"Personal web pages are world wide web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature rather than content pertaining to a company, organization or institution. Personal web pages are primarily used for informative or entertainment purposes but can also be used for personal career marketing (by containing a list of the individual's skills, experience and a CV), social networking with other people with shared interests, or as a space for personal expression." Wikipedia
I began installing, repairing, and maintaining computers and networks in the early 1980s for my workplace. Later I saved up and bought my first home computer, which was top of the line in its day: a 386 IBM PS/2 I paid a ridiculous amount of money for. One of the first things I did with it was run a FIDONET Bulletin Board Systsem (BBS) from my home landline for anyone who wanted to dial in from their computer to mine via our (originally) 1200 baud modems to recieve and forward mail, play games, chat, etc. with others also on FIDONET.
"Open mouth, insert foot, echo internationally" ~ early FIDONET Echomail cautionary tagline / truism that today's users of social media should also commit to memory.
Those were fun days.
Then in the early 1990s the World Wide Web (WWW) showed up - and things became even more fun.
What we gained from the early WWW that we hadn't already had on FIDONET was (1) much greater numbers (of users), and (2) a far greater level of connection between all those numbers.
For example, while my BBS served 500 people a month, my first World Wide Web personal website served over 10,000.
And while there might be, say, 200 topics of information available via BBS, there were many, many, many thousands more topics on the WWW: more people = wider range of potential interests to share. And it was no longer just us super computer nerds (the kind who could install new expansion cards in their computer and then set the proper IRQ switches on the motherboard to make it all work) who were providing the topics. Now it was anyone who could push a computer's "On" button, start up a web browser, and then attach themselves to sites like Geocities to create and publish personal web pages about their own interests, as well.
There was one glaring problem with the early web, though - one that users of the modern web also suffer from, but for a different reason:
It was quite often hard to find anything but the most overly promoted, or most superficial pop-culture, or most.. well, boring topics and sites through search engines. The local city library, where you still had to faintly whisper to communicate or incur the librarian's wrath, and where the only way to find a book you might want was to dig through the (physical) library card catalog, often seemed more exciting and productive. Search engines back then weren't that great because not a lot of the internet had been indexed yet, and the best search engines were quite literally hand-curated (I remember manually submitting my own sites to search engine curaters hoping to get added to search engine results. It didn't always work, or work right).
It could truly be very easy to assume nothing of real interest to oneself existed on the internet.
The solution to this, though, was simple:
Find just one personal web page - even one - that had even a little bit of something you were interested in. Find that, and it was quite likely that personal web page would lead you to a few or perhaps several dozen or more other personal web pages also related to your interest(s). Here's an example walk-through of how it worked:
Say you are going to be moving to Omaha, Nebraska, USA, and you want to know about how much it snows there every year. You enter that query into a search engine, and you get a few million results of dubious and varying quality. You click into one - a personal web page of a Omaha local who's apparently a complete weather nerd. His site gives you the answer you're looking for, but you notice he also has a page called "Links". Curious, you open that page too - and you find from several to several dozen links to other peoples' personal websites on weather, but also a bunch of personal website links related to other non-weather topics this guy is interested in, as well.
You bookmark a few interesting weather related links, but then you scan through his other topics, too. From the categories he lists, you can tell this guy is interested in how to run an awesome backyard weather station, breeding prize-winning goldfish, how to party well in Puerto Rico, and.. repairing and maintaining Honda Civics.
Now, his weather information page - the one that brought you here - has served you well. But so has his Links page. You hadn't opened your web browser today to learn about Honda Civics, but you have one with some ongoing problems you haven't been able to resolve fully, even after multiple searches for the answer via search engines. One of the links on this guy's Links page addresses that Civic problem - and provides another link to a forum where you finally find the answer to your problem.
This is a process you can (literally) follow all day long. If every time you visit someone's personal web page you look for and scan through their Links page, and then from that Links page follow even more links and Links pages, and then from those follow even more links and Links pages, you will be following an information and resource path created by interested and sometimes expert human beings who have an actual and personal interest in the topic(s) you are also interested in. What might sometimes seem like random topic exploration can actually sustain a productive line of info gathering that mirrors how human minds work and learn. How do you know what you most need or want to know, until you come across the knowledge that needs to be learned?
So, let's finish our example. Today, you followed links and Links pages through several people's personal websites, through the following path:
Omaha weather ("What kind of winter boots am I going to need?") >> Honda Civics ("Oh, wow. That's the noise mine keeps making.") >> history of archery in the Olympics ("Never thought about archery before, but that's mildly interesting.") >> people in Omaha who go to a certain bar and drink mead ("Well, that might be a fun group.") >> and, the Society for Creative Anachronism ("Oh wow! Definitely never heard of them before, but they have a group in Omaha, and they actually make beer using only medieval techniques. I want to learn to do that!").
You could even email some of the personal website owners, if they list their contact info, and make even more connections.
The modern web pretty much wiped out personal websites. Search engines got better at finding things we wanted, and things like Facebook and Twitter gave us a place to express ourselves with little to no effort. Our brains turned off.
The bigger problems started, though, when Google turned its "Don't be evil" motto into a politician's promise, the WWW became a swamp of predatory commercialism, and too many people forgot that it's fun and rewarding to connect to and help each other, person to person, even online. These days, it's hard once again to find anything via search engine that isn't overly promoted bloat, or glaringly superficial pop-culture, or just the same old boring top-sites-only.
It's enough to make one think the internet itself is boring.
Of course, it's not.
But with search engine algorhythms set to exclude everything but the most profitable, and most "mainstream"-opinioned (however that is defined at a particular time), sites - the answer to this won't be found in learning and applying "Search Engine Optimization" to your site.
Instead, here's what each of us - most especially you - need to do:
1. Create your own personal web page / site. It can literally be on any topic, and can deliver any kind of information, entertainment, journalling, ranting, etc., that you feel inclined to provide. It can be bare bones, or it can be amazingly creative. You decide! Just keep it noncommercial (save that for your other sites). If you aren't a techie type or don't have money for domain registration and hosting, you can use free sites like NeoCities. You can even learn the basics of HTML and CSS there (which is all you'll need - though you can certainly learn even more if you want to).
2. Include a "Links" page (or if you are using a 1-page site, a "Links" section). Add links to other personal web sites that are related to your topic(s), but also add links to other personal web sites related to your other interests, as well. For example, if you have a site on modern Indian poetry, but you also spend a lot of time learning about and exploring seafood recipes, include links to seafood cooking sites that you would recommend to an interested friend, as well.
3. When you come across personal web pages that are related to yours, see if the other page owner has listed contact information - and contact them. Let them know you appreciate their site and what you've gained from it so far, and invite them to your site, as well. Don't make it a marketing or manipulative ploy. Just share and enjoy, and invite them to do the same.
Don't let the lack of decent search engines these days rob you of expressing yourself on the internet, or of enjoying what other individuals are posting on their own personal websites, as well. We can find each other and the information we're interested in by adding some fun and curiousity to a bit of basic work setting up and/or exploring personal websites.
Just like the "old" days.
"..and don't throw the past away. You might need it some other rainy day. Dreams can come true again, when everything old is new again.." - from the song "Everything Old is New Again" by Peter Allen
Best regards,
Mr. Foss