Personal Websites

I feel bad for Tim Berners Lee (best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web) who has said that one thing he did not anticipate was how quickly the World Wide Web would become a marketplace.

Tim (who is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) reminds us that in those early days personal websites dominated.

But not everything on the web is commercial. Most blogs, including this one, is personal, or at least not commercial. Some personal websites have become "commercial." I'm not thinking of ones that may have some Google or Amazon ads. I'm thinking of ones that contain personal thoughts and images but are also "selling" the owner as a brand.

This website is my personal website, but it does work to sell me. It is part of my web design business because it acts as an example of using a free site like Blogger for your website.

Blogs work as websites because when you are consistently publishing on a blog you are likely to attract attention on social media and search engines and gain followers.

How often is consistent? I have read that commercial blogs that publish more than 16 posts per month get more than three times the traffic of blogs that published less than 4 posts per month. So, that's a recommendation of about every other day or 4 times per week.


This is Melanie Daveid's portfolio features a selection of imagery from her best campaigns and apps. Is it personal? yes. But it's also commercial as it sells her, though not any actual product.
blog.hubspot.com has some best personal website samples and some best practices for personal, as in portfolio, websites. For example, using lots of visuals (even if your brand includes written work) including logos and other branding.

A personal site should be personal - i.e. it should show viewers your personality, style, maybe even your sense of humor, if that is part of what you are selling.

Simplicity should reign when it comes to organization. A main menu with just a few categories that perhaps subdivide into more granular pages after visitors land on the main page is a good navigation plan.


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