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<https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/110046086853608442>

i hate that it's so hard to find advice on how to make a personal website

if you go searching, all you find is SEO bullshit about "personal brands" and "sales funnel" crap for people with portfolios trying to sell you something or get you to hire them

where's the advice on how to make a personal website? a noncommercial one, i mean. one that's about a person. self-expression. how to self-reflect and introspect and know yourself. how to identify and introduce yourself. how to be genuinely engaging. stuff that gets to the heart of who you are.

i suppose part of this is the difficulty in finding purpose with such a website. good communication has occasion-purpose-audience, and you might be able to figure out occasion and audience (someone visits your profile and wants to read more about you?), but not purpose (why are they here and what do i want to tell them?)

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<https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/109619229067921050>

it's so hard to find inspiration for good design, partly because people pump out so much bad design and try to promote it for profit

all the stuff that floats to the top of the SEO bullshit puddle is really cookie-cutter website templates from some listicle titled "25 best free templates" or "40 free site themes" or whatever

the thing that really gets to me though is that it's so hard to tell a narrative about myself. and i suspect other people might have this issue too. it's easier to build a website when you have a clear flow of the information and how to architect it. that comes less naturally when you're trying to differentiate one person from a billion others.

i mean, who am i? who is a? what information do i *really* want to impart on anyone who wants to know more about me? no clue...

and then if i manage to come up with some info about me: how do i present that visually? ordering, layout, style, etc. and also, what story am i telling? how do i tell it?

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<https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/109593314053174200>

also i guess when it comes to myself, i feel like i have a lack of content. nothing to really show for myself. just looking at my website and it feels incomplete, a bit lacking, with no clearly visible shortcoming or way to fix it, but i can feel it nonetheless

the reason why i have an easier time solving other people's problems than my own is that it's easier to think outside the box when you're not the one in the box