I originally built mine as a hub between my other pages, one on angels from an academic point of view and one on Watership Down. Then the WD one got moved to its own domain. I threw some art on my personal page, and eventually replaced it with some Terragen generated images. Now, because my ISP changed my address slightly, part of my angel page no longer loads. And 90% of my links are dead in Linkland. Really, it’s like a big abandoned building with falling ceiling tiles and mice running around and crummy wiring
I’m not sure if I agree with the whole “need to have something to say” argument. I mean, it’s not like there’s a finite amount of space on the internet and all those sites about people’s cats and their car are taking up valuable real estate.
My site’s got a web comic on it. It only seems like content; the same “I may be clogging the internet with junk” fear is here.
When I built the site two years ago, it was just vanity. I was throwing the stuff out there, and if anyone picked up, that was cool.
Then I got fan mail.
It’s worse than heroin.
I feel I’ve got a duty to the small group of regular readers to keep the comic and the site going. My latest big idea is to build a cookie that allows new readers to keep a “bookmark” in my archives. It’s been slow going.
Sometimes I’ve had to go on hiatus because homework got the better of me. I try to keep it running. (The actual comic used to update EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I don’t know how I did it. Now it’s 5 days/week.)
I update it every week. Updating, though, means scanning 4 or 5 pages and posting a short summary of what I’ve been up to. I’m glad I have that auto-keen script on my site, or otherwise I’d have to build individual web pages for every comic book page. (It’s a program that automatically updates the comic part of my site, and displays the comic book page in an archive template.)
I got the livejournal during the Great Dope Winter. I wanted to keep my site semi-professional-looking, and when the SDMB went bye-bye, my only outlet for wackiness was gone too. The journal is about 2/3 me trying to be funny and 1/3 me complaining.
I’ve got a website that I started because a friend and I wanted to see if we could write a combination politics/commentary/humor site that people would want to read. It’s gathering a regular readership, and now gets around 30,000 hits a month.
We have three websites, one which is specifically used for a different board (which I frequent much much more than this one).
Our main web site is the one we use for my wife’s art. It gets updated every few months, when she has sufficient new paintings. It gives us a good chance to create more exposure, and we get good feedback.
The other one is a site with my musical preferences which I started as an exercise before I tackled the art one. I liked doing it, I update it every six months or so and I got some positive (and some negative) reactions.
Mine is kind of a hobby. Plus I keep a pretty extensive photo gallery. My friends use it a lot to show their college buddies what life was like back home.
Mine is utter vanity. It’s an excuse to learn HTML and to put stuff somewhere so I have access to it. If other people like it, I’m glad, but it doesn’t bother me if no one drops by.
At first I pretended I’d update it, but I don’t and I won’t. It’ll be updated when I feel like it, which isn’t often.
I have Buffy fanfiction up on my site, both mine and other people’s, plus links to way more impressive sites than mine. I also have ongoing pics of the house Mr. Kitty and I are building, so that my family can keep track of our progress. And I have a page of quizzes just for fun.
The Buffy stuff is updated as I get stories done/submitted or I get manipulated pics done- once a month or so. The house stuff is updated as pictures get developed- every two weeks, about. The quizzes get updated every few days- taking out broken links, adding in new ones.
I don’t have a guestbook but people do email me, mostly asking if they can archive my fic or if they can submit theirs.
I will, of course, be expecting everyone who opens this thread to check out my website and email me very happy, positive feedback.
Mostly its gaming stuff, tracking my chars so I can keep track of where we were in what campaign. That and pictures ofmy family that I gaze longingly at when I miss them.
I’ve had my site up in various forms for about 6 or 7 years now. I originally started it as an exercise to foolaround with html. Then I put some family photos up for friends and families to see.
Now, the most popular page of the site (by far) based on my tracker is the page on keratoconus, an eye disease that I have. If you google “keratoconus”, my site will be in the top 5 or 10 returned hits.
Second in popularity is a section of pages with photos of Ireland from our honeymoon a few years back.
I do have a guestbook that gets a small number of comments once in awhile. I get quite a few more e-mail responses about the site.
The only parts of the site that get regular updates are the baby photos page and the keratoconus page.
People make websites for all kinds of reasons. For me, it’s like having my own channel of communication, even if it is one way. There are all sorts of things on it. Nasty criticisms on local politicians, games, wallpaper, science, logic, history, and other random bits.
Finally, I have another site which holds everything else (MST3K, Farscape and Reality TV stuff mostly, as well as my sporadically updated blog). It’s the only one without its own domain and is at http://home.earthlink.net/~tanstaafl
I get quite a bit of e-mail traffic from gamepile but it was a featured site on Lycos and About.com for a while. The others produce sporadic bursts of activity. I think it varies depending on which page of Google I’m showing up on at the time.
The Mountain Diver - Hiking trail and Dive site reports The Game Pile - Board Game reviews No Free Lunch - Mystery Science Theater, Farscape, Reality TV and things that just don’t go anywhere else…
My site is all about vanity I suppose. It’s pretty much my rants and raves, what goes on in my life, my kids, etc. I took it down once and a bunch of people emailed me and told me to put it back up. So I did. It’s fun to maintain and design web pages for, but the content would probably bore most here, IMHO.
I freely admit that my website sucks. I even have two of 'em!
They’re school websites, so I won’t link to them here, but really all they are is a collection of links to my current classes. There’s a few other links there that I use often. I finally got around to making the thing aesthetically pleasing, and so now I’m probably done with it until next year when I get a new schedule. I’d love to put content on it but actually have no ideas, and I’m overly protective of my privacy on the internet anyway.
I used to run a site about the comparison between PCs and Macs, which I stopped updating because I didn’t care anymore, and the stuff was too hard to keep up with. I have it still on there, but with a note that it will not be updated any more. I have some other personal junk, but I primarily focus on my RollerCoaster site, which has pictures of parks and coasters, geared towards the coaster enthusiast community. I take good coaster pics, IMO, and I want to share them. I try to keep everything looking very professional.
If you do check out my site…could you please add yourself to the GuestMap I have there? I have a USA based map and a world map…other dopers are on there, why not add your name also?
My site is mostly for vanity–it started out as a general Shadowrun campaign page but has ended up as a fiction page that’s pretty well respected in the Shadowrun community.
For about three years I updated it weekly, although I haven’t updated much lately because I haven’t been feeling too creative. Once I get the two novels I’m working on finished I’ll go back to posting a chapter a week like I used to.
If there are any Shadowrun geeks out there who want to look at it, it’s http://www.magespace.net. I doubt anyone else would care.
My other site is pure vanity–to be more specific, it’s a vanity page for my two cats.
I hate vanity sites too. That’s why I didn’t bother to put up a web site until I realized I had actual not-about-me information that could be of interest to people. In fact, the only personal stuff on my site is all on one page, where it can be easily ignored.
