
Into the Personal-Website-Verse (2019) - rohmanhakim
https://matthiasott.com/articles/into-the-personal-website-verse
======
Jaruzel
Following on from this excellent article, would other HN users care to share
the URLs of their personal webspaces?

Mine is: [http://www.jaruzel.com](http://www.jaruzel.com) (yes, I know it's
not SSL'd!)

~~~
PStamatiou
Here's mine: [https://paulstamatiou.com/](https://paulstamatiou.com/)

Been running it since 2005 (and posting mostly regularly.. about 1200+ posts
now but the vast majority of that was me posting about tech news back when I
had first started it).

It's a mix of tech, design, photography and generally whatever personally
interests me at the time from fido2 security keys to NAS storage for my photos
and so on. I recently wrote a bit about how I built it:
[https://paulstamatiou.com/about-this-
website/](https://paulstamatiou.com/about-this-website/)

~~~
marknutter
Oh my god, I remember drooling over every iteration of your website back when
I was first learning how to code. Glad to see you're still at it.

------
cousin_it
Just be careful to manage your expectations. This idea won't solve the central
problem of the attention economy - low average attention per unit of content.
Modern social networks are actually better at that, because they entice people
to spend attention on lots of content. Getting hundreds of views on your
YouTube video, Facebook status or Medium post is much easier than on your
personal site. That's how the "new web" won creator mindshare. The "old web"
will keep losing until it finds an answer to that.

~~~
superkuh
> getting views

This is the disconnect between the modern commercial web and the real web.
Personal sites aren't usually about gettting views, making money, or grabbing
attention. Those are profit motives.

Personal sites are about putting something out there you care about. It
doesn't matter who, if anyone at all, sees it. It doesn't matter if your site
only has 90% uptime. Or if it looks weird and only works in some browsers. The
only thing that matters is if you like it.

~~~
rchaud
For the most part, yes. The personal site lets you experiment in the way you
want to.

But most people will still need some kind of validation to make it feel like
they're not just putting information out into a silent, gaping void. You don't
have to stoop to Twitter style hot takes to do this, but some acknowledgement
from the outside world is still desirable.

Back in the day, there were "guestbooks" you could sign and webrings you could
join, linking to other related sites. Blog software had user comments and
blogrolls built in from Day 1. Unfortunately spambots and useless pingback
notifications killed the discussion sections.

~~~
superkuh
Webmentions are pretty cool as is covered in the article under discussion. I
recently implemented a static webmentions receiver for my static site and got
a pingback implementation as a side effect
([http://superkuh.com/blog/2020-01-10-1.html](http://superkuh.com/blog/2020-01-10-1.html)).

Pingback is old and well known so it gets a lot of spam. But webmention is
still new enough it's still useful. Sure, it'll eventually get spammed out to
but this is the lifecycle of web-objects. Gotta get use of out them while
they're young and not terrible yet.

------
runninganyways
I think I know why personal websites aren't popular anymore. It's the same
reason retro video games aren't as fun as they were when they came out.

What's missing is the context of the time when they were popular. They were
new and had a high-tech aura about them.

Nowadays making a website doesn't differentiate you in a good way unless you
have a super creative way of coming up with the website and a lot of content
to fill it with.

Nowadays you have to take it to the next level. What's a skill that's beyond
the reach of most people? This could be why PCB business cards are so
appealing. Because it's a thing most people can't do and if you can do it it
shows your technical prowess. I think that's my personal web pages were
popular back then and why they won't ever be popular again.

~~~
weci2i
You are probably onto something with this train of thought. I had an Angelfire
website when I was 17 in the 90's. All my friends were blown away by my
terrible design and color choices because they weren't on the web. Putting
something accessible by the entire world out there seemed like magic to them.
The web in general felt much more magical then.

------
banfeld
I love this article, and that people are leaving their own sites below - more
food for my RSS reader!

Here's mine: [https://jamiesnotes.com](https://jamiesnotes.com)

~~~
jborichevskiy
> Email status: 2 unread.

Love this! Although the response rate of people online is extraordinarily
high, it's nice to get an extra datapoint about whether you're buried in
emails right now and to not expect a response right away.

------
tudorw
The author is right, one day, all these services will be gone, unless you
control a domain name and self publish, you are risking a lot.

~~~
sp332
I'm not convinced that owning a domain name is that reliable. Facebook is less
likely to let their registration lapse in the next 30 years than I am.

~~~
jjulius
But nothing guarantees that the content you want to stay on Facebook will
still be there in 30 years. You have total control on your own domain, not on
theirs.

~~~
tudorw
If Facebook is still around in 30 years, I'll buy you a pint!

------
cjslep
> The first step of this is to explore more ways to establish new and
> strengthen existing connections – and also to improve findability. We don’t
> have to reinvent everything from scratch but can build on so much that
> already exists.

I use ActivityPub as both the broadcasting mechanism and the mechanism to
obtain comments for my personal site. It also allows people to follow my
account on my blog from the Fediverse (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc).

So far, not much engagement (mostly my fault for not posting too much). But a
working proof of concept. It isn't easy to do though, and I skipped all the
other tech to do the AP support first (webmentions, rss/atom).

~~~
tsukurimashou
Could you explain a bit more about how you implemented it? Can you share your
website to see how it actually looks like?

I've read a lot recently about the Activity Pub protocol and I've been
following Mastodon / Pleroma for a while but never really made the jump

~~~
cjslep
Sure, see:

[https://cjslep.com/c/blog/this-blog-is-
federated](https://cjslep.com/c/blog/this-blog-is-federated)

It's pretty bare bones and has had significant downtime due to Mastodon
spamming "account Deleted" activities, which would crash my little server. I
hope I have now fixed it.

------
chrisweekly
Anyone else remember "web rings" from the 1990's?

~~~
banfeld
Yes. There are a few smaller webrings about, but blog discovery is a problem
unsolved.

~~~
chrisaldrich
Here's a list of several including an "IndieWeb Ring" that was started in the
last two years that features personal websites:
[https://indieweb.org/webring](https://indieweb.org/webring)

------
vlucas
Great article. I have thought a lot about personal websites and the lack of
any built-in "social" aspect. Comments, forums, guestbooks, webrings,
topsites, etc. all used to be commonplace, and these have all but disappeared
as social networks have risen.

I am not sure that any of these ideas themselves will make a comeback, but a
remix of them might fill some gaps that exist today, especially with
discovery.

My attempt at a social discovery network of sorts, for content websites:
[https://cruton.app](https://cruton.app)

It's a Reddit-style presentation, but instead of votes, it ranks URLs purely
on traffic and qualitative metrics. Add it to your site if you want to help me
test it out and improve it :)

------
s5l8900xrb
My personal site is for the archival of early iOS stuff (iOS 1.x apps pre
dating the AppStore and what not) as well as some forks and new software
[http://lexploit.com](http://lexploit.com) . Purposely 90s in style.

------
skyfaller
In the feed reader section of the article, he mentions an RSS reader,
Feediary, which is already dead only months after he wrote about it:
[https://feediary.com/posts/2019-09-02-goodbye/](https://feediary.com/posts/2019-09-02-goodbye/)

Since the demise of Google Reader, I've never found an RSS reader I'm entirely
happy with. I hope someone does more to update the concept, perhaps with
additional support for the Fediverse to fully use the features of projects
like WriteFreely [https://writefreely.org/](https://writefreely.org/)

------
rchaud
My personal site is where I review music I like. Good opportunity to practice
design ideas that wouldn't otherwise find its way into my work-related
material.

[http://fuzzcrush.xyz](http://fuzzcrush.xyz)

Yes, there's no SSL.

------
teekay
Great article. Brings back many good memories.

I blog about tango music, which probably won't be of any interest to this
crowd. [https://tomaskohl.com/tango](https://tomaskohl.com/tango).

Planning to start a more techy blog, and looking at static code generators.
Too many of them! :)

------
dzink
Just restarted mine recently with new content brewing now.
[https://blog.dianazink.com](https://blog.dianazink.com) Old one was DMOZ
listed so it points to my biggest project
[https://www.dreamlist.com](https://www.dreamlist.com)

------
creatornator
I have a personal website at
[https://matansilver.com](https://matansilver.com)

At some point I'd like to spend some time building out a larger body of
writing to post, maybe a gist-like snippet list.

------
coreymaass
My web projects: [https://gelform.com](https://gelform.com)

My music reviews and podcast:
[https://BassTourist.com](https://BassTourist.com)

------
forgotmypw15
[http://shitmyself.com/](http://shitmyself.com/)

no HTTPS

compatible with every browser you can throw at it

------
luord
My website is: [https://luord.com](https://luord.com)

Really need to write a new post, I just can't think of what about.

