Building websites has slowly become an exercise in banality, where every keystroke is determined by how well the site will perform, create leads, track users, which is all centered around Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Rinse and repeat while using an annoyingly limiting CMS (content management system) that removes the joy of building a website in the name of convenience and speed. I know this process well, because I do this for a living.
The primary problem is that most websites now are created for business. In the first decade or so of the internet, the majority of website were created by individuals. These personal websites were usually creative impressions of the builder’s interests, hobbies and artistic works. With the advent of social media, many people put away their HTML editors and started posting their work on these platforms. At first, this worked well, but as time went on, the corporate algorithms of greed have increasingly suppressed individual posts in favor or advertising and paid media.
Business websites have their place, but I believe it’s time we bring back personal websites, and have fun with it! Your website doesn’t need to be SEO optimized, track user data, or have a “clean” (I.E. boring as fuck) corporate design. Make them weird! Make them interesting! Have fun learning how to craft a website from scratch. It’s not as hard as you may think.
For anyone new to writing HTML and CSS, it can be a little daunting. Trust me when I say, it’s much easier than you think. A website doesn’t need to be overbuilt, utilizing complicated javascript for fancy user interactions. At it’s heart, a webpage is a document, one that is intended to display information, ideas and to showcase the builder’s creativity. Sure, get crazy with the JS if you know it, but you don’t need to. I’ve included some resources below.
Far too many websites are created to “game the SEO system” and place highest on Google’s search rankings. This endless SEO rat race to rank has led to a mountain of vapid websites creating annoyingly similar content to feed the SEO engine. They all track user data to a disturbing degree and use it to try and inch higher than the competition. Let me tell you, as someone who has worked in this field, it’s a soul-sucking hell.
So, fuck that shit. Create a website for fun. Make it about your favorite hobbies, your artistic creations, things you’re a fan of, subject you find interesting, your personal beliefs, or whatever strikes your fancy. The point is MAKE IT ABOUT YOU! (This is my homage to the ‘blink’ tag of old)
Quick note on web hosting. You’ll need to host your website somewhere. Put a little time in researching who you host through. There are a lot of shady ass web hosting companies out there, many of which I’ve dealt with. Choosing the best web host is out of the scope of this article, but I’ll likely touch on it later. For now, know there are a lot of free options like Neocities, the platform this website is hosted on. (No affiliation or sponsorship, Neocities just happens to be what this website is hosted on)
Search engines can be incredibly useful, I use them all the time, but do not mistake that all the major search engines are businesses and therefor their primary goal is to make money. Because of this, they routinely manipulate search results, and business looking to rank higher play the game to try and manipulate the search results. All of this has become a huge freaking mess, where Google makes an update, and every business website in the world reacts and tries to figure out how they can rank higher. Rinse and repeat.
How can we potentially skip some of this mess? Personal sites linking to other personal sites. This is how users would find interesting websites, back in the day. If you found a website you liked, say about comicbook art, the website owner would link to other websites about comicbook art, which would then link to other websites about similar subject. This was call “web-surfing”, and it was fun.
There is no reason websites couldn’t once again feature a paged dedicated to web links, one that lists other websites that host similar information and content. It’s really that easy.
This last one is a bit more controversial. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a way to see traffic on your website. It can be interesting to see how many visits your site got in a month, or which pages are getting the most traffic. Just, don’t be data shady. What I mean by that is this, don’t obsess over optimizing every aspect of your website to maximize traffic, clicks and sales. Don’t sell user data. Don’t use questionable services, like paid advertising or paid re-targeting, that utilize invasive cookies.
If you want website analytics, consider using one of the many open-source, privacy-focused options out there. There is much debate as to which service is the most ethical, so I’m not going to list those here.
Or, let it go. Create your website and don’t worry about the traffic statistics. Let me tell you, not caring is incredibly freeing after spending so much of my career caring about analytics and data. Leave that shit to the day job hours. This is your own time to enjoy and create something fun.
I should note, most web hosting services offer basic baked in site analytics based off of server traffic. This usually include basic hits on the server and how many unique visitors came to the website. The amount of data varies from host to host, for instant this website’s host only offers total website visits and server hits. In the land of web analytics, this is extremely limited, but maybe that’s enough.