
Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website - sT370ma2
https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/personal-website-hunting.html
======
text_exch
I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to highlight the interesting content
found on personal blogs. It's a single link every other day to something
interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while
that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to
read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily
found online is incredibly valuable.

[1] [https://www.thinking-about-things.com](https://www.thinking-about-
things.com)

~~~
overlordalex
This looks really interesting! Is it possible to see a sample of previous
emails? Are they just links or is there a comment describing them as well?

Getting another email 3-4 times a week is a big commitment, and it would be
nice to get a sampler of what we're signing up for

EDIT: The website also says that it's a link per day, but your comment says
"every other day". A daily link would be an even larger commitment

~~~
text_exch
Each email contains the article's title, the genre, and an extended excerpt.

I'm not sure how to link to previous emails, but here is a sample of previous
links:
[https://mix.com/thinkingaboutthings](https://mix.com/thinkingaboutthings).

It started out as an every day email, but readers told me that every other day
would give them time to read the articles.

~~~
tgb
I enjoyed the first post I read from this list [1], so I've signed up for the
newsletter. But I do take umbrage with some of what it says! When someone asks
"Was Brontosaurus an herbivore?" the right answer would be Yes even if
brontosaurus as a category of dinosaurs had been removed. (It's still a valid
genus name, so the point is doubly wrong. [2]) It is clear that if someone
asks about brontosaurus, they mean the animals whose bones were called
brontosaurus bones, which were in fact herbivores. The only other possible
thing they could mean is "the well-known (but non-factual) dinosaur called
Brontosaurus" which is an herbivore in much the same way that a unicorn is an
herbivore.

Similarly, the author seems to mistake the difficulty in the question of "What
country was George Washington born?" which is primarily the question of what
does that even mean? The country that the spot of his birth became or the
country which ruled the spot of his birth at the time? In fact, I'm not even
sure what answer the author _thinks_ is correct. Washington was a British
subject (citizen? not sure) at birth but the "clue" the author provides seems
to try to hint that Washington was born "in the US" whatever that would mean
prior to the US's existence.

Nonetheless, I stand by the author's overall sentiment that facts should be
connected together and not simply memorized, and the other examples were good.

[1]
[https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/07/was_brontosaurus_a_h...](https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/07/was_brontosaurus_a_herbivore.html)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
The only times I've ever seen the question "In what country was George
Washington born?" it's always been a trick question with the answer "hah hah,
it's Britain I bet you didn't think of that!" or some variation thereof.

~~~
dmurray
But he wasn't born in Britain, any more than someone born today in Gibraltar
or Montserrat would be. He was born in Virginia, a British colony.

He was an officer in the British colonial army before he became a traitor and
a revolutionary, though. That's fairly well known so maybe the "trick
question" is that he was actually born in the modern day US?

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I'm not saying the people with the trick question are accurate, I'm just
saying that's the way I've ever heard it.

------
yobuko
I really enjoy the articles put out on this website, as well as the points the
author raises in each. I always enjoy seeing it appear on HN.

A query though - Is it possible to have some verification of the "top 100"
personal sites claim? For example, years ago if you searched for "Sumerian
gods" \- you would get all manner of results, but nowadays you will always get
Wikipedia as the top link, junk mixed in, and then other factual sources if
you keep digging.

Wikipedia having top spot is not always necessarily a bad thing because
ultimately most people searching likely want a factual source - or at least a
source they trust. However, as a result of the two algorithms (and no doubt
many more) we have a bunch of "junk" links in between the top link and the
other interesting links. Even Britannica ranks lower than the junk links.

What I mean by "junk" links is the "Top 10 Best Sumerian Gods", etc. These
frequently contain content lifted from other sources - including each other,
spam-like advertising, and simply prey on the search engine's algorithms to
get on to the front page beating the interesting content down into pages 3,4,5
and beyond. There's entire sites devoted to "how to" game the search engines,
as is to be expected with any automated system.

Yes, the algorithms could be better - Britannica and other factual sources
shouldn't be below "Top 10" lists, but so could the ethics of those who run
sites purely for advertising revenue.

Conversely, better results are shown on page 1 for "Elizabeth I".

~~~
flyinghamster
> What I mean by "junk" links is the "Top 10 Best Sumerian Gods", etc. These
> frequently contain content lifted from other sources - including each other,
> spam-like advertising, and simply prey on the search engine's algorithms to
> get on to the front page beating the interesting content down into pages
> 3,4,5 and beyond.

Better known as chum: [https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-
intern...](https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-
chum/)

------
lettergram
Much of my personal blog is actually ranked on Google for terms. I tend to
keep my notes in my blog, I share it on HN and Reddit.

It’s important to develop a personal brand, but also to share knowledge. My
personal, unquantifiable goal, is saving a million man hours through my blog
posts. So many things are implemented or explored, but never shared. Knowledge
in a vacuum is useless to society.

I wish more people would do this (write and attempt to rank content), it’s
what makes the internet revolutionary (not the memes or messages).

~~~
dheera
I actually would write more, if people would read it.

Unfortunately, if I write a blog on my personal website, nobody is going to
find it. And I don't like Medium for their policy of forcing people to paywall
their content in return for visibility.

If I post a link to a blog post on my website to Facebook, Facebook downranks
it and doesn't show it to most of my friends (seriously, WTF).

The only thing I can do is post the actual text on Facebook, if I want people
to read it, but there's a limit on post length, and in-line media isn't
supported.

~~~
rikroots
I don't write much on my blogs nowadays, but that's mainly because I lack
inspiration. For the past few years my 'blogging' has mostly been long
rambling rant-thoughts about obscure stuff on Facebook: it gives my friends
something to chuckle about.

When I do write proper blog posts, the lack of an audience doesn't bother me
anymore. It is (as they say) what it is. It's also liberating: I can write
what I like without fear of reprisal or the need to justify myself - an online
occasional diary, if you like. Last year I built a new website to collect
together all my writing work. I included some blog functionality in it and
rescued a bunch of posts from old Blogger blogs. It was fun to read them all
again[1].

I, too, loathe Medium's business model. If I see a potentially interesting
post here on HN which links to that site, I've taught myself not to click the
link.

[1] -
[https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog](https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog)

~~~
Hoenoe
I thought I read somewhere in the HN comments that Medium articles are
automatically down voted by the algorithm. I rarely see them. But I might be
mistaken.

------
abruzzi
my father (75yo) still obsessively updates his personal website (using
FrontPage!) For years he was proud that his article on Hill's Criteria of
Causation was the top hit on google for a search on "hills criteria" or
similar. At the time Wikipedia had no article on it (he's now #4 since
wikipedia has a article as well as a couple of medical sites.)

His site has the look of a personal webpage from 1997, but since retiring, he
still works on articles and publishes them on his site. His site is a mix of
scholarly articles (Anthropology), old syllabi, and personal stuff.

~~~
mro_name
That's great!

Tools are just means to an end and overrated compared to the actual end.

Changing quarterly to the "most efficient" tool is a lot of work over time.

Sticking to one seems to get things done.

And static websites save you the headaches of security - I think your father
can't imagine what it means having to patch a critical bug in
node/php/mysql/whatever during your vacation when travelling.

And I guess, he may not think of this kind of publishing as being for the
"technically minded" or "tech-savvy" ones only.

And the stuff can be read in ages to come.

------
6ak74rfy
I recently setup a personal website. My intent was to migrate a few old blog
posts from WordPress and, more importantly, make my notes public. After trying
a bunch of note-taking apps, I realized that most of my private notes didn't
contain any private information, so I thought why not just make them public
as-is.

My setup is (almost) free, mostly built on open components (so, no vendor lock
in) and pretty low-latency. See if you'd like some inspiration on how to setup
something similar for yourself: [https://ketanvijayvargiya.com/posts/58-setup-
blog-and-email-...](https://ketanvijayvargiya.com/posts/58-setup-blog-and-
email-on-custom-domain-for-almost-free/)

~~~
mro_name
I also chose hugo a year ago with pretty much the same motivation, but
meanwhile I may even go with plain html plus some scripts creating tag and
overview list pages and no other tool at all.

I'm just sick of breaking updates.

Search and comments are radical: [https://blog.mro.name/2019/05/wp-to-hugo-
making-of/](https://blog.mro.name/2019/05/wp-to-hugo-making-of/)

~~~
6ak74rfy
Search, yes, and I need to spend an afternoon to get that working. (From what
little I've investigated so far, it seems like it'll be some work to get that
to work.)

------
dusted
Webrings are back :D Put your personal sites in a webring! :)

~~~
merlinscholz
Funny timing, I just blogged about webrings on my personal website a few days
ago: [https://merlinscholz.name/post/bring-back-the-old-
web/](https://merlinscholz.name/post/bring-back-the-old-web/)

~~~
searchableguy
I have seen few people with webrings on HN as of recent. Hard to tell if it's
gaining momentum or I am just lucky?

Example: I was reading
[https://www.jefftk.com/index](https://www.jefftk.com/index) yesterday which
also included webring.

~~~
jefftk
My site is also using Drev DeVault’s openring, which is a relatively new tool.

~~~
SamBam
Random question, since your site came up: what do your kids use to make their
personal pages? Thinking of doing something similar with my 7-year-old and
4-year-old this fall.

~~~
jefftk
They dictate and I type plain html + css. Sometimes they ask for complicated
things (like when Lily first wanted polka dots) and I look it up.

Lily's Inxed page and RSS feed are from a script I wrote that does it
manually:
[https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/lilyrs...](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/lilyrss.py)

I wrote about this some here: [https://www.jefftk.com/p/helping-the-kids-
post](https://www.jefftk.com/p/helping-the-kids-post)

~~~
searchableguy
I loved pony podcast lol.

------
lwigo
There was a huge push for "new coders" to start their own blogs about problems
they encounter and such, especially as part of the bootcamp that I was working
for. I wonder if that is still a thing.

~~~
thomascgalvin
I wonder if that's for resume padding? People post their blog entries to
LinkedIn as social proof of their skills pretty frequently.

~~~
kixiQu
Even though the technical skills I see explained are often quite basic, done
well it's valid proof of whether they can explain something in writing, which
comes up at my work a lot.

------
gilli
After reading that post, with the pink color background, and then hitting the
back button to come back here. Hacker News looked quite green for a few
seconds. It was an interesting experience.

~~~
lurquer
Holy crap! I thought my phone had messed up!

------
wonder_er
I love this.

I love finding out-of-the-way personal websites.

A while back I did my own implementation of "lets make hard-to-discover things
slightly more discoverable"

Every time you visit the website, you get a different personal website, as
submitted by hacker news users a while back:

[https://random-hn-blog.herokuapp.com/](https://random-hn-blog.herokuapp.com/)

------
kradeelav
I'm tangential to the indie comics scene and it's interesting seeing a
personal (not portfolio) site revival in those circles in the last six months,
particularly with NSFW artists getting booted from patreon/instagram/twitter.
Being able to host your own works on a place that'll never be taken down
according to whims of legislation is ... massively reassuring.

Set up a links page for a few of them, if anyone's curious in a personal site
scene that's different from tech:
[http://www.kradeelav.com/link.html](http://www.kradeelav.com/link.html)

------
djsumdog
There are a lot of good personal websites people are listing. A lot of them
probably only update once or twice a month. That's why it's so important to
use RSS!

[https://battlepenguin.com/tech/rss-the-original-federated-
so...](https://battlepenguin.com/tech/rss-the-original-federated-social-
network-protocol/)

Sure you can just go to HackerNews and see what people are submitting, but
what if you want to be the person who submits that amazing post for those
sweet sweet Internet points? Just use one RSS reader site and fill it with
EVERYTHING. Load random person OPML from Github, blogs and whateve.. and every
once in a while, scroll through the titles, see if anything is remotely
interesting, and if it turns out to be gold, put it on HN or your Mastodon
account or Lemmy or (barf) Reddit or whatever.

Not everyone is gonna have your mad RSS skills. Other people have real lives
and can barely digest what Twitter and Facebook feed them.

And by scrolling through stuff, you're not getting doused by those bullshit
algorithms. You're in control of how you view, sort and filter your feed (and
maybe use another RSS reader or one that supports profiles for the important
stuff).

------
tybulewicz
Site seems to be down, archive link:
[http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://cheapskatesguide.org/ar...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/personal-
website-hunting.html)

~~~
EGreg
Congratulations. The hunt is on!

And the game... is afoot.

~~~
082349872349872
Tally-ho! I actually get many personal sites with my web searches, but maybe
that's because they are both narrowly targeted and expressed in keyword form?

------
dgellow
I found this huge list of personal blogs some time ago, it's a great source in
case that's something you're looking for:
[https://blogs.sirodoht.com/](https://blogs.sirodoht.com/)

I don't know how sirodoht manages it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

------
technothrasher
I remember the good old days when personal websites ruled the web. I even
found mine listed in the Netscape daily "rants and raves" directory for
jokingly professing my undying love for Lindsay Wagner.

That listing led to a local newspaper reporter contacting me for a story about
people who had web pages. I had a nice big quote in the article about how this
new medium broke down the barriers to publishing and allowed all us common
people to have our own voice broadcast out without needing to play the big
publishers games or having to worry about the finances involved in publishing
content.

I suppose much of that is still alive today, though definitely yoked by the
social media companies' stranglehold on content publication by the masses.

~~~
II2II
> I had a nice big quote in the article about how this new medium broke down
> the barriers to publishing and allowed all us common people to have our own
> voice broadcast out without needing to play the big publishers games or
> having to worry about the finances involved in publishing content.

Many of us forgot that technical knowledge was a barrier to online publishing.
Even if you used a program that made website development as simple as using a
word processor, you still had to figure out how to secure space to host the
site and how to upload the site. Those applications simplified that as well,
yet all of those simplified steps still led to many books to guide people
through the process.

Yes, there were other factors at play. Social media and biased search engine
results were certainly part of the reason.

------
dstick
Did anyone else read this in David Attenborough's voice?

~~~
joshuaissac
The style of writing reminds me of the works of Fravia, who used similar
imagery in his searching guides.[1]

1\.
[http://biostatisticien.eu/www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm](http://biostatisticien.eu/www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm)

------
ehonda
wiby.me - a search engine for websites similar to what OP is looking for

~~~
ryantgtg
wiby.me appears to be a search engine for web pages, not websites. On their
submission form, if you are submitting a blog they ask that you submit link to
a specific post, and not the index. That was enough to dissuade me from
submitting my personal site. I guess I just don't get it.

~~~
ehonda
Yes its not everyone's cup of tea

------
spicyramen
In Latin America we had geocities in the 90s which made it very easy for
people to create their own website, then myspace arrived and as pointed out in
article,the herd started moving out there.

------
dddddaviddddd
I added a Tor hidden service version of my personal website after reading this
article, with the Onion-Location header for the regular version.

------
gavreh
Reminds me of an aggregator, [https://diff.blog](https://diff.blog)

------
troynabed
Someone should make a search engine that only indexes personal websites,
blogs, etc

------
ghoshbishakh
Microshaft

