10 ms·

Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website

244 points by sT370ma2 6y ago

gilli 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Holy crap! I thought my phone had messed up!
tybulewicz 6y ago
Site seems to be down, archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/personal-website-hunting.html http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://cheapskatesguide.org/ar...
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
  Oh, the irony.
- EGreg 6y ago
  Congratulations. The hunt is on! And the game... is afoot.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    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?
dusted 6y ago
Webrings are back :D Put your personal sites in a webring! :)
- merlinscholz 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
    - dusted 6y ago
      I don't know if they are, I think, a bit, the "old web" is actually huge, but getting into it takes some effort.. Sometimes, you find these hub-like sites, for example when browsing a webring (shameless plug geekring.net ), that leads deeper into some neocities commune or similar, it's great fun :)
    - jefftk 6y ago
      My site is also using Drev DeVault’s openring, which is a relatively new tool.
      - merlinscholz 6y ago
        Opening really is a godsend for starting a webring, especially in combination with some static site generator like Hugo.
      - SamBam 6y ago
        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.
        6y ago
text_exch 6y ago
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
- andeee23 6y ago
  Your link is not working, had to put www. in front. Seem nice though, I subscribed
  - text_exch 6y ago
    Thank you for letting me know. Fixed.
- overlordalex 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
    - iamericfletcher 6y ago
wonder_er 6y ago
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/
ehonda 6y ago
wiby.me - a search engine for websites similar to what OP is looking for
- ryantgtg 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Yes its not everyone's cup of tea
ghoshbishakh 6y ago
Microshaft
dstick 6y ago
Did anyone else read this in David Attenborough's voice?
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  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
kradeelav 6y ago
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
yobuko 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > 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-internet-chum/ https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
- sellyme 6y ago
  Honestly, sometimes the "junk" lists are fairly useful. They contain absolutely minimal content (because that would require work), but hit all of the necessary keywords for the subject matter. This turns out to allow extremely efficient lookup of a word or name you may have forgotten, whereas trying to find the information you're looking for in Britannica could require reading several pages of dry information before you end up seeing "Ninhursag" and realising that's what you were looking for. Just make sure your ad-blocker is working before clicking on them and it's all gravy.
spicyramen 6y ago
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.
dgellow 6y ago
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)_/¯.
lwigo 6y ago
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.
- jaybeeayyy 6y ago
  Our bootcamp didn't mention anything about a blog, just having a personal website as a portfolio like usual.
- thomascgalvin 6y ago
  I wonder if that's for resume padding? People post their blog entries to LinkedIn as social proof of their skills pretty frequently.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Partially but it could also serve as a "learn by teaching" theory concept, forcing them to clarify their understandings to pass it on.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kixiQu 6y ago
    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.
  - Kihashi 6y ago
    There's also value in having a beginner's perspective on stuff- What concepts weren't clear? Was there some documentation that was difficult for a beginner to grok? What helped the pieces fall into place? There's a school of thought w.r.t. project documentation that encourages beginners to write beginner focused documentation since the people who are experts on the project don't always have the perspective to effectively communicate to beginners.
lettergram 6y ago
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).
- isabelc 6y ago
  >I wish more people would do this (write and attempt to rank content), it’s what makes the internet revolutionary At first glance, I thought, "No, that's what broke the internet." Because I was thinking of all the spammy articles I find at the top of the search results. But I see what you mean. People with useful insight should try to rank their personal/niche content. First page of Google Search used to show me articles from personal websites 10+ years ago, not anymore.
- dheera 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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
gavreh 6y ago
Reminds me of an aggregator, https://diff.blog https://diff.blog
abruzzi 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
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-on-custom-domain-for-almost-free/ https://ketanvijayvargiya.com/posts/58-setup-blog-and-email-...
- mro_name 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.)
technothrasher 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > 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.
djsumdog 6y ago
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-social-network-protocol/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/rss-the-original-federated-so... 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).
dddddaviddddd 6y ago
I added a Tor hidden service version of my personal website after reading this article, with the Onion-Location header for the regular version.
troynabed 6y ago
Someone should make a search engine that only indexes personal websites, blogs, etc

244 points by sT370ma2 6y ago

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 6y ago
Holy crap! I thought my phone had messed up!

tybulewicz 6y ago

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

ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
Oh, the irony.
EGreg 6y ago
Congratulations. The hunt is on! And the game... is afoot.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  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?

dusted 6y ago

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

merlinscholz 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - dusted 6y ago
    I don't know if they are, I think, a bit, the "old web" is actually huge, but getting into it takes some effort.. Sometimes, you find these hub-like sites, for example when browsing a webring (shameless plug geekring.net ), that leads deeper into some neocities commune or similar, it's great fun :)
  - jefftk 6y ago
    My site is also using Drev DeVault’s openring, which is a relatively new tool.
    - merlinscholz 6y ago
      Opening really is a godsend for starting a webring, especially in combination with some static site generator like Hugo.
    - SamBam 6y ago
      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.
      - 6y ago

text_exch 6y ago

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

andeee23 6y ago
Your link is not working, had to put www. in front. Seem nice though, I subscribed
- text_exch 6y ago
  Thank you for letting me know. Fixed.
overlordalex 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - iamericfletcher 6y ago

wonder_er 6y ago

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/

ehonda 6y ago

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

ryantgtg 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Yes its not everyone's cup of tea

ghoshbishakh 6y ago

Microshaft

dstick 6y ago

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

joshuaissac 6y ago
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

kradeelav 6y ago

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

yobuko 6y ago

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 6y ago
> 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-internet-chum/ https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
sellyme 6y ago
Honestly, sometimes the "junk" lists are fairly useful. They contain absolutely minimal content (because that would require work), but hit all of the necessary keywords for the subject matter. This turns out to allow extremely efficient lookup of a word or name you may have forgotten, whereas trying to find the information you're looking for in Britannica could require reading several pages of dry information before you end up seeing "Ninhursag" and realising that's what you were looking for. Just make sure your ad-blocker is working before clicking on them and it's all gravy.

spicyramen 6y ago

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.

dgellow 6y ago

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)_/¯.

lwigo 6y ago

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.

jaybeeayyy 6y ago
Our bootcamp didn't mention anything about a blog, just having a personal website as a portfolio like usual.
thomascgalvin 6y ago
I wonder if that's for resume padding? People post their blog entries to LinkedIn as social proof of their skills pretty frequently.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Partially but it could also serve as a "learn by teaching" theory concept, forcing them to clarify their understandings to pass it on.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kixiQu 6y ago
  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.
- Kihashi 6y ago
  There's also value in having a beginner's perspective on stuff- What concepts weren't clear? Was there some documentation that was difficult for a beginner to grok? What helped the pieces fall into place? There's a school of thought w.r.t. project documentation that encourages beginners to write beginner focused documentation since the people who are experts on the project don't always have the perspective to effectively communicate to beginners.

lettergram 6y ago

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).

isabelc 6y ago
>I wish more people would do this (write and attempt to rank content), it’s what makes the internet revolutionary At first glance, I thought, "No, that's what broke the internet." Because I was thinking of all the spammy articles I find at the top of the search results. But I see what you mean. People with useful insight should try to rank their personal/niche content. First page of Google Search used to show me articles from personal websites 10+ years ago, not anymore.
dheera 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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

gavreh 6y ago

Reminds me of an aggregator, https://diff.blog https://diff.blog

abruzzi 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago

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-on-custom-domain-for-almost-free/ https://ketanvijayvargiya.com/posts/58-setup-blog-and-email-...

mro_name 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.)

technothrasher 6y ago

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 6y ago
> 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.

djsumdog 6y ago

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

dddddaviddddd 6y ago

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

troynabed 6y ago

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