Building your own corner of the web

I spent twenty minutes yesterday trying to read a recipe through a trellis of pop-up videos and cookie consent banners that felt like a digital hostage situation. The modern internet is mostly a shopping mall built on a swamp, where you pay for the privilege of being tracked. If you want to actually own your presence in 2026, you have to stop renting space on platforms that hate you.

Buy a domain name that isn't your full legal name if you can help it. Use a static site generator or a dead-simple host like Neocities or Carrd because anything more complex will just rot. You don't need a database to tell people who you are. Complexity is the enemy of longevity, and you want this site to outlive the current crop of AI-bloated search engines.

Skip the blog for the first six months. Most people start a blog, write two posts about their productivity setup, and then let the site die out of guilt. Instead, focus entirely on a robust About page that actually says something. Tell us what you believe in, what you've built, and what you're currently obsessed with.

An About page is a manifesto, not a resume. It should be the most interesting thing you've ever written about yourself. Avoid the third-person professional bio that sounds like it was written by a frightened HR intern. If the reader doesn't know whether you're a crank or a genius by the third paragraph, you've failed.

Put up a list of your favorite things that have nothing to do with your job. List the three books that changed your mind or the specific brand of mechanical pencil you refuse to trade for anything. These small details act as digital handshakes. They give people a reason to email you that isn't a networking request.

Make sure your site is fast and ugly. A site that loads in half a second and looks like it was designed in 1998 is infinitely more charming than a slick, bloated template that takes five seconds to reveal a newsletter signup form. Minimal CSS is a moral imperative. Use a font that people can actually read without squinting.

Link to your friends. The web used to be a physical map of connections, not a series of isolated silos where you hope the algorithm blesses your post. Create a links page and put people on it who deserve the traffic. If we all stop feeding the social media giants and start pointing at each other, the mall might actually start feeling like a neighborhood again.

The goal isn't to be an influencer. The goal is to be findable by the right kind of weirdo. You are building a porch, not a billboard. Sit on it and wait for someone interesting to walk by.