Everyone Needs a Personal Website | Hacker News Reader

Everyone Needs a Personal Website

diiulio.org

21 pointsghostDancer21 comments

May I humbly recommend another option:

EDIT: shameless plug. http://kelukelu.me/ Though being Asian, I don't think I will ever get on the first page of a google search result for my name.

Well one of the main points of the article is that you should have your own website so your content isn't hosted on another service that could censor what you write. Given the whole 'retard' fiasco at GitHub, I don't think it would be the best place to host things

Paying for Ghost for hosting means you can be censored too...

I think since the premise of the author's article is that everyone should have a place where they can take more deliberate care of their online presence, it's pretty reasonable to infer that it goes without saying that one shouldn't use pejoratives like "retard" except in cases where the word itself is under discussion (like critiquing the use of the word in society, as we're doing now). Even still, I'd consider that a pretty hazardous topic to write about unless I were a linguist or in some field that made it appropriate to discuss it intellectually.

Admittedly, it's not clear whether GitHub would take down such a repository/site, but my hunch is that when it's deliberate and not casually thrown around, people wouldn't have as much footing to complain about a charged word. That being said, I'm not willing to test it, which says your point has merit just by virtue of a chilling effect.

Nevertheless, a sibling comment mentions using S3, which (I think) would be less likely to get taken down (although I've never heard of Amazon outright refusing to take down such content, so maybe the request simply hasn't happened yet).

>>> Admittedly, it's not clear whether GitHub would take down such a repository/site, but my hunch is that when it's deliberate and not casually thrown around, people wouldn't have as much footing to complain about a charged word.

The point is, it's not your website if some moderator somewhere can search-replace your content, probably without you knowing.

>>> use pejoratives like "retard"

Retard should not be a pejorative. It is a medical term.

>Wait, retard is a pejorative now?

It's fairly well-documented[0], and the GitHub incident in particular has been discussed on HN at length[1]. I think I gave the exclusion that if you're talking about it in a context that's socially acceptable (e.g. critiquing the use of the word, or as you point out discussing it medically), then I imagine that's fine (but I don't know, and I'm not about to test GitHub on how readily they'd censor content in a gray area).

This point about whether a site is yours or not is a red herring. For the purposes of technicality, you could argue that you don't really own your online presence unless you own the servers and the service providing access (per example: Wikileaks used Amazon's S3 service until AWS dropped them[2]). For the purposes of this discussion, however, it suffices to say that you "own" your online presence if your front page (absent a personal site, your profile pages on social networking sites) is determined by you rather than potentially influenced by friends (e.g. tagging you in a photo at a party).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard_(pejorative)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

[2]: https://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/

What is the "retard" fiasco?

S3 is another option

Is it easy to set up? One of my non-tech friends tried it and gave up.

I'm using the exact same combination for my website (http://r3bl.me). GitHub + Jekyll + Namecheap's domain.

Actually, the reason why I created a website was that there was already a designer, a photographer, an actor and an alleged war criminal who I share the exact same name with. Of course I have to do my best to get to top Google results, otherwise, my potential employer could stumble upon a term "war criminal" and think that was me.

Off-topic: Am I the only one who thinks that managing a Jekyll-powered website is _way_ more easy than Wordpress?

Hi, I'm the writer of this blog post. I love the simplicity and speed of Jekyll, but honestly I'm too lazy to use static site generators. WordPress is heavy and bloated, but it efficiently gets the job done for me. I'll add Jekyll to the list!

The author's key point: if you want a presence in Google, you need your own web site.

Hostgator is much cheaper than his alternatives, starting at $3.96/month. He's writing for a very low tech audience, though; people who think Markdown is "technical".

It's interesting that "WordPress hosting" now costs 4x more than getting a web site and installing WordPress.

Great suggestions for non-technical people in there but if a real concern is ownership and control of content then the only real option is buying or renting server space and putting up a website with maybe Ghost (the most overrated blogging platform ever) or the open source Wordpress or just plain HTML. All the other options listed still could potentially shut you down for some weird TOS violation (like if you're a big KKK supporter or something). Is it likely to happen? No. But isn't this where we post our overanyzed takes on everything?

Really though, the only way to own your own web content is to run your own server, and physically control access to it. Even buying or renting server space puts your content in the control of a third party.

Why? Why does everyone 'need' a personal website? Reasons presented in the article are why you would want one, and they break down to bragging.

I was going to post something to this effect, but I'm glad you also brought up the bragging point. I think it's safer to argue that everyone could benefit from a personal site, and the arguments the author lays out are pretty compelling in that context, but not much further.

I'd like to see a discussion over whether a personal website is a better investment of one's time (and money?) than a LinkedIn profile on balance (maybe for certain people). It may be controversial, but I imagine there are good points on both sides (more detailed insight about exposure from google analytics on someone's and better export affordances with personal sites; a real network and infrastructure on LinkedIn's side).

First off, no, you do not need a website. You are a high school student. Slow your roll.

Secondly, what you really need is an editor, because damn your site is riddled with misspellings.

"Everyone needs a mobile app"?

Are there any way someone can defend personal mobile apps for personal presence?

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