Basic Guide To The Personal Web 

Hello everyone, It's been a while and I've learned a lot since making this video. I'm going to be more active now. Firstly, 1. Here is the link to the map: psychcool.org/links/Personal%20Web%20Map.pdf 2. Here is the link for the guide: psychcool.org/links/BuildingAPersonalWebsiteGuide.pdf If you are building a site from stratch for the first time then it's reccomended that you use a template (sadgrl's template): goblin-heart.net/sadgrl/projects/layout-builder/ I am not posting links to other people's sites due to respect for them. Secondly, There is a lot of terminology that has sprung from online communities over the years... Personal Web, Yesterweb, IndieWeb, Web Revival, Small Web, Cozy Web. All having slight differences and similarities. This video was generally made for people who want to get into making websites, instead of being on social media apps. That's it. Thirdly, I'll try my best to update/correct information, but video formats become a pain in the arse since everything gets outdated and you learn better information Thanks for all the comments, I appreciate the responses and feedback! - Psychcool

As someone who was born in the early 2000’s this is so exciting to me because I grew up hearing about things like blogs and MySpace and even old-school tumblr and Reddit and I thought it was so cool and I couldn’t wait to grow up and get in on it too, only to grow up to find that culture very much dead and replaced with hellish corporatized social media, which I don’t like as I was not allowed to have growing up so it just feels alien to me but I’m so happy to find that the internet of my childhood still exists somewhere!!!!

I like the idea of kids growing up today rejecting the entire idea of blindly using modern social media to have an online presence. To learn and have fun with the creative challenge of building your own wildly customizable website.

Imagine watching a guide on how to build a personal website in 2024. Kinda crazy that this stuff got forgotten over time and replaced by apps and social Media spaces.

"go buy a domain name, its $5" *proceeds to show a domain listed for $56k*

Nothing has made me feel older than the term "traditional social media" Thank you for talking about this stuff, I hope it will help kids who were our age at that time find out how much fun the internet used to be

I absolutely adored this. I program web applications and servers all day every day. It sucks the life out of the art sometimes. This really brought me back to the reason I fell in love with the internet. It’s a craft. It’s an art. It’s an expression of the digital self. Great video.

Great video, but as a tip, you can do entirely without the flashing pictures, its an outdated editing technique exactly because it's uncomfortable. You can still make your visual point by showing images spaced .4 or .5 seconds each, or show overlapping pictures in a wider space like a collage spaced .2 or .3 seconds each.

I do not know how RU-vid recommended this to me with it being this small but goddam I’m grateful for it because I love this

I've missed the personality of the early web so much. I feel like you've given a great jumping point to learn more, make my own site, and reconnect with the wonders of a decentralized web.

Been exploring some stuff, and I feel kind of reborn. It's like reading nothing but corporate rags for years and then picking up a bunch of zines. Big hits, big misses, some authentic, some trying too hard, but all the more sincere in all 4 outcomes.

You inspired me to make an account on neocities and maybe start something there finally. I've got the git repo set up now. Now I just gotta learn html/css...

I've been keeping a personal website for a few years now, but have really only been using it as a programming blog and portfolio that I can show to potential employers (which has still been super valuable, although limited). Seeing this video and a few others about Web 1.0 is inspiring me to expand it more - perhaps blogging more often and about a wider berth of subjects. Thanks too for talking about RSS! I've never really used it, but now that I've seen it in action, I'll be setting up a feed.

Glad to see more people talking about the personal web Great vid!

I had this thought lingering in my mind for weeks at this point! I needed a way to speak my thoughts off while enjoying doing that, since no one in my life really has enough space for whatever I have to say (which is out of their control, people have lives). This feels like the right way for me!

This video is such a refreshing sight in today's mass of slop content. Outstanding

Oh my god this is so cool thank you for sharing this on RU-vid. People, share about this with your friends, they might be interested. We need this kind of thing.

This video is so good. Among all the reasons why I loved building a personal website, you helped me realize exactly what it was: it's part of who I am. My website is almost like an extension of myself. I want to thank you so much for making this video and helping me to realize this. Definitely got a like and a sub from me!

thanks, I found zonelet really easy to work with and add. I've been looking for something similar for a while. I'll come back to this for finding personal web communities and tools again. thanks for the work in sharing

Everything about this video was just super nice. Especially you and the huge nostalgia I felt about recognising the look and feeling of the internet from my childhood.

Thank you for this video. I'm now fairly certain the YT recommendation algorithm is processing my comments for this to have shown up when it did, but regardless, this is helpful information.

I love this. I don't want to be confined to a social media platform anymore. I can just promote my website on social media.

wow this channel is so based.... so based... i am now tempted to finish my website, great job! i hope that you will grow

I can't tell you how much I miss forums. It felt so much more personal and way better structured in a way my brain craves. But now it seems even if you do find a forum on a topic you like, it's a just a graveyard. Thank you for all the website recommendations and tips!

You're doing good work by creating videos like this. It's ironic that the RU-vid algorithm brought me here but for i'm very happy it did! Thank you for creating the map and guide on your website as well.

Glad to see u on this side of the web with such a great overview! Many great tips!

I loved this so much and it has inspired me! I also respect that at first I found some bits a bit dogmatic, but then I realised that's kinda the point - vive la opinions!

This video is like a time travel to 20 years ago. Great stuff!

Excellent, its great that you crafted this for an intermediate user like me. Social media's lowest common denominator slop is getting really old.

This is great! Lots of excellent info here! I have been working the last few years to lean on my personal website for more of my outreach and do make an RSS feed from it. I love the resources you've provided, especially about webrings! Thans for making this

Great video! Loved the guide on making Blog posts, will come back to that for my own website.

I’d love to put more effort into this, but everything web-related seems to be engineered to be as high-maintenance as possible. I thought a few years ago that going with a static site builder would be a sure-fire way to make something that will last. Boy was I wrong. The theme I used has undergone several major restructurings (requiring me to completely re-do all of my customizations every time), and now they’ve even completely moved away from Hugo to something else. Just because I want to update the foundation of my site to fix some annoying bugs, I get to essentially completely re-structure it from scratch every time, taking a “quick update” and turning it into multiple days of work I don’t want to do. These Javascript developers apparently have nothing better to do than reinvent the wheel every 3 minutes, and I’m so tired of dealing with all the churn that causes, no matter how you try to use web stuff.

I've been pretty despondent about the web lately. I quit Reddit and Twitter. I only have Facebook to keep in touch with older family and Instagram for younger family. I miss the days of forums and personal blogs. This video really struck a nerve. Thanks so much!

Nice video! Personal websites are truly refreshing to read and create compared to the fragmented, sporadic, and polluted stream of information one gets on social media.

What a video! I love it! Glad to see you're still improving and checking out this post! I'm sure someone's pointed this out, but TTL is "time-to-live" which is (in minutes) how long the feed should stay cached before attempting to get an update. You generally want this to be not too crazy, as its the longest amount of time that someone can wait before they're notified or get your updated blog posts (worst case being someone refreshes right before you update your RSS feed) I tend to set my TTL at double my update speed, so that if I update once a day, I'd set the TTL to make readers check in twice per day, so that its a maximum of a 12 hour delay. But you could totally do more if the traffic isn't an issue!

Bro not even half way throught the video. YOU'RE ONE OF THE BESTTT DUDEEEEE!!!!!!! Just amazing!! I've recently made my own website and didn't know what to add or do and damn!!! Thank you fella :D

I recently got more involved in FOSS programs and RSS, this video was really informative and insightful!

Love this video! Recommend putting links to the various resources in the description though, be much easier for people to check them out that way.

This is the internet I came up with. Loved it. Cool video

Very interesting! Love the aesthetics of early 2000s personal websites.

Surprised you don’t have more subs. This vid and others are extremely high quality. Keep it up and you’ll be big!!

I've been wanting to dig into this for a while now, and this video was good at segmenting the different parts of the personal, decentralized web. Time to get coding.

"...There's no teacher out there quite like experience." What a wonderful quote!

thank you so much i knew about all of these things but i needed the impetus to realise that maintaining these things does lead to a better internet only when you described the rss logo as an orange wi-fi thing i realised that this isn't for me, or not just for me, it's for people that missed the train on all these things and they aren't in on the past 20-30 years of internet tech thank you so much

could you please share the roadmap you were using?

This is perfect, I remember making a personal website when I was a little kid but now the internet just…sucks I’m glad to see this exists, I’m going down this rabbit hole lol

for the past couple of months I've been looking for the old internet lol. I was born in 94 but I had a computer early and was online during the AOL days. I clearly remember forum websites and regular non application websites that dominated the internet and I thought it was gone for good. I'm so happy that its been there all along and I'm all aboard the nostalgia train... TOOOT TOOOOT.

Very informative. I always loved the aesthetic and concept behind personal websites and thought they were only a things in the 90's and early 2000's. You must have put alot of work in creating this map, so thank you ! ! ! !

Did you know how much I've learnt from your vid ❤ Keep this up

This video is golden.

when programming i really like to block resources from big corporations (tutorial point, w3 school) and search for personal developers blogs. They are much more cozy and informative

This video is amazing and underrated ❤🎉❤🎉❤🎉❤

Liking that video. But why against Markdown? It's like even simpler than HTML. I get the fact that you will need to transform it to HTML, but mostly tools are doing it for you without a big trouble.

Thanks for the inspiration ❤ also, this is a video that every single person using the internet must watch!!! THIS is the absolute best video in all of RU-vid. THIS video is what your kids should be watching, a video that inspires you to stop wasting your precious time and do something productive. Btw in my opinion, everyone should learn HTML/css/js and host their websites using a cheap service like hostinger. Thank you, forr changing my life ❤

16:10 I disagree. For my blog, I use a framework called Jekyll, which converts Markdown to static HTML using a defined template, and even automatically manages the RSS feed for you. I'd argue it's even less complicated.

This is such good content, wow 🤯

i love the personal web so much, i have a spacehey page and im currently writing my personal web page in html and css! im working on making art for it too alongside my partner :)

really very good video thank you :3

this is a great video, you get my approval :3

this channel is underrated

Im browsing your videos and im surprised you have so few followers, i really enjoyed this though!

You're underrated!

Could you add the mentioned stuff in the description too?

As a "90s kid" I am here for the Geocities rebirth

I love this video so much, I've been learning about the personal web lately and I'm so intrigued. I really wish you linked the websites that you used as visual examples, and especially some of the "getting started resources" ones, just to get people clicking.

i loved your video

i love the idea and ive been wanting to do the same thing but i get overwhelmed with stuff and give up

Having your own wrbsite is pretty cool

sick video thanks so much

thank you.

i feel like i knew this when i was younger, but they tried so hard to make us forget this. thanks for the inspiration.

Spot on, this has been a problem for a long time and AI is only acceperating the shit storm. Quite unbelievable it has come to this, going completely full circle, and lots of people are totally unaware. Awesome video 👍

As a tech person I admire DIY solutions. Recently built my first website and despite doing everything SEO it still doesn't show up on corporate big brother's search engine. Will fix this but in the meantime, small/personal web sounds like a neat world to explore

Stay social, the personal way.

seeing one of my webpages gave me a jumpscare! lol i can tell which webrings you clicked around to find examples. nice video :^)

Thank you

I'm going to go make my own website!

woah, my website appeared in a video... thank you!

I haven't wayched the video yet but your video inspires me to make my kwn website lol. Currently learning HTML by bits and bit...also currently i'm spamming the font family and font size option for now because i'm too lazy to figure out how to put a universal one script one lol

8:27 This is what I'm doing right now. Since I'm running a user generated content website. Please back up your progress site and your database. Use at least 2 or 3 portable hard drives or flash drives. This is a very important and huge recommended.

Personally, I want my personal website to my permanent online home someday.

manually updating an RSS feed? Whooo doggy that's a bold move there cotton. Maybe that's me personally but I'd just teach myself python enough to write a script that does it for me. Run the script. fill in the information and then plop it into the XML file. It may not seem different but it feels different to me.

Very cool

The personal web seems cool and all but a lot of the things you mentioned just don't make sense to me. "Social media has echo chambers" forums have echo chambers as well. Oftentimes even more extreme ones because of the lack of unbiased moderation. "Propaganda is spread on social media" what stops somebody from spreading propaganda through the personal web? If somebody wants to propagandise they will do it. Just because personal websites are more honest does not mean they are more factual. I'm confused why you kept bringing up these two points in this video.

Hey that’s a thumbnail of my page in 0:42 lol that’s wild

With a little bit of python scripting knowledge you probably could make a script to automate and customize the RSS xml build process

Can you please make a part 2 to this.

good vid

Amen!

Also, what did you use to create the map? A neat tool.

Detroit's famous attorney Joumana was in the flashing pictures segment between 0:25 - 0:26. Platinum blonde woman with very dark lipstick. We cannot escape her watchful eye! SHE IS ALWAYS LOOKING OUT FOR YOUR RIGHTS.

do you have a link to your website? ic couldn't find it

if a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

take a shot every time u say garbage :p nice video though ^•^ it's good to get this info out the for people

@psychcool what program did you use for the mind map

Can you please provide me with the blog post shown in the video titled ‘The princess (or beauty) of Xiaohe. I really want to read it.

8:14 you mean visual studio code, right?

cool video, but why are you actively trying to destroy my eyes with the fast shifting images?

Idk if this will get picked up as spam so I’ll reply to this with the actual link. The map is on his neocities site under the Projects > Social Networks page. Same username.

Had no idea it was a movement or had a name, been doing this forever lol