Nice personal website

This is kind of a scrapbooky page that collects all kinds of links about having a nice personal website if Gemini is too restrictive for what you want to do.

First published January 7, 2025.

Most recently updated September 6, 2025.

I would like to point out that once you have your website up and running, large language models like ChatGPT and Claude and Google’s Gemini, thanks to gazillions of asked-and-answered questions on Stack Overflow, are VERY good at answering questions like “How do I _______ in HTML/CSS/JavaScript?”. Last I checked, the guides below were written before those kinds of tools were widely available or assume that you don’t want to use them for whatever reason(s).

HOWEVER…

The first time I really realized how useful source control (Subversion at the time, although everyone uses Git now) was, even singleplayer, was when I was working on my website and made a complete mess of things and didn’t know how to get back to where things were still looking OK and not totally messed up. Reverting to the last known good commit with just one command, undoing the state of everything back to when everything still looked OK, was nothing short of revelatory. Man, that saved my bacon.

You know what’s good at turning your website from something that looks OK to something that looks messed up in ways you can’t fix yourself? Large language models like ChatGPT and Claude and Google’s Gemini and Copilot hooked up to editors like Visual Studio Code and Cursor that largely have free rein over your website’s markup and styling and code.

While you probably shouldn’t embark on a detour (of nontrivial difficulty, that may leave you running and screaming) to learn Git before making a website of your own unless you really want to, having a website will give you a VERY good reason to learn Git. A much stronger reason than having a mere Gemini capsule will, thanks to all the styling options that one can bungle.

Just sayin’.

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How to have not just the website, but the entire server underneath as well

Propaganda in favor of personal websites in general, and having a personal website in the first place

How to actually make your site

The different vibes your new site could have, easily

Using build tools (or not) on your website

Things you can put on your website (or not)

If you want to ape the ’90s look directly

Blogging-specific advice

Actually just writing anywhere, not even necessarily in public

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