This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Last week, I mentioned how I want the web to be weird again: more personal sites, more eclectic online experiences, and more authenticity in what and how people share.
I got a lot of emails and comments in my membership Discord about wanting to start a personal website but not being sure where to start.
Today, I wanted to answer some of the questions I got, and encourage you to just fucking ship.
What should I use to build my website?
I’ve found that reducing friction in publishing has been the most important thing for me.
If you love GUIs, something like WordPress or Kirby might be a good choice. If, like me, you prefer to write in markdown, I love static site generators.
I really enjoy Hugo, but if you know JavaScript, you might find templating in 11ty a lot easier, and it has a much better community around it.
Astro is also a good option, though in my opinion a bit complex for the needs of a blog.
The one thing I feel strongly about: own your platform.
Avoid hosted-WordPress (wordpress.com), SquareSpace, Wix, etc. You want to be able to take your content with you, save it locally, etc.
To that end, something with static files is more portable than something with a database. Of the options listed, WordPress is the only database-driven one.
I’ve been sitting on an idea for a while, but I haven’t gotten the design just right yet.
Who cares. Fucking ship it!
I’ve seen great websites that use absolutely barebones CSS, and at least one that’s got no CSS at all. Craig’s List is wildly successful and the UI is straight 1998 web design.
The beauty of the web is that you can nudge and tweak it over time. Your tastes will changes. Designs will change.
A personal website is a chance for you to experiment and be weird.
Just grab Kelp or Pico or WaterCSS or your favorite lightweight CSS boilerplate and throw that damn thing online already!
Don’t have all the content? Grab a retro under construction GIF from GifCities and get on with it.
Where should I host my website?
If you’re rocking a static site generator, GitHub Pages are free.
They’re designed to auto-build Jekyll websites (another static site generator). But if you’re using another tools, you can run your build before committing your code, tell GitHub which directory is the public files directory, and it just works.
That’s how I host the website for Adventure, my rules-lite TTRPG.
If you want something you have more control over, or you want to run server-side code, I run nearly every other website I own on DigitalOcean, and use ServerPilot to manage security and configuration (because configuring servers sucks).
DigitalOcean also has one-click installs for WordPress, Node, Ghost, and a slew of other stuff.
If you want something somewhere in the middle, Cloudflare has static site hosting and serverless functions if you want to run server-ish code without managing a server.
You can use Workers with GitHub pages or some other host, too, if you’d prefer.
What should I pick for a domain name?
It literally doesn’t matter.
Paul Jarvis, before he literally quit the internet, had a very popular website at pjrvs.com, his name with no vowels. My favorite websites all have weird domains that I often forget, and a quick Duck Duck Go search brings me right to them.
I personally prefer to have the .com for a thing. And I avoid .dev and other fancy TLD’s because they’re expensive AF when you renew.
But .com, .net, whatever. It doesn’t matter.
A domain is your little plot of internet homestead. All that matters is that its yours.
Back in the day, I used to buy domains for every little idea I had. Don’t do that! It adds up to a lot of money, and you’ll probably never use them.
Now, I do what Chris Coyier suggested a few years ago, and just use subdomains.
What should I post?
Literally anything!
Be you. Be eclectic. Be a whole person. Be weird!
Many, many years ago, designer Frank Chimero had an article on his website (that’s now lost to the sands of internet time) about redesigning his website to be like a grandmother’s house.
Lots of nick-knacks in every room. Every room has a few doors that lead to more rooms. If you pay attention, you’ll find fun little corners and spaces that aren’t used much and often overlooked.
I really love that, and it’s stuck with me nearly a decade later.
That kind of character and charm isn’t designed. It happens as a byproduct of a life lived.
If you need some inspiration, I really enjoy the eclectic weirdness of websites from…
And too many more to list. The one thing they all have in common is that they take a messy digital garden approach to web curation.
How often should I post?
As much as you want. Or as little.
I personally find it’s actually easier to build a habit of writing every day than it is to try to post once a week.
When you post every day, you can write short, sloppy, typo-ridden things, and not obsess over getting it perfect. Your site becomes a living, changing reflection of you at a current moment in time (and a funny little journal of past versions of you).
Social media destroyed personal websites in a lot of ways, but one thing it’s taught us is that brief and published is often better than perfect and still-in-your-head.
Write it down. Publish it. Move on.
Just fucking ship.
Oh look, the title of this post!
The many thing I want you to take away from all of this: just do the damn thing!
Don’t think about it too hard. Don’t wait until its “perfect” (it never will be). Just put it out there!
You can always change it later. The web is ephemeral.
Like this? A Lean Web Club membership is the best way to support my work and help me create more free content.
This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Go Make Things | Sciencx (2025-08-07T14:30:00+00:00) Just fucking ship. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/07/just-fucking-ship/
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