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If I can't rant on my own website then where the hell can I rant?
Ranting
For those who don't know, my band website (engeo.co.uk) was made almost entirely by me, nex. I did of course use a few free scripts to make the site more interesting (hey, there's no point re-inventing the wheel - that's what open source is all about! ).
Anyway, the point is, that engeo.co.uk is not my first website. Not that I've made many. I think it is only really the fifth website that I have made (naturally excluding any REALLY crappy ones). But the important thing is that, apart from one other site, this is the only one which really had any purpose. All my other websites have been slightly pointless, unnecessary or so called 'personal' websites.
Now, I think personal websites get a bit of a bad rap these days. I think I heard somewhere that there are now 10 times as many websites (that's SITES not PAGES) as there are people in the world. Approximately 50 percent of those are porn sites, 40 percent belong to businesses and academic institutions/research institutions/specialist websites and the last ten percent apparently goes to personal websites (which I think technically includes engeo.co.uk).
My point is that since most of the rest of the web is concerned with… less artistic matters, personal websites are really the only medium on the web that allows for a lot of genuine creativity and originality. You can only truly express yourself when you have no one else to answer to, and personal websites give you the freedom to do that.
I suppose it's been a long time since I have really done a true personal website and, like most, mine did tend to go without being updated for long periods of time. But still, I say lets have more personal websites and more true originality on the web! Why not join me? You're probably only a tutorial away from being able to…
Discussion
I wrote this article many years ago and I am somewhat sad but what really happened. Personal websites did truly grow. In fact, I think most websites now probably are personal ones. But sadly they are all a bit too much like this one.
The websites are all blogs and most of them are simple rants about life or a journal of what people do and think. And there is nothing wrong with that. But the web still hasn't achieved its full potential. Everyone should have something genuinely useful to give to the world. But most people seem content to simply keep an account of their lives.
It is fascinating to have such a large database of people's lives, but most people write the same sort of things. Post the same pictures from a pub crawl. Write the same comments about how long it's been since they saw the author.
I think personal websites might not be the best way to achieve the web's potential. Perhaps community sites truly are the way to go.