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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

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anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date.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

wccrawford 8y ago
I actually feel the opposite. People do seem to be interested in the stuff I do, but the idea of creating a blog to brag about it is pretty horrifying to me. Instead, I just send pictures of the stuff to those closest to me via SMS or other social networks, and call it a day. I don't need the whole world to know about my personal interests. If I decide to try to make money from any of those hobbies, then I would start a blog or portfolio for that, but that'd be business, not personal.
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
So true. The vast majority of the web must surely be out of date, uninteresting, and not worth keeping.
darekkay 8y ago
> 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.
- bloopernova 8y ago
  > My goal was to contribute back the same way. YES! So much of our computing-related triumphs come from documentation that other people wrote. Even super basic stuff that no senior developer or sysadmin would dream of asking, that stuff still needs to be written down by someone. I have a dozen or so Markdown documents of varying sizes that I need to finish, proof and polish before putting them online. I sorely lacking in motivation (and sleep)
  - bluehatbrit 8y ago
    Release the documents first, then finish or polish them. If you get bored with them, someone else might want to finish them off or extend them. But unless you publish them, they're only benefiting you. You might also find more motivation if they're already out there.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    My quotes file recently reached 1MB of plain text, 160,257 words. I started this file 17 years ago! This is enough to fill three average sized novels! One day... I might have a go at weaving a narrative through it.
    - 8y ago
Phenix88be 8y ago
Most of my website is my personal documentation. I write on my blog because I want to save something or archiving stuff. I don't write for anyone, or because I think I'm an interesting person. If it help someone, good, but the main purpose is to help myself. I don't really write a lot and I don't think I should write on regular basis. I just write when I need it. Of course you might not feel the need of doing that, but having that tool helped me a lot personnaly and professionnaly.
RandomInteger4 8y ago
You should be more positive about yourself. You're interesting. I believe in you.
brightball 8y ago
I just enjoy writing and when a topic is really on my mind it gives me an outlet. I honestly never thought anyone would read half the stuff I write but several things have made it here for big discussions. It was pretty fun and encouraging so I kept doing it.
basetop 8y ago
Rather than a personal website, I think having an "nonpersonal" website ( or domain ) in order to learn and play around with technologies like ( web server, database, dns, networking, etc ) is better. Though I guess you could do all that locally within your own intranet.
usgroup 8y ago
At a contrast: I think lots of people have he problem that regardless of how interesting they are in the grand scheme, they are more interesting then they seem. So a blog becomes a good way to expose that. If you think yourself less interesting than you seem, then perhaps being less known and is a better option :)
rgoulter 8y ago
Fair points. That said, I wonder if the things I find interesting, smart, or well articulated are thought of that way by the author. If the author knows it and I don't, maybe the author thinks it's obvious where I find it surprising.
morganvachon 8y ago
> 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. My wife and I are fairly boring people. I'm a sysadmin and fill-in sales rep at work, she works for the local government. Our hobbies are run of the mill; she reads and reviews the books she's read, I tinker with embedded computing projects and niche operating systems, and in the past have written (but not published) short fiction. She maintains a review blog she started a few years ago when she wanted to connect better with the authors and fellow reviewers she was in contact with on Facebook and Twitter. It has taken off as far as such sites can, and while it takes up a ton of her free time after work and on weekends, we balance with time together as well. She makes absolutely no money from it (she hates the idea of ads on her site) and honestly I agree with her; she would feel like it was a second job if she tried to monetize it. Still, she does it because she enjoys the back-and-forth she gets with authors, and she often gets to meet some of her personal heroes in real life at conventions and release parties. I'd say having a personal website has helped her feel fulfilled outside of a boring day job and I'm all for it, even though it means less time spent doing things together. It makes that time together even more precious and fulfilling. Oh, and as for me...I did start a writing blog several years ago but writing fell to the wayside and I haven't posted anything in a couple of years. I've thought about ditching that altogether and blogging about embedded projects instead, but I have more fun doing the hobby itself than I would writing about it. I'm not a very social person and I don't have any social media accounts (unless this site and my sporadic activity on OSNews counts), and overall I feel I'm a pretty boring guy outside of niche circles. I'm also not job hunting nor am I in a hiring role at work, so I don't feel the need for my info to be out there.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  These are not run of the mill hobbies.
- cirgue 8y ago
  I would be stoked to read about your projects with embedded systems or your unpublished short stories. Hell, even if they suck, that’s more authentic and more interesting than 99% of the internet right now.
samcday 8y ago
> I'm not that interesting I disagree. Your thoughts on this topic have gone to the top of HN. To me, that implies you're interesting enough to be able to write thoughtful pieces that a bunch of other online armchair commentators agree with and upvote :) Don't sell yourself short, friend!
- danaris 8y ago
  Being able to write an interesting comment in response to a particular topic that frustrates you is not at all the same thing as having spontaneous interesting thoughts about enough topics to make a personal website/blog about it.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    Plenty of blogs are nothing but interesting comments on topics that frustrate the author. Even some of the most well known writings in computer science are just that, like the short article by some guy frustrated with everyone using goto instead of functions/while/for/etc (the article that inspired countless "... considered harmful" headlines).
    - danaris 8y ago
      I agree—and some of the RSS feeds I follow are in fact almost entirely that. However, there's also a big difference between leaving a comment/reply on an existing discussion site about a particular frustrating topic, and posting it on a personal blog that doesn't have a significant readership. Sure, maybe someday it'll gain such a readership—but until and unless it does, everything you post tends to feel like masturbatory shouting into the void. And while some people may like that, I suppose, I certainly wouldn't. (Which is why, despite thinking about it several times and having my own domain running a web server, I've never actually put anything you could reasonably call a "personal web site" there.)
lettergram 8y ago
I recently wrote a blog about “Dutch Oven Fried Chicken”[1], I don’t think it’s particularly interesting and anyone can do it. However, now I can send a link to a friend and go back and make the recipe myself. Blogging for me isn’t about popularity. It’s about being able to share ones ideas and document your interests. I send links to my blog all the time, because I wrote about topics I found challenging / fun. I don’t think it’s the best, but it is my own thoughts. Speaking of which... I’ve written about learning through storytelling[2] and blogging[3]. [1] https://austingwalters.com/dutch-oven-fried-chicken/ https://austingwalters.com/dutch-oven-fried-chicken/ [2] https://austingwalters.com/how-storytelling-effects-learning/ https://austingwalters.com/how-storytelling-effects-learning... [3] https://austingwalters.com/learning-through-blogging/ https://austingwalters.com/learning-through-blogging/
- eitland 8y ago
  > I don’t think it’s particularly interesting and anyone can do it. However, now I can send a link to a friend and go back and make the recipe myself. I used to have a blog or two back in the day and two things I noted back then was: 1. If I figured something out that I hadn't found a solution to elsewhere on the net people would find their way to my site. No further SEO necessary. (I don't know if this would work anymore.) 2. Sometimes I would Google [0] a weird problem and find my own page. [0]: yep, that's what I did until three years ago or so) Edit: FTR I never made any money on this. It wasn't that popular. Also I recently started writing again at https://erik.itland.no https://erik.itland.no just to contribute some stupid posts like those you'd find on the old web I used to like. Hopefully I can start adding some links to stuff I like to read as well, and deliberately not add any dum nofollow or other stupid CEO. My wesite, not Googles :-] Edit 2: Could we have a tread were everyone who wants posts their imperfect personal web sites? Or has there been one and I have missed it?
  - Intermernet 8y ago
    You're actually touching on the reason why SEO is an anti-pattern for society. Search engines (ideally) eventually find the best source of information for a query. SEO artificially skews these results.
Veen 8y ago
This is a well-written comment from an interesting point of view. That's all you need to write a blog article. If there are things you'd rather be doing than writing a blog, do them instead, but a blog doesn't have to be an exercise in personal branding. It can just be a place where you publish your thoughts and the things you've learned.
- onion2k 8y ago
  This is a well-written comment from an interesting point of view. That's all you need to write a blog article. Writing HN comments is much easier than writing blog posts because the inspiration is the story that's been linked to; for a blog post you don't have that starting point, you just have a blank page. That's a heck of a barrier for most people when they're starting out.
  - all2 8y ago
    I've considered rolling comments I've made here into blog posts. I'm not sure if that's a fox paws[0], though. [0] I know. I did it on purpose.
    - onion2k 8y ago
      Jokes are like code. If you have to explain then it's probably not very good. ;)
      - all2 8y ago
        I take great joy in awful jokes and puns. For some reason they make me very happy.
    - yitianjian 8y ago
      If it's insightful/interesting - why not? It's incredibly hard to search HN comments via search engines too, but I've definitely come across comments that just made me stop and think.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
For what it’s worth, I think this comment would make a great single page personal website.
Carpetsmoker 8y ago
I don't think writing is just about communicating things to other people. It's also communicating things to yourself. I think the greatest value in writing things down is to order and articulate your own thoughts. Certainly in my own case, I never finish a large chunk of articles I start to write simply because during the research I find out I was wrong, or that things are more complex than I thought and I'm no longer sure I'm right. See my personal website for a post I wrote about that :-) https://arp242.net/weblog/why-write.html https://arp242.net/weblog/why-write.html An additional reason is that publishing your thoughts also means people can point out flaws or points you hadn't considered. Maintaining a website is just one way of doing that of course (commenting here is another), but I find it's a pretty effective way.
- FerretFred 8y ago
  > It's also communicating things to yourself. Yeah! And remember to back it up. I had a blog in the early days when it was all new, and bitterly regret not backing it up properly - 5 years of content gone.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    I handle my websites in a way that provide automatic backups -- I keep complete mirrors on my own machines that are already part of a backup regime. I make changes to the mirrors, and then upload the changes from there to the public sites. That way, I always have an offline copy without having to remember to make one specifically.
  - kalid 8y ago
    Have you checked archive.org for a backup? It's saved me a few times.
    - FerretFred 8y ago
      No, I wrote the blog software myself and all the content was stored in a MySQL database on my rented host. I thought I'd backed it up, but hadn't. It's the usual story of "it isn't a backup until you've tested it".
lazyjones 8y ago
> and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. That, or you might feel pressurized into finding some interesting hobbies or pastimes. The horror!
nkrisc 8y ago
I used to feel the same way as you, but then I decided I didn't care if I was interesting or not (I'm not). So I made myself a website. I only update it a handful of times a year when I have something that I'm excited enough to write about. I choose a dead simple design that would be timeless and never need updating.[0] Turns out a few things I've written about have actually been very helpful and useful to a handful of other people in the world, and they even emailed me to thank me for sharing it! That was pleasant. I'm not looking to be famous or popular, but it felt good knowing that something I had done helped a few other people out. [0] My styles are based on this: https://github.com/programble/writ https://github.com/programble/writ It's basically Web 1.0 but made to look nice and read well on large screens. I'm a UX designer in my professional life but the last thing I wanted was a slick, trendy, bloated site. My site is completely static and loads blazingly fast. The CSS is simple too so it should play nice with user-agent styles too.
- ptx 8y ago
  > I'm a UX designer in my professional life but ... My site is completely static and loads blazingly fast. Isn't that good UX design? Or are fast-loading sites a taboo in the UX field?
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    > Isn't that good UX design? It certainly is! > Or are fast-loading sites a taboo in the UX field? Tragically overlooked.
telaport 8y ago
I may not know who you are, but after reading this post I know that I would definitely never want to hire you. So there's that.
- sctb 8y ago
  Please don't be rude and mean. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
MIKarlsen 8y ago
You should make a personal website, and just copy-paste this post onto it. Would be a bold statement!
flyingdoggo 8y ago
To be fair, this comment would make a pretty good blog post
base698 8y ago
> 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. https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/ https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-peo... Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
gricardo99 8y ago
You should take this comment and use it as your personal web page. It shows how grounded you are and how much you know yourself and can recognize your own limitations. It’s a breath of fresh air where there does seem to be a lot of pomp and over selling.
dwheeler 8y ago
> 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. I think it's a good idea to have a personal web site. If someone wants to find out more about you, they have a chance of hearing your side of the story: what's interesting to you, what you've shared with the world, and so on. If you only post on Facebook, Twitter, etc., then when those sites disappear or change their terms of service your information doesn't disappear. Do you want those companies in complete control of what others learn about you, or do you want to have some control? There are many former powerhouses of social interaction that have since disappeared, including MySpace, AOL, Google+. But if you own your own web site, you decide if it will remain available, not someone else, and what it will say. You don't need to be "interesting". Everyone is probably interesting to someone anyway, and I think that's the wrong thing to strive for. Instead, think of things that you could share that might be useful to someone else, and share them. If you've helped someone else, then you've provided value to the world, and that's all anyone can ask for. There's no requirement that you keep everything "up to date". Put a date on what you release, modify it if you update, and that's that. If it was released 20 years ago, it'll make the time clear. And really old stuff can still be really useful. I just Googled myself, and my home page returns the top rank to me. Sure, it might not to others, but clearly it's possible to be easily findable even with a somewhat common name. Regarding "enough interesting content"... you don't need to have a lot of interesting content. Post at least one thing that you believe helps at least one other person. Now your site has value to someone else. To me, that's enough.
- thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
  These are all great arguments but they're also contingent on Google. If google doesn't show your website to people when they search for you, then they won't find it.
madhadron 8y ago
> go out of date Pause for a moment on this one. Why would it go out of date? The oldest content currently listed on the front page of my website is from 2005. What is in it has not gone out of date in the slightest. In fact, nothing from the intervening fourteen years has gone out of date. I could probably dig back through archive.org and pick out some more from sites I had back in the 1990's that would still be perfectly good, up to date content today. If what you're writing is substantive, not gossip, there is no reason to think about it going out of date. Just don't wrap it in a blog format where the structure of the site makes it look like it's going out of date.
- insulanus 8y ago
  Maybe they mean things like commands to install software, command line arguments, dead URLs. Things like that change.
purplezooey 8y ago
I have an exceedingly common first and last name As you implied, that's kind of like a secret weapon. No bored middle manager can Google you and not hire you because they didn't like the wording of a DIY forum post about your plumbing 9 years ago.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  I agree! My real name is exceedingly common as well, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It makes me essentially ungoogle-able.
nine_k 8y ago
I keep my own simple static web site in order to host my resume. It is by far the most important page, and, at times, the most visited.
ta1234567890 8y ago
> 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. There was a writer (sorry, forgot who), that used to say: it's not that your life is not interesting, it's that you don't have a good storyteller to tell it. Good storytellers can spin up a great story out of seemingly very boring facts. It's just the way you tell it. Most youtubers/streamers/influencers are not really saying anything particularly cool or interesting, but they know how to tell it to their audience. It's very similar to marketing/product. You need a decent product to sell, but most of the success will come from being able to properly market it, not from how good the product is. In this case, you and your experiences are the product, the stories about them and how to tell them are the marketing. You can definitely learn how to tell better stories. One last analogy, you know when someone tells a joke and it's just not funny at all? Then your hear someone else tell exactly the same joke, but now it's actually really funny? The difference is not the joke, but they way they tell it.
hotcrossbunny 8y ago
I'm going to opine that you probably are a lot more interesting than might think. Granted that most people's lives don't serialise down well into a regular stream of weekly episodes. If one can put aside the requirement to "be someone" on the internet, I think maintaining a personal site can be a really great form of self expression, albeit with a few provisos.
VLM 8y ago
Decades ago I never really understood how to use VI editor or how ATM AAL5 worked or how SSH authorized keys worked until I wrote it down and tried to teach a coworker. Ditto Kerberos, SSL, AFS, LDAP, BGP route priority list, DNS glue records, lisp lambda functions ... For topics I'm an expert at, or at least an old timer, I'm well aware I'm worse at teaching those topics than someone who more recently learned and I wouldn't even bother trying to document or teach that stuff. Find your edge, push a bit beyond it, chmod a+r your notebook, more or less.
silexia 8y ago
I have run joelx.com for 12 years now and have thousands of posts. As social media sites have come and gone, this site has remained. I sometimes will copy and paste a social media post onto my site or vice versa. I think when you have all your ideas and memories in one place, it becomes very powerful. I like to take a trip down memory lane once in a while and see what I was thinking or working on a decade ago.
Hmaal 7y ago
I came here unknowingly to hear this. I am you. Thank you for this.

wccrawford 8y ago

I actually feel the opposite. People do seem to be interested in the stuff I do, but the idea of creating a blog to brag about it is pretty horrifying to me. Instead, I just send pictures of the stuff to those closest to me via SMS or other social networks, and call it a day. I don't need the whole world to know about my personal interests. If I decide to try to make money from any of those hobbies, then I would start a blog or portfolio for that, but that'd be business, not personal.

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago

So true. The vast majority of the web must surely be out of date, uninteresting, and not worth keeping.

darekkay 8y ago

> 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.

bloopernova 8y ago
> My goal was to contribute back the same way. YES! So much of our computing-related triumphs come from documentation that other people wrote. Even super basic stuff that no senior developer or sysadmin would dream of asking, that stuff still needs to be written down by someone. I have a dozen or so Markdown documents of varying sizes that I need to finish, proof and polish before putting them online. I sorely lacking in motivation (and sleep)
- bluehatbrit 8y ago
  Release the documents first, then finish or polish them. If you get bored with them, someone else might want to finish them off or extend them. But unless you publish them, they're only benefiting you. You might also find more motivation if they're already out there.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  My quotes file recently reached 1MB of plain text, 160,257 words. I started this file 17 years ago! This is enough to fill three average sized novels! One day... I might have a go at weaving a narrative through it.
  - 8y ago

Phenix88be 8y ago

Most of my website is my personal documentation. I write on my blog because I want to save something or archiving stuff. I don't write for anyone, or because I think I'm an interesting person. If it help someone, good, but the main purpose is to help myself. I don't really write a lot and I don't think I should write on regular basis. I just write when I need it. Of course you might not feel the need of doing that, but having that tool helped me a lot personnaly and professionnaly.

RandomInteger4 8y ago

You should be more positive about yourself. You're interesting. I believe in you.

brightball 8y ago

I just enjoy writing and when a topic is really on my mind it gives me an outlet. I honestly never thought anyone would read half the stuff I write but several things have made it here for big discussions. It was pretty fun and encouraging so I kept doing it.

basetop 8y ago

Rather than a personal website, I think having an "nonpersonal" website ( or domain ) in order to learn and play around with technologies like ( web server, database, dns, networking, etc ) is better. Though I guess you could do all that locally within your own intranet.

usgroup 8y ago

At a contrast: I think lots of people have he problem that regardless of how interesting they are in the grand scheme, they are more interesting then they seem. So a blog becomes a good way to expose that. If you think yourself less interesting than you seem, then perhaps being less known and is a better option :)

rgoulter 8y ago

Fair points. That said, I wonder if the things I find interesting, smart, or well articulated are thought of that way by the author. If the author knows it and I don't, maybe the author thinks it's obvious where I find it surprising.

morganvachon 8y ago

> 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. My wife and I are fairly boring people. I'm a sysadmin and fill-in sales rep at work, she works for the local government. Our hobbies are run of the mill; she reads and reviews the books she's read, I tinker with embedded computing projects and niche operating systems, and in the past have written (but not published) short fiction. She maintains a review blog she started a few years ago when she wanted to connect better with the authors and fellow reviewers she was in contact with on Facebook and Twitter. It has taken off as far as such sites can, and while it takes up a ton of her free time after work and on weekends, we balance with time together as well. She makes absolutely no money from it (she hates the idea of ads on her site) and honestly I agree with her; she would feel like it was a second job if she tried to monetize it. Still, she does it because she enjoys the back-and-forth she gets with authors, and she often gets to meet some of her personal heroes in real life at conventions and release parties. I'd say having a personal website has helped her feel fulfilled outside of a boring day job and I'm all for it, even though it means less time spent doing things together. It makes that time together even more precious and fulfilling. Oh, and as for me...I did start a writing blog several years ago but writing fell to the wayside and I haven't posted anything in a couple of years. I've thought about ditching that altogether and blogging about embedded projects instead, but I have more fun doing the hobby itself than I would writing about it. I'm not a very social person and I don't have any social media accounts (unless this site and my sporadic activity on OSNews counts), and overall I feel I'm a pretty boring guy outside of niche circles. I'm also not job hunting nor am I in a hiring role at work, so I don't feel the need for my info to be out there.

chrisseaton 8y ago
These are not run of the mill hobbies.
cirgue 8y ago
I would be stoked to read about your projects with embedded systems or your unpublished short stories. Hell, even if they suck, that’s more authentic and more interesting than 99% of the internet right now.

samcday 8y ago

> I'm not that interesting I disagree. Your thoughts on this topic have gone to the top of HN. To me, that implies you're interesting enough to be able to write thoughtful pieces that a bunch of other online armchair commentators agree with and upvote :) Don't sell yourself short, friend!

danaris 8y ago
Being able to write an interesting comment in response to a particular topic that frustrates you is not at all the same thing as having spontaneous interesting thoughts about enough topics to make a personal website/blog about it.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  Plenty of blogs are nothing but interesting comments on topics that frustrate the author. Even some of the most well known writings in computer science are just that, like the short article by some guy frustrated with everyone using goto instead of functions/while/for/etc (the article that inspired countless "... considered harmful" headlines).
  - danaris 8y ago
    I agree—and some of the RSS feeds I follow are in fact almost entirely that. However, there's also a big difference between leaving a comment/reply on an existing discussion site about a particular frustrating topic, and posting it on a personal blog that doesn't have a significant readership. Sure, maybe someday it'll gain such a readership—but until and unless it does, everything you post tends to feel like masturbatory shouting into the void. And while some people may like that, I suppose, I certainly wouldn't. (Which is why, despite thinking about it several times and having my own domain running a web server, I've never actually put anything you could reasonably call a "personal web site" there.)

lettergram 8y ago

I recently wrote a blog about “Dutch Oven Fried Chicken”[1], I don’t think it’s particularly interesting and anyone can do it. However, now I can send a link to a friend and go back and make the recipe myself. Blogging for me isn’t about popularity. It’s about being able to share ones ideas and document your interests. I send links to my blog all the time, because I wrote about topics I found challenging / fun. I don’t think it’s the best, but it is my own thoughts. Speaking of which... I’ve written about learning through storytelling[2] and blogging[3]. [1] https://austingwalters.com/dutch-oven-fried-chicken/ https://austingwalters.com/dutch-oven-fried-chicken/ [2] https://austingwalters.com/how-storytelling-effects-learning/ https://austingwalters.com/how-storytelling-effects-learning... [3] https://austingwalters.com/learning-through-blogging/ https://austingwalters.com/learning-through-blogging/

eitland 8y ago
> I don’t think it’s particularly interesting and anyone can do it. However, now I can send a link to a friend and go back and make the recipe myself. I used to have a blog or two back in the day and two things I noted back then was: 1. If I figured something out that I hadn't found a solution to elsewhere on the net people would find their way to my site. No further SEO necessary. (I don't know if this would work anymore.) 2. Sometimes I would Google [0] a weird problem and find my own page. [0]: yep, that's what I did until three years ago or so) Edit: FTR I never made any money on this. It wasn't that popular. Also I recently started writing again at https://erik.itland.no https://erik.itland.no just to contribute some stupid posts like those you'd find on the old web I used to like. Hopefully I can start adding some links to stuff I like to read as well, and deliberately not add any dum nofollow or other stupid CEO. My wesite, not Googles :-] Edit 2: Could we have a tread were everyone who wants posts their imperfect personal web sites? Or has there been one and I have missed it?
- Intermernet 8y ago
  You're actually touching on the reason why SEO is an anti-pattern for society. Search engines (ideally) eventually find the best source of information for a query. SEO artificially skews these results.

Veen 8y ago

This is a well-written comment from an interesting point of view. That's all you need to write a blog article. If there are things you'd rather be doing than writing a blog, do them instead, but a blog doesn't have to be an exercise in personal branding. It can just be a place where you publish your thoughts and the things you've learned.

onion2k 8y ago
This is a well-written comment from an interesting point of view. That's all you need to write a blog article. Writing HN comments is much easier than writing blog posts because the inspiration is the story that's been linked to; for a blog post you don't have that starting point, you just have a blank page. That's a heck of a barrier for most people when they're starting out.
- all2 8y ago
  I've considered rolling comments I've made here into blog posts. I'm not sure if that's a fox paws[0], though. [0] I know. I did it on purpose.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Jokes are like code. If you have to explain then it's probably not very good. ;)
    - all2 8y ago
      I take great joy in awful jokes and puns. For some reason they make me very happy.
  - yitianjian 8y ago
    If it's insightful/interesting - why not? It's incredibly hard to search HN comments via search engines too, but I've definitely come across comments that just made me stop and think.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

For what it’s worth, I think this comment would make a great single page personal website.

Carpetsmoker 8y ago

I don't think writing is just about communicating things to other people. It's also communicating things to yourself. I think the greatest value in writing things down is to order and articulate your own thoughts. Certainly in my own case, I never finish a large chunk of articles I start to write simply because during the research I find out I was wrong, or that things are more complex than I thought and I'm no longer sure I'm right. See my personal website for a post I wrote about that :-) https://arp242.net/weblog/why-write.html https://arp242.net/weblog/why-write.html An additional reason is that publishing your thoughts also means people can point out flaws or points you hadn't considered. Maintaining a website is just one way of doing that of course (commenting here is another), but I find it's a pretty effective way.

FerretFred 8y ago
> It's also communicating things to yourself. Yeah! And remember to back it up. I had a blog in the early days when it was all new, and bitterly regret not backing it up properly - 5 years of content gone.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  I handle my websites in a way that provide automatic backups -- I keep complete mirrors on my own machines that are already part of a backup regime. I make changes to the mirrors, and then upload the changes from there to the public sites. That way, I always have an offline copy without having to remember to make one specifically.
- kalid 8y ago
  Have you checked archive.org for a backup? It's saved me a few times.
  - FerretFred 8y ago
    No, I wrote the blog software myself and all the content was stored in a MySQL database on my rented host. I thought I'd backed it up, but hadn't. It's the usual story of "it isn't a backup until you've tested it".

lazyjones 8y ago

> and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. That, or you might feel pressurized into finding some interesting hobbies or pastimes. The horror!

nkrisc 8y ago

I used to feel the same way as you, but then I decided I didn't care if I was interesting or not (I'm not). So I made myself a website. I only update it a handful of times a year when I have something that I'm excited enough to write about. I choose a dead simple design that would be timeless and never need updating.[0] Turns out a few things I've written about have actually been very helpful and useful to a handful of other people in the world, and they even emailed me to thank me for sharing it! That was pleasant. I'm not looking to be famous or popular, but it felt good knowing that something I had done helped a few other people out. [0] My styles are based on this: https://github.com/programble/writ https://github.com/programble/writ It's basically Web 1.0 but made to look nice and read well on large screens. I'm a UX designer in my professional life but the last thing I wanted was a slick, trendy, bloated site. My site is completely static and loads blazingly fast. The CSS is simple too so it should play nice with user-agent styles too.

ptx 8y ago
> I'm a UX designer in my professional life but ... My site is completely static and loads blazingly fast. Isn't that good UX design? Or are fast-loading sites a taboo in the UX field?
- nkrisc 8y ago
  > Isn't that good UX design? It certainly is! > Or are fast-loading sites a taboo in the UX field? Tragically overlooked.

telaport 8y ago

I may not know who you are, but after reading this post I know that I would definitely never want to hire you. So there's that.

sctb 8y ago
Please don't be rude and mean. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

MIKarlsen 8y ago

You should make a personal website, and just copy-paste this post onto it. Would be a bold statement!

flyingdoggo 8y ago

To be fair, this comment would make a pretty good blog post

base698 8y ago

> 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. https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/ https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-peo... Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

gricardo99 8y ago

You should take this comment and use it as your personal web page. It shows how grounded you are and how much you know yourself and can recognize your own limitations. It’s a breath of fresh air where there does seem to be a lot of pomp and over selling.

dwheeler 8y ago

> 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. I think it's a good idea to have a personal web site. If someone wants to find out more about you, they have a chance of hearing your side of the story: what's interesting to you, what you've shared with the world, and so on. If you only post on Facebook, Twitter, etc., then when those sites disappear or change their terms of service your information doesn't disappear. Do you want those companies in complete control of what others learn about you, or do you want to have some control? There are many former powerhouses of social interaction that have since disappeared, including MySpace, AOL, Google+. But if you own your own web site, you decide if it will remain available, not someone else, and what it will say. You don't need to be "interesting". Everyone is probably interesting to someone anyway, and I think that's the wrong thing to strive for. Instead, think of things that you could share that might be useful to someone else, and share them. If you've helped someone else, then you've provided value to the world, and that's all anyone can ask for. There's no requirement that you keep everything "up to date". Put a date on what you release, modify it if you update, and that's that. If it was released 20 years ago, it'll make the time clear. And really old stuff can still be really useful. I just Googled myself, and my home page returns the top rank to me. Sure, it might not to others, but clearly it's possible to be easily findable even with a somewhat common name. Regarding "enough interesting content"... you don't need to have a lot of interesting content. Post at least one thing that you believe helps at least one other person. Now your site has value to someone else. To me, that's enough.

thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
These are all great arguments but they're also contingent on Google. If google doesn't show your website to people when they search for you, then they won't find it.

madhadron 8y ago

> go out of date Pause for a moment on this one. Why would it go out of date? The oldest content currently listed on the front page of my website is from 2005. What is in it has not gone out of date in the slightest. In fact, nothing from the intervening fourteen years has gone out of date. I could probably dig back through archive.org and pick out some more from sites I had back in the 1990's that would still be perfectly good, up to date content today. If what you're writing is substantive, not gossip, there is no reason to think about it going out of date. Just don't wrap it in a blog format where the structure of the site makes it look like it's going out of date.

insulanus 8y ago
Maybe they mean things like commands to install software, command line arguments, dead URLs. Things like that change.

purplezooey 8y ago

I have an exceedingly common first and last name As you implied, that's kind of like a secret weapon. No bored middle manager can Google you and not hire you because they didn't like the wording of a DIY forum post about your plumbing 9 years ago.

JohnFen 8y ago
I agree! My real name is exceedingly common as well, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It makes me essentially ungoogle-able.

nine_k 8y ago

I keep my own simple static web site in order to host my resume. It is by far the most important page, and, at times, the most visited.

ta1234567890 8y ago

> 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. There was a writer (sorry, forgot who), that used to say: it's not that your life is not interesting, it's that you don't have a good storyteller to tell it. Good storytellers can spin up a great story out of seemingly very boring facts. It's just the way you tell it. Most youtubers/streamers/influencers are not really saying anything particularly cool or interesting, but they know how to tell it to their audience. It's very similar to marketing/product. You need a decent product to sell, but most of the success will come from being able to properly market it, not from how good the product is. In this case, you and your experiences are the product, the stories about them and how to tell them are the marketing. You can definitely learn how to tell better stories. One last analogy, you know when someone tells a joke and it's just not funny at all? Then your hear someone else tell exactly the same joke, but now it's actually really funny? The difference is not the joke, but they way they tell it.

hotcrossbunny 8y ago

I'm going to opine that you probably are a lot more interesting than might think. Granted that most people's lives don't serialise down well into a regular stream of weekly episodes. If one can put aside the requirement to "be someone" on the internet, I think maintaining a personal site can be a really great form of self expression, albeit with a few provisos.

VLM 8y ago

Decades ago I never really understood how to use VI editor or how ATM AAL5 worked or how SSH authorized keys worked until I wrote it down and tried to teach a coworker. Ditto Kerberos, SSL, AFS, LDAP, BGP route priority list, DNS glue records, lisp lambda functions ... For topics I'm an expert at, or at least an old timer, I'm well aware I'm worse at teaching those topics than someone who more recently learned and I wouldn't even bother trying to document or teach that stuff. Find your edge, push a bit beyond it, chmod a+r your notebook, more or less.

silexia 8y ago

I have run joelx.com for 12 years now and have thousands of posts. As social media sites have come and gone, this site has remained. I sometimes will copy and paste a social media post onto my site or vice versa. I think when you have all your ideas and memories in one place, it becomes very powerful. I like to take a trip down memory lane once in a while and see what I was thinking or working on a decade ago.

Hmaal 7y ago

I came here unknowingly to hear this. I am you. Thank you for this.