmtd
> _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._

Much the same sort-of chronology and hosting story for me…

> _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'm curious to pick your brains on that. I've gone the other way: I ended up
standardising on a .net but I kinda wish I had the .org instead, my rationale
is, .org is a closer match to what my site is: if I squint I can consider it
to be an "organisation" of one, but I can't convince myself that it or I'm a
network. I originally picked the .net because I thought it scanned better with
my choice of domain.

~~~
neilv
I don't think I have any strong feelings on TLDs today. Especially when
there's so many new TLDs, appropriations of the county code TLDs, and so many
non-techies. I'm guessing many techies no longer know what the original TLDs
meant, back before rules/conventions were relaxed, pre-ICANN. Either .net or
.org original meanings, "of one", could work.

As an aside, I'm still slightly uncomfortable with the real-name domain name.
I did it because I had some idea that this was a facet/presence of my real
identity, which already had a name, and there's the idea of standing behind
one's name. The discomfort is because my upbringing tried to teach me a flavor
of traditional values, like not being boastful, not advertising your deeds,
etc., yet the real-name domain name means I'm plastering my name all over,
like some politician. Maybe why I went with it despite discomfort is that I'd
gotten used to discomfort -- trying to reconcile upbringing (humble is good),
with personality (still learning), with conventions in industry&academia
(promoting name is accepted/required). I don't worry about it, and I do need
some kind of identifier in this space, but I don't know whether I'll ever
fully like the domain name.

------
keerthiko
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 there's one
or two decidedly well known person(s) of that name, and that person has
authored a personal site, search engines should prioritize that on the first
page, if not the very first result(s).

Try googling for John Carmack, Barack Obama, or (op) Mark Christian. What's
the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search
engine?

~~~
hnarayanan
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.

~~~
jeremyjh
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.

~~~
Veen
Your website is indexed by Google. You can see whether it's indexed by running
a site specific search. Put "site:" before the domain name. But that site has
three pages, one of which is a blog listing with no content. It's not ranked
because there's nothing worth ranking.

~~~
jeremyjh
If you are searching for information about _me_ , it is the best source
online. Ideally the best sources are listed first. DDG does that, and Google
doesn't list it even in the first half-dozen pages. Is it really a worse
website than all the spam white-page sites?

------
jzzskijj
In Finland it is illegal to google for applicant's online presence, because of
the possibility of judging the candidate because of misidentification. You
have to have applicant's permission to that. And I am glad, because one of my
name doubles isn't very representative person according to their online
presence.

~~~
Matty1992
I have the opposite problem, I share the name with someone else working in the
tech field who is academically and professionally my senior.

I frequently get emails and phone calls from recruiters offering positions
with a salary up to 200k more than I'm expecting at my level because they
think I teach at Stanford

~~~
thirdsun
Did you ever try to bullshit your way into one of these positions? Obviously
it's a bad idea, but I'm only half joking since it might be an interesting
experiment to see how people rate and value you if their mind may have already
been made up.

~~~
lugg
Why is that a bad idea? If you can pass the interview stages and the only
difference is perception then I say go for it.

~~~
Phenix88be
Stealing someone identity is, by definition, a bad idea.

~~~
klntsky
> is, by definition, a bad idea.

So what is the definition?

This is certainly legal.

------
RenRav
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.

~~~
Spare_account
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.

~~~
ryandrake
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.

~~~
kermitismyhero
>I feel super fortunate that I have a relatively common first and last name,
and you pretty much cannot find me through search engines.

Same here. My ultra-common first and last name means I'm also essentially
unsearchable. On occasion as an experiment I'll try to find myself using
combinations of my name (including an also-super-common middle name) and birth
city, cities I'm lived in, jobs I've had, companies I've worked for, hobbies,
and other things would normally narrow down a person in a search engine. I've
never found myself. I've gone a hundred page deep in google, bing, duckduckgo,
and others (both regular and image searches) and I've never once found me.
It's like having an invisibility superpower.

------
stakhanov
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 that you put up. Nowadays, if you're unlucky and you have a
name that's somewhat common, or even just a single other person exists with a
strong online footprint that has the same name as you, then you won't even
rank for your own name any more. If you want any of your actual content to
rank, then the chances of making that happen are even slimmer.

More eyeballs on the internet means greater incentives to put content online
that will get noticed, which means that commercial interests will throw money
and resources at making that happen which a personal side project can't
compete with. More content online means search engines get to be pickier about
what they show to users. The cost/benefit calculation has changed
dramatically, especially around how much content you have to put up and how
frequently you have to put up content, because search engines heavily penalize
content for being old or stale even when content ages well when it's good and
even when you actually write on stuff that you are a real authority on and
even when the web is desperately in need of less of the "sponsored" kind of
content and more of the "independent & authoritative" kind of content.

So in order to truly solve the problem of making it worthwhile again for
people to have personal websites, one first needs to solve the discovery
problem.

I think somebody should invent a search engine to do that.

I think that when people put up personal webpages now, they should adopt a
"fediverse" technology stack to turn their personal webpages into a social-
media-like experience that allows for an alternative vector of discovery next
to keyword search.

I think that policymakers should reverse the current trend wherein they put
liabilities on website owners & operators that a private person doing a
personal webpage can't possibly shoulder.

So, in conclusion: Bring back some of the goodness of the WWW of 1997 again.
I'm all for it. But the technology community has a loooong way to go, before
that can become a reality.

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

~~~
stakhanov
...that's a pretty good idea, actually. I'd bet that in some way, shape, or
form, search engines probably already have the ability to detect presence of
advertising. The question is how they work it into the relevancy formula given
that the big two search engines are at the same time the big two ad networks.

~~~
asdff
I wonder if you can just make an extension to filter these out of the google
results. Adblocker extensions certainly don't have a hard time detecting ads
in webpages.

------
mooreds
Couldn't agree more.

A place on the internet that you own and can write your thoughts down is very
valuable. Yes, there are other services that you can leverage (medium,
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, stack overflow, to name a few, depending
on your content and desired reach) but your content there will alwybe subject
to the whims of others. Big companies aren't always going to have your best
interest at heart.

It's a bit of a pain to set up, but as the article states, you get your own
space. Writing is one of the ways I learn best, and any writing I do is highly
leveragable and can be used by folks far into the future. With your own site,
you also have, again as the article states, a place to do low risk but still
meaningful technical exploration.

I have had my own site for almost 20 years and look forward to having it for
20 more.

Also, see this post from Dion Almaer about bringing content back to his site
vs a third party service:

[https://blog.almaer.com/almaer-com-reopens-for-
business/](https://blog.almaer.com/almaer-com-reopens-for-business/)

~~~
dmuth
This is the comment I came here for. It's always a good idea to have your own
spot on the Internet that you have control over, and can write about whatever
you like.

My website is my username DOT org, for anyone who is curious.

------
dvt
Completely agree with the article. I think it's very unfortunate that so many
think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a
custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose.

I've been told several times that I was Googled prior to interviews/meetings
and have heard great things about my website, my online presence, my books (I
have an "author" card when people Google me), etc. Whatever you do to make you
stand out is a boon.

~~~
lazyjones
> _I think it 's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or
> StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that
> can portray you in any light you so choose._

A logical consequence is that you compete with other vain people online who
might choose to stretch the truth a bit more than you do. At which point does
telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have?

~~~
teddyh
> _At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful
> skill to have?_

Since… forever?

------
qubyte
I don't think everyone _must_ have a website, but I do think many more people
would if they realised that the cost and difficulty of setting one up are much
lower than they used to be.

A personal site can be about pretty much whatever you want, and look how you
want it to look. It doesn't need to be a sales pitch, or on topic all the
time. It doesn't need to come top in google when you search for your name. You
get to decide why you're building it and who your target readers are (if any).

------
bifrost
I've had a personal website online since around 1996. I make sure its
offensive and hilarious. This is not a new issue lol.

~~~
bifrost
[http://www.minions.com/](http://www.minions.com/)

~~~
saagarjha
Has Illumination Entertainment contacted you at any point to ask for that
domain?

~~~
bifrost
I don't think so, if they have its never been serious contact. I get tons of
shady offers all the time, I usually delete them.

------
CIPHERSTONE
Like almost everyone I've done the blogging thing on blogging platforms, on
hosted traditional sites, on github with jekyll, etc. At some point I always
get tired of dealing with it, question why I am even posting something, and
what the whole point of it is.

Essentially what I want is a journal, and as my vanity continues be killed,
I'm sure I'll eventually go to using an actual paper journal.

Right now I am one step away, I've been using gopher to blog on SDF.org. A
huge reduction in audience, and since it is text based, its about as simple as
you can get.

------
_hardwaregeek
I don't judge a person's technical skill through this metric (or at least I
make an attempt not to), but it's rather noticeable when someone has nothing
going on online. A blank GitHub, no website, no projects, etc. For an employed
person, eh, whatever, maybe they just have a life.

But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying
students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracurriculars. But
something like a simple GitHub projects site or more than 50 commits in a year
goes a long way to making yourself seem like an active, competent developer. I
can count the number of people I've met with semi-active GitHubs at my school
on one hand. That's not exactly a vote of confidence for my school's CS
program.

~~~
intertextuality
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 program professionally. It's true that I sometimes program after work on
personal projects and write for my blog, but I also devote my time to studying
Korean, and Japanese kanji. I also draw, spend time with friends, or
occasionally play videogames. Programming is exhausting and oftentimes the
last thing I want to do is look at code or write about it after work.

And of course, people have things like kids or other responsibilities in their
life. College students may have extracurricular activities or work. Not every
college student has oodles of free time as you so broadly assume.

 _We shouldn 't have to justify NOT blogging or pushing to github_. How dare I
have any interests outside of computers and programming. Blegh.

~~~
maddening
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 would use to evaluate person? Hell no! But if I can
see someone's actual achievements it gives me much more insight and confidence
about how I am evaluating the candidate.

Would I miss some good candidates? Probably. But the strategy is not about not
missing all good candidates, it is about ruling the bad ones. E.g. in Germany
if you were hired, everyone though that you were ok, but then they found out
that you are shitty, they cannot just fire you. They have to give you head ups
that you are underperforming, then they have to make a formal evaluation to
make sure that it isn't about them oppressing you and finally they are
obligated to propose a recovery plan for you - only after you fuck it up the
company is allowed to fire you. So you might end up with a guy not doing
enything for 6 months. In such perspective it can be better to miss 2 good
candidates than to hire one bad one.

~~~
intertextuality
You don't quite get what I was saying.

A review is not written by the mechanic _themself_ once they get home from
work, is it? My point was that people don't expect mechanics to go home and
start blogging about new tools that they use or the latest in car news. It's
an absurd concept, yet it's seen as normal for criticizing and penalizing
prospective software developers. Artists are in a totally different boat,
where they actually do need a good portfolio to demonstrate their personal
style and past work, etc. For programmers they do it through known concepts
called "resumes" and "interviews".

> But if I can see someone's actual achievements it gives me much more insight
> and confidence about how I am evaluating the candidate

If I have an accomplishment but I don't blog about it or post on github, did
it actually happen?

Not only is this quite preposterous, I literally cannot share code if it was
developed under an NDA. I only can discuss vaguely / without specifics in
interviews.

> Would I miss some good candidates? Probably. But the strategy is not about
> not missing all good candidates, it is about ruling the bad ones.

Again, you are arbitrarily penalizing people for not being on their computer
14-15 hours a day. You are penalizing people with children. You are penalizing
people like me who have interests outside of programming.

Not only is your reasoning absolutely absurd, you are -still- missing out on
good candidates. It's lazy, and I would not want to work at a place that hires
like this, because it means they do not value personal lives outside of work
at all.

People like you are why people feel like they HAVE to blog and HAVE to
contribute to open source projects- on their personal time. Fuck that. It's a
sickening practice and as I said, it's not expected in other fields. Why is
programming the exception here?

------
numbers
Some people like to be ghosts online but I really do like to post and write
about my experiences whenever I can and it is nice to look back and see what I
was doing a couple of months or years ago.

Personally, a website I can just do whatever on is great and I don't have to
be worried about a platform's limitations, requirements, or nuances.

Most people prefer simplicity of networks like Twitter, facebook, etc but I
really like having my own blog where one blog post is 50 words and another is
1500 words and many other things at the same time. And my individual pages can
be anything from experiments to documentation.

------
PopeDotNinja
> You should...

Except for all the reasons you shouldn't. The biggest reasons is that if
putting up a website doesn't feel like a good use of time, it's probably
better to just not have one.

An alternative way to think about it is this... is it a good business decision
to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real
surprised if the answer was yes.

~~~
buzzert
One of the benefits not mentioned in the article: it serves as a good personal
record of accomplishments or thoughts (similar to a diary). How often does the
new year come around and you think to yourself, "where did the year go?"

~~~
robjan
Why should this be public information, though?

------
lazyasciiart
This is an uncompelling piece. I believe the core argument is that you should
have a personal website a) because the author was unsettled by his own lack of
an online presence and b) a side benefit is that he has somewhere to use tech
that is interesting to him but not something he can do at work. There's also
an offhand comment buried in there about writing practice being good, and an
audience making it easier to stick to.

There's not even a real attempt to turn this into a persuasive piece - it's
like it started as a post "why I like having a personal website" and then got
a new title and intro paragraph. I'd like to see an attempt to explain why the
two major points apply to "everyone" \- or perhaps the first one wasn't even
intended to be an argument, just background?

------
sebastiangraef
Curated online presence > no online presence > bad online presence imho.

That includes personal website and social media.

------
henrik_w
I've been blogging for 7 years using Wordpress (hosted, with my name as the
domain name). It's been a great experience, and I wish I had started earlier.
I don't feel any pressure to blog every week or every month, but over the
years the content has built up anyway. At an interview recently, I was asked
several questions (e.g. What makes a great programmer, What are the most
important lessons you have learnt) for which I could point to blog posts I had
written.

I've written about my experience blogging here:
[https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-
pr...](https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-programming/)

------
mapcars
>“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.

~~~
jrootabega
Because others will. It's an arms race.

~~~
jmull
You may want to know: an arms race in what war?

Put another way:

\- Who thinks it's a meritorious thing that someone screws around on Facebook,
twitter, or personal blogs all the time? \- Who specially wants to work
for/with the people who do?

Not that it's a _bad_ thing. But why is it a good thing? And why should we
think the people who do think it is a good thing are significant?

~~~
jrootabega
The war of getting hired in the tumultuous tech industry. Others will sell
their brand online, so you will do it yourself, or you will be outcompeted. I
don't think it's inherently good to do it, just necessary.

------
twhb
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?

~~~
darekkay
I've started blogging on firstlast.com (using my online alias), but by now
I've turned it into my de-facto online portfolio. Most of what I publish goes
to firstlast.com/project or project.firstlast.com. I don't think there is
anything wrong with this approach: I'm not the _subject_ , but it is _my_
project after all.

The only issue I've had with my domain name was chosing my default email
address: I did not like first@firstlast.com, so I went for hello@firstlast.com
instead.

------
quanticle
_“I like to look people up before an interview to try to get to know them a
bit. You were a complete ghost online.”_

Why is this a bad thing?

~~~
loteck
Because hiring people is risky and expensive, so (all other things being
equal) companies prefer candidates they know more about.

~~~
quanticle
I get that, but the context from the article is that of an _interviewee_
looking up the interviewer and commenting that the interviewer was a "ghost"
online. To me, that's somewhat bizarre. What bearing does your interviewer's
hobbies have on your perception of whether the company and the role would be a
good fit for you?

~~~
johnchristopher
Where I live, it's expected from candidates to show they looked up the company
and have prepared a question regarding a project the company is working on or
something else about the company itself. So, you actually end up googling the
thing.

~~~
overcode
That doesn't address the question at all.

------
craigds
Something about this comments page plays the Trogdor the Burninator song (in
the premii HN app on Android). I've never had that happen before, anyone else
experiencing it?

~~~
drmpeg
It's from a comment with a link to this web site.

[http://www.minions.com/](http://www.minions.com/)

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, seems like the app is prefetching links.

------
tarasmatsyk
Agree with the article, it does not cost too much effort and gives you online
presence.

I am using gohugo + netlify, tried gatsby, jekyll as well. If you are
interested how to setup a personal web-site - I've an article for you:
[https://medium.com/@tarasmatsyk/how-to-kick-off-a-blog-
in-2-...](https://medium.com/@tarasmatsyk/how-to-kick-off-a-blog-
in-2-hours-4bb142922185)

------
exlurker
In addition, there should be a search site that only indexes personal web
sites.

~~~
mxuribe
As much as i would like this...taken to a logical conclusion, not sure if it
would help. Walk with me a bit, and see if this makes any sense (or not)...

1\. A new search engine appears and focuses on "personal presence" sites -
however a personal presence would be defined.

2\. Google, bing, etc. begin crawling this new search engine, and its index of
sites.

3\. Users by default simply use google, bing, etc. to search for people...but
how would google, bing, and other search engines resolve the conflicts of
"which is the correct John Doe site?" between the results they've captured
(such as on silos/walled gardens) vs results from this new personal site
search engine?

Well, if its google, i suppose they'll use some signal like relevance. And, as
i recall google uses link authority (big boys pointing to YOU gives you
authority, which leads to "relevance" in the eyes of google)...which would
suck because the big boy silos likely have a bit more "authority" by way of
quantity of links, no? Unless i'm missing something, having another search
engine - focused on personal sites - may not help the layperson find your
personal site any more than current environment. Please someone correct me if
my logic is flawed here, because my scenario is quite depressing.

(Let me caveat that I'm very much a proud supporter of personal websites, and
would love having a new/additional "personal site-focused" search engine...I'm
just not hopeful that it helps much.)

------
noobcode
I started my own online journey as codingbbq which is my alias. I wanted to
write articles and have my share of online presence, without connecting to my
actual identity. If I wish to look for job or apply to a company, I can always
share my website with them.
[http://codingbbq.github.io](http://codingbbq.github.io)

------
Vordimous
Wonderful article, RSS needs to make a comeback. Especially among friends and
family who love to make large posts about important topics. I try to tell them
to build a blog and then just link to articles that they write. Your article
and others inspired me to finally just put together a system to make it easier
to start blogging. I just mimic a social media platform, but since everything
is committed to a repository using the JAMstack it could easily be converted
to a full website. Any feedback would be wonderful. [https://your-
media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/](https://your-
media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/)

I will also mention that
[https://www.stackbit.com/](https://www.stackbit.com/) is doing basically the
same thing but more from a “Make life easier for Website designers”
perspective.

------
theNJR
I’ve been writing on my personal site [0] since 2006. Most of it is bad. The
early goal was to rank first for my name on google. That worked until an actor
with my same name emerged.

A few of my articles have made it to the front page here on HN. The traffic
spike and follow on views from peoples newsletters and twitter is fun to see.

But nothing material has ever come from it.

I still enjoy writing on my site. When I’m in a mood where I write twice a
week some of it even gets good. Then there will be periods of months where I
stop. I tell myself if there was a consistent audience coming back for more I
would write more. But that is undeniably the wrong answer to the personal site
chicken-egg problem.

I suppose this thread is now pushing our personal sites.

[0][https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com](https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com)

------
mouzogu
I don't think it's fair to judge a candidate based on their online presence.
Some people are very private, or for whatever reasons prefer not to have an
online presence.

Furthermore, if you judge every candidate by the number of linkedin posts and
stackoverflow answers or whatever superficial metric than you will miss out on
a lot of talented people.

I'm not the type who has an urge to express my opinion or feelings on
anything. I've been on Youtube for years and never posted even one comment.
Although I always like videos, if I liked them of course.

~~~
markchristian
Oh, I wasn't looking them up--the candidate told me that they looked _me_ up.

~~~
mouzogu
Oh I see, that's a fair point. Perhaps in your case it makes sense to have
some presence when you know that people may you look you up. Although, I would
still argue that should not be reason enough - unless that it is, you actually
want to have a personal website and enjoy writing.

In my case, I often feel like my opinions are so asinine and generally not
worth sharing that I just don't feel the urge to set them in stone, so to
speak.

~~~
molteanu
Except that, you just did. :)

~~~
mouzogu
Exactly, where's that delete comment button...

------
shortformblog
Mark wrote a great article for my newsletter a couple of months ago and I
found his passion really showed through. I think a big part of it is that he's
put so much work into his own site.

We need more of this! Especially in 2019.

~~~
markchristian
Aw, thanks Ernie! <3

------
ArtWomb
Terrific thread! Am enjoying reading about personal experiences around
"building your brand." In fact, I believe this is so important you should
fight your instinct to keep things "pure." And go ahead and contract
professional services if you are serious. Hire professional developers,
writers, graphics, video, and stylists if necessary ;)

For certain folks just coming up this is de rigeur. If you are a young writer
/ director trying to break into advertising to gain experience before
conquering Hollywood. You need a killer demo reel. Same for a recent MFA grad
living in Brooklyn seeking Manhattan gallery representation. An Instagram that
tells a visual narrative is way more powerful than a series of unconnected
shots.

Furthermore, learning to take a single piece of content. Such as an onstage
presentation or demo. And slice and dice it into bite sized content tailored
to specific platforms. It is one method for extending your reach 10x. It's the
"attention arbitrage" in Gary Vee's Content Model ;)

[https://www.slideshare.net/vaynerchuk/the-garyvee-content-
mo...](https://www.slideshare.net/vaynerchuk/the-garyvee-content-
model-107343659)

And it's why "free tiers" such as Github Pages, App Engine and 1MB are so
important in our community. Not only does it level the playing field. It
offsets the risks for experimentation and self-discovery.

"Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like _yourself_ " \--Miles Davis

------
rcarmo
I've been reading the comments for a few hours, and am actually amazed that
this is still at the top of HN, so here goes:

I've kept a blog ([https://taoofmac.com](https://taoofmac.com)) for over 15
years, and I've derived satisfaction from it on three main counts: I like to
write in general (and keep notes, and the site actually started out as a Wiki
of notes covering my migration to the Mac), I like to tweak the code behind it
(although new releases are now years apart), and I like the (little)
correspondence that comes from people who tackled the same issues (sometimes
with different solutions).

As to exposure, it was great fun in the pre-iOS days and when Mac blogs were
all the rage. But professionally (and this is the bit where I think some
pushback is needed) I get exactly _zero_ benefits from it, because:

\- What I write about technically has (by design) nearly zero import on my
work, skills or career aspirations

\- LinkedIn has become the de facto "show off" (cess)pool, and although I
write a few opinion pieces now and then and post them there (and on Medium),
the novelty value has largely worn off

In fact, my online presence has, if anything, been a nuisance in my career
moves--my currently being at Microsoft and keeping a Mac-related blog is often
commented upon, for instance, and many recruiters who approach me via that
route usually think I'm a developer (I also have
[http://carmo.io](http://carmo.io), but that has essentially zero visibility).

~~~
mikeg8
Just checked out your site and wanted to say I really like the visual design.
Not sure if you do all your own CSS but it has a great feel/balance on
desktop. Well done

~~~
rcarmo
Thanks!

On Tao, I decided to go with a Jekyll theme as a base and then proceeded to
rip out most of it, starting with the typography, and added lazy loading to
make it a better experience on mobile - and the iPad.

The portfolio site is based on a minimalist skeleton CSS. I tend to rely on
proven grid/layout bases and tweak the rest to my satisfaction (sometimes
obsessively).

------
mxcrossb
Over a decade ago, I had a website. But it seems to me that Facebook killed
that urge. As people are now moving off of Facebook, it does make sense for
personal websites to return. But people will return with a new perspective.

I’ve done the same, and made one via github about a year or two ago. But it is
very different than my older sites. I feel like I have less room to express
personal thoughts or design ideas. Everything is more scripted, sanitized, and
is trying to sell me to employers.

------
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.

------
reneherse
I'm a similar "ghost", and with new projects in the works have been
contemplating a big update to my own site. Thanks for the inspiration!

------
gargs
In the same vein, I consider it a dark pattern when companies don’t have a a
public email for recruitment purposes. Ideally, every opening should have an
associated email answered by a real person. It’s kind of rich to expect
candidates to upload custom cover letters, CVs, samples of work, but only
expect them to receive template replies. Some companies even state that
replies are not guaranteed.

------
el_cujo
I could see how having a personal website that is basically just your resume
could be helpful. If you're a web dev in particular, this kind of thing is
essential. However, I don't think having a personal blog is a good idea for
everyone. If your posts are all extremely boring and about mundane tasks, then
you end up looking very self-involved. Being too funny can come off wrong as
well, making you seem crass or like someone who can't be counted on to take
things seriously. God forbid you talk about politics or complain about the
person who cut you off in traffic.

I'm not saying that having a personal blog is bad, by all means make one and
complain about politics, but if you make a website/blog for the sole purpose
of helping you get a job, I'd think twice about the kind of content you'd
going to put out and how that would reflect to future employers. Having no
presence online really doesn't strike me as a bad thing at all.

------
franky47
The author mentions learning how to properly format metadata to have links
unfurl nicely in Slack and other social media platforms. Are there any
debugging tools that let you see what an URL would look like on all platforms
at once, without having to post it everywhere and deal with caches when you
have to change the content ?

~~~
paxys
Unlikely because these platforms themselves control how the content is
displayed, and this will likely change often.

------
joelrunyon
I actually started startablog.com to help people with this. We'll actually set
up someone's wordpress site for free. We've done several hundred and we're
hoping to help 10,000 people make the move.

People keep moving to privatized networks and there's nothing that beats
owning [yourname].com

------
docker_up
I have no identity online, except for Facebook and Linkedin. Linkedin is the
only one that is public. I don't even have a photo.

I've been careful since about 1997 to always ensure that I don't attribute
myself to anything I've written. Even accounts like this I'm always careful to
write things that won't identify me ever, unless I did it completely on
purpose (a blog post for my employer, etc). I learned very early on that the
things that get written are forever, and I didn't want something I wrote 20
years ago to come back to haunt me.

I rejected a handful of candidates for things they wrote on Twitter (ex. "old
people should give up their right to vote because they don't matter anymore",
"SF is a piece of shit and everyone that lives there is a piece of shit").

~~~
sosodev
I don't think many people will write something that reflects them negatively
when it's long form content.

~~~
docker_up
That's why Twitter is such a giant-killer.

------
yoz-y
A side note:

Author mentions <sidebar> but as far as I know (and after searching for it
too) this element does not actually exist. Modern browsers fallback to <div>
rendering for anything they don't know but it's not exactly semantic web
either.

~~~
markchristian
I actually meant to use <nav> — just a silly mistake. I've corrected the
article since.

~~~
Theodores
Hi Mark

For accessibility your sidebar could be a <header> containing a <nav> with the
links in that. This <header> can precede the <main> content. The title for the
links should be in the <nav> so it outlines properly and the heading for the
<header> or the <nav> doesn't need to be <h1>. <h1> is best kept just for the
article, not anything else.

If the <header> containing the <nav> precedes the <main> you can style it to
look like a sidebar. Why bother? Well, try it and then see how the page opens
with Firefox Reader Mode. You should see the difference, the reader can jump
past the header 'landmark' to the article.

If you want to go fully HTML5...

The newsletter signup could be in an <aside> rather than a <div>.

Then with the article, it is nice to see use of <figure>, I have no evidence
but I believe Google likes that. You can also try breaking down the article
into <section> sized chunks, with the <h2> headings at the top of each
<section>. This should compartmentalise each 'section' into a way that search
engines might prefer. Amongst the <section>s the <aside> for the newsletter
can slot in, outlining nicely. Ideally the newsletter <aside> also has a
heading.

Footnotes. If you change 'name' to 'id' then you will get top scores on
validation. Nobody will ever notice or care, but you don't want validation
errors do you?

Also check out this:

[https://codepen.io/SitePoint/pen/QbMgvY](https://codepen.io/SitePoint/pen/QbMgvY)

Really cool footnotes using CSS counters.

Why bother?

Well, you have taken HTML5 so far and not much is needed to go exemplary. In a
world where everyone is up to speed on web technologies few get the actual
HTML right. You might not know the latest funky web technology but it is
always useful to point out how HTML5 could be done using the full vocabulary
instead of just <div> mumblings.

------
alexbecker
I've had some interesting conversations sparked by my personal website (linked
in profile). Friendships, even. I don't blog as much as I like to, I'm
embarrassed by some of the content at times, but overall I'm pleased with it.

------
PorterDuff
I'm going to have to throw myself in the camp of those who don't have much
interest in publishing a page or blog. I suspect that it would either be
ignored or result in protestors setting up outside of my house.

If a strong urge to write presented itself, I rather like the idea of self-
publishing either a novel or a non-fiction book on something I know a
reasonable amount about. It not only would force a certain discipline to
writing and study for the author, but would serve as my tiny push towards
encourage long-form reading again as opposed to the modern urge to read things
that fit on a computer screen (like I'm doing here of course).

------
lpman
Somehow related (pretty good in my opinion): [https://www.troyhunt.com/the-
ghost-who-codes-how-anonymity-i...](https://www.troyhunt.com/the-ghost-who-
codes-how-anonymity-is/)

------
shurcooL
For more reasons why this might be a good idea, see
[https://indieweb.org/why](https://indieweb.org/why).

------
mtw
Another reason to have a personal web site is that it allows you to define
your digital identity. If you don't, other people or worse, corporations, can
easily publish documents, texts, tweets or something else that will make you
look in a certain way.

You don't have to post amazing pictures or publish Paul Graham essays, publish
once a year and having the link in your email footer is enough to establish to
others who you are

------
darepublic
Don't see how you could be a ghost online with a name like Mark Christian.
There would be a ton of Mark Christian's all vying for attention.

~~~
markchristian
Life is tough when your first name is just a word. :P

------
caprese
Fascinating how I agree with the headline and disagree with the article
completely.

Personal websites are a lot easier to control and chronicle what you want them
to. They also help with SEO and also community building if you desire that.

When I didn't desire that, I was very content being a "need to know senior
engineer" behind the scenes. I gamed my third-party recruiters to do all the
work for me and we all made money.

------
Zigurd
With a name like Zigurd, SEO isn't a problem. Nor was registering the .com. A
very simple site that points to Amazon and other places with information in
context is useful. Google Sites is free and simple, and it is no longer sucky
looking and retro. It took longer to do the "do you own this url" dance with
Hover's DNS tab for the url than it did to create the site.

------
_pmf_
I think GitHub profile maintenance as a service would be quite a business
model for body leasing type of consultancies (that cater a particular industry
sector) ... for individuals, it would not be very sustainable.

Actually, a lot of work maintained by consultancies is half finished non
production shovelware, so they probably already do this themselves.

------
nojvek
I put up a very simple bio page at [https://nojvek.com](https://nojvek.com) a
while back and that gets me decent inquiries here and there.

I don’t think I can blog regularly with 2000+ word articles.

That’s awesome but it makes me feel I should rather be writing 2000 words of
code and building something. Just me.

------
raindropm
Once I remember a coloring app developer, calling for artists to be featured
in their app.

Requirement: Portfolio _and_ Instagram profile with a considerable amount of
followers. I mean, it's perfectly understandable. Who will want to feature
unknown artist in their app — but you know what, _screw it._

------
qwtel
I agree and I just so happen to have built a Jekyll theme for personal sites
that’s kinda good for hackers & nerds and is available here:
[https://hydejack.com/](https://hydejack.com/) (it’s based on the Hyde Jekyll
theme)

------
parliament32
Content aside, this is a great minimalistic blog without the usual
trackers/bloat -- it's rare to uBlock blocking 0 assets. Seems to be built
with Jekyll [https://jekyllrb.com/](https://jekyllrb.com/)

------
sascha_sl
"how to design web sites that respect the notch on iPhone X and friends"

i'm a notch disrespecter

------
b3b0p
This somehow reminded me of John Carmack's .plan files [0].

[0] [https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-
archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

------
k_sze
Out of curiosity: do you draft on paper or do you go straight to the text
editor?

------
treve
Now all browsers have removed the RSS feed button, here's his!
[https://writing.markchristian.org/feed.xml](https://writing.markchristian.org/feed.xml)

------
pknerd
Technical blogging isn't all about all about showing off. I write because I
want to share what I am up to hence share in the form of articles. That's the
other thing that I got leads as well.

------
davesque
IMHO, a personal website that is super out of date looks worse than one that
doesn't exist. My website is a good example of this (being out of date). So I
recently removed it from my resume.

~~~
dan-robertson
It seems the opposite is true in academia where most academics have a personal
website but the normal style is best described as “mid 1990s”.

~~~
davesque
By out of date, I meant lacking any recent content.

------
known
Always post anonymously on Internet. Nobody wants you to succeed.

------
ausjke
if there is a native markdown driven, login supported, file-based(no
database), online editor supported blog platform that transforms both code and
markdown to html5, I will start tech blogging right away.

drupal and wordpress users for years and I keep looking for a simpler
solution, no not the static site generators which has no online editor and no
login support either.

I plan build one with python/flask, then I will have my personal site.

------
pacifika
People are going to look for your name so you can influence the results that
come up through a personal website.

------
walkingolof
If you wanted to start one, what would be the easiest way of doing so,
preferably an all static site. ?

~~~
Etheryte
As a developer, a very natural choice would be Github Pages and Jekyll [1]. If
you're not a fan of having your whole site out in the public like that, you
can also use Jekyll locally. I'm sure there's other similar static site
generators, but Jekyll is pretty widely used and in my opinion easy to get
started with.

[1] [https://jekyllrb.com/docs/github-
pages/](https://jekyllrb.com/docs/github-pages/)

~~~
markchristian
Yep, Jekyll is what I use, and I quite like it. I'm not hosted on GitHub pages
though.

------
Dig1t
What font does he use on this website? I can't find it in the source, but it
looks really nice.

~~~
bradley_taunt
For the main paragraph content it's "Helvetica Neue". For the main headings
it's "Arial Rounded mt bold".

------
egrer8014
I wouldn't expect a younger person to have a personal website, given that it's
almost impossible to come up with a domain name that's not taken. For
instance, my real name is also Mark Christian. What am I going to do, register
markchristian1.org? theothermarkchristian.org? Might as well not have a
website at that point.

~~~
baroffoos
No it isn't. There were like 100000 new tlds added. Basically any name you can
think of is available on one of the tlds. Also most personal websites don't
use the authors name as the domain name. Most dev blogs I have seen have some
strange name but have their real name in the text of the website so it will
show up when searched.

------
mgranados
Have a personal web site and a blog! Great idea, will work on it :)

------
edpichler
I think you are just lazy, and there is no problem with that. Anyway, laziness
is a sin, and some philosophers classify this sin as "the loss of taste for
life", which is not good for you.

~~~
Intermernet
Sins are a social construct. Laziness is a state of being that many people
aspire to, but few can realistically achieve without serious detriment.

~~~
grayed-down
Oh no! Not all sins are a "social construct". But I do agree with the rest of
your post. True laziness with a degree of comfort and lack of anxiety is quite
difficult.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Not all sins are a "social construct".

Yes, even those sins where the social construction of them as sins has some
social utility are social constructs.

