Is a personal website still relevant today?

I have to be honest, I had to think about this for a moment. But I believe the answer is a resounding yes, now more than ever!

Here’s a brief overview of what ultimately convinced me.

Master of my own content

The main reason I decided to go for it is twofold: on one hand, I’ve been intentionally less active on social media (except for the occasional visit to LinkedIn and my daily check-in on Strava), and on the other hand, I still want to share content but on my own terms.

Much has already been written about the addictive algorithms of social media, so I won’t go into that here. For those interested, I can recommend this scientific article: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11804976/.

What’s most important to me is having full control over the content I share, how it looks, and who gets to see it without having to chase the whims of a constantly changing algorithm. You don’t want to bet everything on a single horse.

You could even look at it from the opposite angle: if no one else is doing it anymore, you stand out even more by actually doing it.

Writing

I believe I should spend more time putting down in writing the things that occupy my mind, my thoughts and ideas in general.

Charlie Munger put it this way:

“If you get good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.”

There’s a lot of truth in that, and I think the only way to improve at it is by writing those ideas down and working them through.

Writing also comes with many benefits: it helps train and maintain your focus, strengthens your memory, and stimulates creativity. On top of that, it supports emotional processing and helps organize your thoughts, leading to more clarity and peace of mind.

In short: you’d have to be crazy not to invest time in it.

Playground

Lastly, I also see this personal website as a playground. A place where I can freely experiment with Drupal, test new modules, and try out creative ideas. This site was built with Webhaven, a platform I’m developing myself, but more on that later.

I still firmly believe that a well-made personal website can be worth its weight in gold.

So welcome to my personal website. I’m glad you’re here!