Although it doesn't bother me much I was wondering what are other people experiences on having a website. Do you just have it without any particular interactions from other internet persons? Or you do have interactions and feedback to your content? Does it bother you if you don't get any hits or you maintain your website just for fun and you find it fulfilling?
I write without the intend to generate much engagement. But sometimes you are the first to write on a small topic or problem and then people find your site and link it in forums. That definitely feels nice because you see that you are able to help others without much effort.
When I receive emails it is often regarding specific implementation details on my work or stuff that I referenced. Others are just sending a note that they found something really helpful or liked some of my photography. And then there people who think that you really enjoy solving their problems for them.
In general I like any interaction with anyone who wants to discuss topics that I wrote about. It is not that common that two people have exactly the same problem or have an interest on the same topic AND they make the effort to write an email about it to someone. I learned quite a lot from others this way.
However for my personal peace of mind I never view the Webserver statistics to see the number of page views. I did that in the past but it changed my motivation to be rather extrinsic and my mood to be rather pessimistic. I ditched social media exactly because of this toxic quantification of my personal work. I recommend to you the same because, especially in the beginning, the number of page views that are not yours will be 0. That is something that should not bother you.
For anyone who is interested, here is my small Hugo based site: https://ayeks.de/
I used to write for other people to read it. I learned after awhile that writing for other people diluted my thoughts and resulted in me not having a clear voice in my writing. Something about accommodating the average reader that really suppressed my thoughts. Now I write for myself and if it resonates with others then so be it.
The result is that my articles have hit the FP multiple times since the mental switch.
No comment section.
No JavaScript. But I use CSS intensively.
No AES in TLSv1.3, just Cha-Cha (breaks older Chrome)
The way it supposed to be.
Glad you're making a personal page for your art, by the way. :) Social media to a vast majority of artists is toxic, and there's a spark of individuality in personal pages that many people are hungry for. I'll be checking out yours.
(*I'm sure a large number are bots, but since I get some lovely personalized emails from the humans, the number itself doesn't matter in the end of the day.)
Case 1: a few posts of mine go viral and land on the front page on HN or Reddit and I get a few to ten thousand ish views. Those days I get three to four emails from people on my contact form and we have a brief convo
Case 2: I have a few tutorials that have been linked back across the web and receive daily traffic from Google.
Outside of those two cases, most of my posts get little to no traction. My analytics are public [1] so you can see an example if you’re curious!
This.
Also I use it as a public repository of information I either often forget and have to look up again or want to have accessible everywhere easily (for example recipes, restaurant recommendations and git conmands)
Ultimalely I just like tinkering on a website without pressure to perform well in aspects that are business relevant.
It is probably helpful to present a competent image when job searching. It shows you can develop and run a site, and that you have interests of your own.
The idea is simple: You merely link to my site, and ask your visitors to leave comments there. Comments will be emailed to you, with user identity redacted and rate limited. You can reply to the constructive comments on my site and ignore the trolls.