Ask HN: Share your personal website

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Directory and purpose of the thread

  • OP is building a directory of HN personal sites at hnpwd.github.io, seeded from sites that have had reasonably successful HN submissions.
  • People are encouraged to either post links in the thread or submit GitHub PRs; OP prefers PRs for scalability but doesn’t want that to block participation.
  • There’s interest in importing links from a similar July 2023 Ask HN and in driving the directory from a JSON file to make automation easier.
  • Other discovery tools are mentioned: blogs.hn, Kagi’s “small web” directory, webrings, and “now” pages as related ecosystems.

Types and styles of personal websites

  • Huge variety: technical blogs, CV/portfolio sites, photo and art galleries, creative writing, game dev, music, security research, hardware hacking, and niche interests (language learning, semiotics, theology, cruising, etc.).
  • Many sites are static (Hugo, Jekyll, custom SSGs, Nix, Go, Quarto, hand-rolled generators), often hosted on GitHub Pages or simple VPS setups.
  • Design ranges from ultra-minimalist “old web” HTML to highly stylized experiences (OS/Desktop metaphors, pure-CSS 3D spaces, SVG metaballs, shader-heavy UIs, retro Windows/Apple clones, multiverse mode switchers).
  • Several authors proudly mention unusual or very short domains and personal TLD choices as part of their identity.

Meta-discussion on blogging, feeds, and “small web”

  • Many say they rarely update their sites and hope this thread motivates them to write more.
  • Strong interest in RSS/Atom feeds; some readers explicitly only follow via RSS and complain when feeds are missing.
  • Some lament modern platforms (e.g., WordPress “enshittification”) and express nostalgia for hand-made, ad-free, cookie-free personal sites.
  • A few suggest making this “share your site” thread recurring (quarterly/annual) to keep the small web energy alive.

Tooling, infrastructure, and safety concerns

  • Suggestions to automate link extraction from the thread (e.g., browser scripts) and to use static-friendly comment systems.
  • One detailed cautionary story about using AWS as a domain registrar: account suspension → 2FA lockout → account “closed” → domains immediately released and grabbed by others, including scammers.
  • Some discussion of HN’s spam filter: many single-link comments from very new accounts are auto-killed; users are torn between vouching for them and worrying they’re AI-generated spam.
  • A minority voice calls the thread “people doxxing themselves,” but this isn’t widely picked up.