In Defense of the Personal Homepage

Somewhere in the transition from GeoCities to LinkedIn, we lost the personal homepage. The place on the internet that was just yours. Not a profile page. Not a portfolio. Not a personal brand. Just a website about you, for no particular reason.

The Old Way

Personal homepages in the 1990s were glorious. They had:

• A page about the author's pets
• A list of favorite links
• A section about their hobbies
• A page of photos from their vacation
• A guestbook (of course)
• An "under construction" GIF (always)
• A visitor counter at the bottom

These sites weren't optimized for anything. They weren't trying to convert visitors or build an email list or establish thought leadership. They were just people putting things on the internet because they could.

The Professionalization Problem

Today, if you have a personal website, it's probably a portfolio. It exists to help you get a job. Every element is calculated to present you as a competent professional. The copy is polished. The design is minimal. The vibe is: "Please hire me."

This is fine! Portfolios are useful. But they've crowded out the other kind of personal website — the kind that exists purely for self-expression.

Making Space for Yourself

Your personal website can be:

• A collection of things you find interesting
• A journal of your learning process
• A digital garden of notes and ideas
• A list of every book you've ever read
• A gallery of photos you've taken
• Literally anything you want

It doesn't need to be responsive. It doesn't need to follow design trends. It doesn't need analytics. It doesn't need to be "good." It just needs to be yours.

The personal homepage is the web at its most human. Let's bring it back.