I was thinking about the sorts of personal sites I’ve enjoyed on the web. They roughly fall into two sorts, roughly dividing “website”-ish websites from “weblog”-ish websites.
h2. Websites
These are often a handful of pages, at most a dozen.
- Landing page - These sites give you a little bit of biographical info, maybe a page or two on specific points of interest. They rarely link to any other web presences.
- Personal ecosystem - These sites serve as a trampoline to send you to other sites representing the person’s online personality. c.f. Pat Nakajima or Merlin Mann.
- Collection of works - These sites are, essentially, portfolios. They show off the cool things the person has done.
h2. Weblogs
Chunks of content in reverse chronological listing, time and taxonomy-based archives. Sometimes comments, sometimes no. Usually a few other pages for the “potpurri”.
- The “Classic” weblog - Writing on some focused topic or a cluster of topics. Sometimes they are a cult of personality, sometimes it’s just a person’s dedication to an idea. c.f. Daring Fireball, Garrett Dimon
- Curated text - Interesting bits found on the web, aggregated and summarized. Usually higher volume than a classic weblog, but not as bad as a “professional” weblog. Always focused around the author’s personal fascinations. c.f. Kottke
- Curated links - Just a collection of links, followed by a few words describing them. c.f. Trivium
- Tumblelog - Another sort of curation, this time with little or no summarization and a focus on a tone, subject or personality. c.f. Projectionist, Ideas for Dozens (tiny)
- Lifestream - An aggregation of the author’s activities online. Like the personal ecosystem, but without the lazy linking. c.f. Adactio Elsewhere
My personal site (hint: you’re reading it) will probably continue to evolve to include a little of each of these.
