Hobby.
It’s full o’ useless crap that I have been emailed over the years.
I also create ‘Demotivational Images’. Well, not so much create as use quotes and attach them to images which you can load in as your desktop background, just to know how much the bastards are grinding you down. Kind of like the motivational posters you can get, but with a darker theme.
I also use it to keep track of my geocaching statistics and whatnot.
It’s all driven by php and MySQL so the majority of it was set up so I could see what I knew and whether I could implement it.
I also use it to show photos to family and friends a long way away. Rather than email 10MB of stuff, I can put it up on the site and they can pick and choose what to view at their convenience.
It serves around 2,000 unique pages a day. So while that’s not huge, I’m really happy with these numbers. Over 3 years this has steadily grown from 500 unique pages a day to the 2,000 mark.
How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
I built my own CMS (Content Management System) to mantain the site, so adding to the content is really, really easy. The demotivational images are updated at least monthly, or if I’m in the mood, I’ll create a bunch ahead of time and then the PHP code tells the site what to display depending on the day or month. Makes it easy to keep the content ‘up to date’ when the site serves up the newest additions for the month without me touching anything.
I update the geoaching stuff when I return from a days worth of caching. There are also pictures showing the cache locations, but they’re secured so as to not allow people to cheat on the locations. Each cache probably takes 30 seconds or so to load up. Name, cache, links to the cache page, my log, other assorted info.
Whenever I get the urge, I also add other statistics to the geocaching page. The majority of the effort is just to see whether I can implement a new idea. They all seems to work (eventually). Using the CMS I don’t have to worry about really updating any specific area as the PHP and MySQL databases create all the statistics on the fly.
With the personal photos I just load them up and the PHP creates thumbs on the fly (just to see if I could get it working) based on the directory contents, so it’s no work for me to create new pages, link to previous and next, etc. The PHP code generates all of that dynamically with only a page of code.
What reactions do you get (if any)?
I get emails around once a week. Some people want to buy larger versions of the demotivational images (sigh) which I don’t have. They’re optimised for desktop displays. I also get people pointing out spelling errors and alternative answers to the mind teasers. I have recieved some flattering comments about the layout and easy of navigation (hmmm), and luckily no one has written to me saying that it sucked.
Has your site ever been hacked?
Not sure. There was a unknown username which accessed some of the data, but didn’t change anything, so I’m not sure whether it was hacked or not. A quick change of password seemed to remove that issue. Certainly the site hasn’t been hacked in a traditional way with p0rn coloured screens and messages in leet speak. I always design locally and publish only the resulting working code, so I’ve always got a backup of the code. I take copies of the database at frequent intervals, especially after large updates. This way I really don’t care if the site gets hacked as I can reinstate it in less than a hour.
My site.Biz. I’m working on selling my novels online, but last time I did it, I was successful, but it took awhile, so I’m prepared to be patient. Also the mad programming skillz I developed doing it has gotten me some contract gigs.
Coding stuff for the site and uploading it, about an hour a week for my weekly updates. Writing stuff for the site and marketing it, all of my available free time. Runs from 10 to 30 hours a week, depending.
The people who like what I write like it a lot. Them as don’t like what I write (and what I write about) hate what I write, what I write about, the fact that I am free to write it and publish it on the Web, the way I look, etc., etc.
My prior site was hacked, but not in a way that harmed its usefulness to visitors or to me.
If you got enough going on to want to post to a message board, and you post here a lot, you got enough to put up a site with.
I have a website (well not really; a domain). I use it because I can manage my emails better: every website where I register gets a different email address, so if I start getting spam, I know who to yell at. Fortunately I haven’t had any problems yet. I also use it to host the odd picture for my friends, but mostly just for email.
1. Why do you have it? (business? hobby-related?)
A combination of hobby, utility (I’ve got various FAQs and stuff people want to access), and a soapbox.
2. How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
Not enough. It’s especially problematic since my site is currently 90% hard-coded HTML. I’m looking at revamping the site to use a web-based CMS, though, which should make it much easier to toss new stuff up on a whim.
3. What reactions do you get (if any)?
Various “Hey, this is neat” stuff. No bronze plaques or trophies, though.
I have one on Angelfire, I think it’s linked in my profile (I really need to update more often). It’s been through a few incarnations–now it’s a hobby site. I think there’s still a few remanants from previous versions floating around though.
Why do you have it? (business? hobby-related?)
-Because I can. I’ve had it since I was ~15, maybe a bit longer. Still not sure why I made it in the first place, but every once in a while I decide to do something with it and am glad I have it.
How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
-Maybe 15 minutes a month. Right now when I do ‘update’ it’s just to upload and post more images generally. There’s very little there, not even the standard terms and conditions most other similar sites have (I figure most people who would visit already know the deal, so I use that to justify my laziness).
What reactions do you get (if any)?
-Reactions? What’re those? Someone once said “She has anime reviews on her site, cool” does that count?
Has your site ever been hacked?
-No. And I wouldn’t much care if it was.
Why do you have it? (business? hobby-related?)
Mostly hobby, though I did use it for posting web-graphics files for a place I was interning at, when I had created the files at home. So school-related as well, in the past.
How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)? Very little, <1 minute a week. I use it for posting explanatory pictures of -whatever-, anything I have and I or anyone else is having trouble with. Sometimes the page has some text too. I don’t bother making any of it look nice at all, white backgrounds with black text. The only organizing is individual page links on the main “index” page. I do know how to do the fancy stuff–HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash ect but don’t bother, unless that itself is the subject of the discussion. It’s just a place to stick pictures that I know won’t have a lousy bandwidth limit like GeoCities etc. It’s got a 5-meg disk space limit (the bandwidth I dunno) but I would be surprised if I’ve ever had more than 1 meg of stuff posted up at once, and that defenitely would have been back during the internship days. I have a semi-resume up but shifted that into a joke-resume, because the local job market is a joke.
What reactions do you get (if any)? None, although I kinda don’t know what to say to people who can’t get images from my pages… they are passive HTML W3C-compliant pages, on a regular ISP domain…
Has your site ever been hacked? No but it wouldn’t be a big deal if the server content was lost; at the moment, I can re-send everything in about 30 seconds anyway.
~
http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk - It’s website that allows you to calculate your take-home pay after tax etc (only useful for UK residents, of course).
It’s a hobby - I just wanted to learn how to do this sort of thing in php.
I don’t update it often - there’s not much to say/do. When the new budget came out, I had the new tax bands on there and working within 90 minutes, which considering I was at work was pretty good. Sadly, I have very very few visitors so I doubt anyone noticed.
Not had any reactions so far - still too few visitors I think. It’s only just filtered into some search engines so there’s not much traffic.
As far as I know it’s never been hacked - I can’t see why anyone would bother and I could have the content back up there in a matter of seconds anyway.
It’s supposed to be for sharing my family tree information to allow any cousins out there searching for a connection to find me, but I’m very lazy about updating it and don’t spend so much time on the family tree now. I also use it for hosting pictures that I post on my other message boards.
2. How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
As indicated above, almost none. I occasionally add or fix something. I still haven’t added anything for photos 2 and 3 on the About Me page, despite the fact that the currect design has been up for nearly a year.
3. What reactions do you get (if any)?
Sometimes I get an email about the family tree. Mostly people say nice things about it, but it doesn’t attract a huge amount of traffic.
I had one for a while. It’s still up, but I haven’t done anything with it for months.
I started it last summer when construction on our house started. I wanted to keep a sort of diary of its construction, and I wanted an easy way to keep our parents updated on the progress and to let them see for themselves how it looked as it went up. At first, my wife thought I was nuts, because I was basically taking pictures of dirt and rebar. But toward the end, both our families were checking the webpages daily and calling us to ask why there weren’t any new pictures yet.
It was pretty fun. But, by the time the house was ready for us to move in, I kinda lost interest in the webpage, and I haven’t put new pictures up since early December.
Yep, I’ve got a site. Had it for the last four years or so.
Why do you have it? It’s a family site, ostensibly so family and friends can keep up with us, but really it’s just to see our names and faces in print . We post pictures, links we like, a “journal”, and other miscellaneous stuff that makes us happy. We update it about twice a month when we’re good.
**How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)? ** A couple of hours, twice a month.
What reactions do you get (if any)? Family and friends seem to like it. Had a few responses from people I went to Junior High and High School with, and from a couple of random strangers. Those were nice.
**Has your site ever been hacked? ** Nope. It’s hosted by a big conglomerate ISP with many vigilant elves.
We also recently took over webmaster duties for our Church’s website. We update it weekly with church activities, and less frequently for seasonal stuff, new pictures, special services and the like. We spend about thirty minutes a week on it. It’s never been hacked.
I had one for a long time which even I thought was fascinating. It was based on this (wrongful) assertion that I’ve heard around the Web:
“Jack the Ripper was the first serial killer.”
Which is really wrong. I had data and cites about serial killers throughout history, such as Vlad the Impaler, Elizabeth Bathory, etc. I had a list of “prerequisites” to be a serial killer, and a detailed synopsis on why each person I had in my list was a serial killer. My final result was a statement that Jack the Ripper may have been the first serial killer deemed as such, and followed as closely, but the penchant existed throughout human time.
I was a theory junkie in college. In fact, my entire reason for going to college was to write, read, and share theory with folks who would (presumably) take this stuff seriously. I did not succeed in making an academic career for myself so I put my favorite theory papers online as a way of making them available to other people, and in hopes of drawing comments / discussion / feedback.
Oh, and I’m also a FileMaker Pro geek (it’s what I do for a living) and so I have a second website that serves as a professional portfolio.
2. How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
Not as much as I should. I really really detest HTML and I’m lazy. Mostly I let it sit there. I have a nagging message reminding me to do an update. That message is now 103 days overdue and I haven’t complied yet.
3. What reactions do you get (if any)?
I have a “guestbook” and over the years I’ve attracted both negative and positive feedback as well as ongoing dialog between guests.
4. Has your site ever been hacked?
Nope. I don’t host it personally, I just use the free FTP/web space that came with my ISP account, so to whatever extent anyone has ever tried to hack my site (none that I know of, btw, but the content does piss some people off enough that it’s possibe that someone has tried), my ISP gets the security credits, not me.
Both, sort of. I play music part-time. Websites are an incredible improvement over mailing CDs and photos to venues and booking agents.
2. How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
Not as much as I should – I will when I get more serious about marketing myself.
3. What reactions do you get (if any)?
A few, all complimentary that I can recall. The music I play is pretty obscure, so the occasional out-of-the-blue response is very satisfying. Earlier this year, I got an email from a guy I haven’t seen since we graduated from high school together almost thirty years ago. He had been searching for music in the genre I play, did some googling, and recognized my name (which is fairly unusual).
4. Has your site ever been hacked?
No – to paraphrase George Carlin’s comment about the groupies that a comedian gets, hackers would have to be aiming pretty low to want to go after my site.
The space comes with the ISP subscription, may as well use it. Mostly hobby related, fighting ignorance :), or just to try out something new in webpage technology.
2. How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
Very little. Used to update quite regularly, now update about once a year.
3. What reactions do you get (if any)?
About 50/50 positive/negative. I’ve removed most of the email feedback links; got bored with being told the same things over and over, and with the spam. Prior to that I’d sometimes get as many as 100 non-spam emails a month.
1. Why do you have it? (business? hobby-related?)
For the fugguvit. It’s pretty much turned into three main things:
a. A place that friends and family can go to see pics.
b. A place to run my football pool.
c. A place for other random nonsense (case in point).
2. How much time do you spend maintaining it (assuming you do it yourself)?
It depends. Uploading pics is an occasional thing. The football pool area takes up a few hours of my week from September through February. The other stuff depends on what I have going at the time.
3. What reactions do you get (if any)?
Family love the pics. Participants in the football pool love that section. <shrug>
4. Has your site ever been hacked?
Not to my knowledge.
Yep, I’ve got one, theromanceofparis.com. It’s the site for a group I play in. It’s sort of a business and hobby; it’s promotional, but it’s not as if I’m making a living from the group, so… let’s call it a paying hobby.
As far as site maintenance goes, after I did the design work, it just comes down to updating with news etc whenever there’s news to report; maybe a half hour or so every other month, except when I’m adding lots of new stuff. For example, today I added a new section with song lyrics, a new section with links, and updated some of the audio files, so I spent a bunch of hours on it. I guess maybe every five or six months it gets a whole days worth of work out of me.
I haven’t gotten many reactions other than from friends family members of me and the guys in the band, who all seem to like it, though their impartiality is suspect :). It was my first real attempt at CSS design, and I’m just happy it turned out looking relatively neat and clean.
Nope, it’s never been hacked.
I used to have a personal website when I was connected to the University of Vermont, but I recently lost my server space there. That just had all sorts of vanity stuff; some recordings I’d done, links to friends’ pages, links to all my stuff on the web (live journal, etc), photos, and it was my hosting space for all the pics and stuff I’d share with people online. I’ve moved that component to my band’s page, but I haven’t put my personal site back up.
My site I’m just now changing hosts, so there may be some temporary downtime.
family, hobby, hobby-about-to-be-lifetyle
Our siblings and children are scattered all over the country. The idea was to be able to keep everyone up to date. Never worked that way.
OldGuy is quite a cook so it’s a way to share recipes.
Genealogy has been my hobby for some time so it’s a place to publish and share info with others who may be pursuing the same family names.
Once we got into sailing, it was a way to show our family and friends what we were doing. This is the one that will become a lifestyle when we move aboard our sailboat in spring '06. At that point I may create a site devoted just to our sailing adventures
It was very heavily front-end loaded with design work (even if it doesn’t look like it. Once the page templates are in place, it takes very little time to keep it current. But I haven’t updated anything but the boat pages in a loooooonnnng time.
Not much reaction since the site is pretty narrowly focused. I do get the occasional genealogist who finds it by searching on a name. Mostly it’s for family and friends. Very few people just find it by chance.
4 No. never been hacked. Probably because it is pretty obscure.
I made a site years ago so members of my family who’d moved out of town could still have access to all the family recipes. My aunt had begun the family cookbook years ago as a hardbound edition, but as it became updated, it was easier to keep it online. So yeah, a site of yummy food.
-Lil
. We post pictures, links we like, a “journal”, and other miscellaneous stuff that makes us happy. We update it about twice a month when we’re good.