What should a personal website be?
What should a personal website be?
个人网站应该是什么样的？
I was responding to a new email friend today (Project Inbox 2026 is going well, thank you!) in which the subject of trying to make a personal website when your “interests are all over the place” came up. Which is as good a time as any to write down these thoughts I’ve been germinating for the last decade. 今天我正在回复一位新结识的邮件好友（“收件箱 2026 项目”进展顺利，谢谢关心！），谈话中提到了当一个人的“兴趣点极其分散”时，该如何建立个人网站。这正好是一个契机，让我写下过去十年来一直在脑海中酝酿的想法。
I’ve had this website for a long time and for the first two thirds of that time (as of this writing), I struggled with the question, “What should my website be?” I didn’t know if I should try to have a professional portfolio and résumé or, later, a blog when that got popular, or just make it a JavaScript-heavy art project to show off my 1337 skillz. I did a little of all of those things. 我拥有这个网站已经很久了，在（撰写本文时）这段时间的前三分之二里，我一直纠结于一个问题：“我的网站应该是什么样的？”我不知道是该做一个专业的作品集和简历，还是在博客流行起来后去写博客，亦或是把它做成一个充满 JavaScript 的艺术项目来炫耀我的“极客”技术。这些事我多多少少都尝试过。
Sad but true: I put off adding a bunch of things to my site for years because I was obsessing over getting the directory structures “right” the first time. One day, for whatever reason, I finally stopped worrying and just started putting stuff up and let the organization work itself out as I went. Having “stuff” to work with is important for, as the proverb goes, it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright! 可悲但真实的是：我推迟了多年才在网站上添加内容，因为我总是执着于在第一次构建时就把目录结构弄“对”。有一天，不知为何，我终于不再纠结，开始直接发布内容，并让组织结构随着时间的推移自然形成。拥有“内容”去处理是很重要的，正如那句谚语所说：空袋子难以直立！
You can see a big jump on the chronological part of the home page starting around 2017 and really taking off in 2018. It gently snowballed from there. (Just counting links doesn’t show the whole picture because some of those links go to big things and some go to small things, but it still gives a general sense.) That’s 20 YEARS before I became comfortable with the weird hybrid this site is now. 你可以看到主页的时间轴部分从 2017 年左右开始有显著增长，并在 2018 年真正起飞。从那时起，它就像滚雪球一样慢慢壮大。（仅仅计算链接数量并不能反映全貌，因为有些链接指向大型内容，有些则指向琐碎内容，但这依然能提供一个大致的感知。）我花了 20 年时间，才终于适应了现在这个网站这种奇怪的混合形态。
It has some chronological “blog-like” elements like an RSS feed, but it also has this huge flat directory of “cards” (you’re reading one now), and deeper sections devoted to particular subjects. The cards, especially, have been incredibly freeing for me to write down ideas without obsessing so much about structure. 它既有一些类似博客的时间轴元素（如 RSS 订阅），也有一个巨大的扁平化“卡片”目录（你现在正在阅读的就是其中一张），以及专门针对特定主题的深度板块。尤其是这些卡片，让我能够非常自由地记录想法，而不必过度纠结于结构。
Do you need to be an expert to write about things? I’m not sure I’d call myself an expert on anything. But I believe more strongly now than ever that non-experts should share things. And I’m still learning that it is seldom too late to start. In the above card, I make an example of the newest section of this site: Dave’s Cheese Pages. In those cheese entries, you can see me writing notes for myself and learning in public. I’m not a cheese expert, so who am I to write about cheese? Well, anyone can start reading those entries from the bottom up and learn with me. It’s an ongoing cheese adventure! 写东西一定要成为专家吗？我不确定自己算不算任何领域的专家。但我现在比以往任何时候都更坚定地认为，非专家也应该分享内容。我也在不断学习，意识到开始永远不晚。在上面的卡片中，我以本站最新的板块为例：Dave 的奶酪页面。在那些关于奶酪的条目中，你可以看到我为自己做的笔记，以及“公开学习”的过程。我不是奶酪专家，我凭什么写奶酪？好吧，任何人都可以从头开始阅读这些条目，和我一起学习。这是一场持续进行的奶酪冒险！
My hope is always that because I’m not an expert, I’m not just bringing other people along for the ride, I’m also encouraging other people to be brave, learn in public, and put their own stuff out there on their own personal websites. It can be in the form of a blog, or long-form articles, or interactive tutorials. Or just geek out about something you love. Not everything has to aim to teach! 我一直希望，正因为我不是专家，我不仅是在带大家一起体验，更是在鼓励其他人勇敢起来，公开学习，并将自己的内容发布在个人网站上。它可以是博客、长文或交互式教程的形式，或者仅仅是为你热爱的事物而疯狂。并非所有内容都必须以教学为目的！
You can do what you would normally do on “social media sites” and follow POSSE (“Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”). I do a bit of that. These are all just options. A personal website should be, above all things, personal. Meaning, its structure and content should reflect what you, as a person, want to put out there. Want to go deep on a topic? Create a deep structure. Want a ton of little topics? Have a shallow structure. I have both. 你可以像在“社交媒体网站”上那样，遵循 POSSE 原则（“在自己的网站发布，在其他地方同步”）。我也这样做过一些。这些都只是选项。个人网站首先应该是“个人”的。这意味着它的结构和内容应该反映你作为一个个体想要表达的东西。想深入探讨一个主题？那就创建一个深层结构。想要很多小主题？那就用扁平结构。我两者兼有。
Putting notes-to-self on your website with things like keyboard shortcuts for your favorite software or famous quotes you don’t want to forget, like a commonplace book, can be an amazing resource for yourself. And other people will find it useful too! I use my own site like that all the time. When I can’t remember where I stashed a note, I’ll search for it. Most (all?) of the major search engines let you narrow results to a domain, so I can find my own notes on a topic (e.g. “DWM”) from just about any computer in the world by writing my search query like so: site:ratfactor.com dwm or, if I’m being lazy (I’m usually being lazy), just ratfactor dwm.
在网站上放置备忘录，比如你最常用软件的快捷键，或者不想忘记的名言警句（就像一本“摘抄本”），这对自己来说是非常棒的资源。而且其他人也会觉得有用！我一直这样使用自己的网站。当我记不起把笔记存在哪儿时，我就会搜索它。大多数（甚至所有？）主流搜索引擎都允许你将结果限定在特定域名内，所以我可以在世界上的任何一台电脑上，通过搜索 site:ratfactor.com dwm 来找到我关于某个主题（例如“DWM”）的笔记；或者如果我懒得打字（我通常都很懒），直接搜 ratfactor dwm 也可以。
To paraphrase Linus Torvalds, “upload your stuff and let the rest of the world mirror it.” There is no wrong answer. If you want it to be a professional portfolio and résumé, do that. If you want to make fan pages for your favorite book series or music band, do that. If you want to write daily or weekly journal-like entries to get your thoughts out into writing, do that! And in time, I think you’ll discover what I did: You can actually do all of those things at the same time. 套用 Linus Torvalds 的话：“上传你的东西，让全世界去镜像它。”没有错误的答案。如果你想把它做成专业作品集和简历，那就去做。如果你想为你最喜欢的书系或乐队制作粉丝页面，那就去做。如果你想写每日或每周的日记来记录你的想法，那就去做！久而久之，我想你会发现和我一样的结论：你其实可以同时做所有这些事情。
People generally like seeing that other people are well-rounded full-featured humans. (I sure do, perhaps now more than ever!) And if somebody out there doesn’t like your website because you didn’t stick with one format or topic, well, what the heck is their opinion worth, you know what I’m saying? Keep doing what works. Drop what doesn’t. Above all, a website is malleable (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) 人们通常喜欢看到别人是一个全面且完整的人。（我确实喜欢，现在可能比以往任何时候都更喜欢！）如果有人因为你没有坚持单一的格式或主题而不喜欢你的网站，那么，他们的意见又值几个钱呢？你懂我的意思吧？坚持做有效的事，放弃无效的事。最重要的是，网站是可塑的（别让任何人告诉你反话）。
If I had just one piece of advice, it’s that you can go back and edit pages! You should edit pages. Expand things, change your mind about things, start drafts while you’ve got a great idea and maybe finish them later. Practice Digital Gardening. Do add an RSS feed, if you want, but don’t feel you have to publish everything to it! Nor do you have to put the full content of your pages in the feed (which isn’t even possible if you’re making cool interactive things!) People will question you on this and try to make you sad. But they are wrong. It is your feed. There are no rules for feeds any more than there are rules for websites. Point them to this page and tell them Ratfactor said so. 如果我只有一个建议，那就是：你可以随时回去编辑页面！你应该去编辑页面。扩充内容、改变想法、在有灵感时写下草稿，以后再完成它们。去实践“数字园艺”吧。如果愿意，可以添加 RSS 订阅，但不要觉得必须把所有内容都发布到订阅源里！也不必在订阅源中放入页面的全部内容（如果你在做酷炫的交互式内容，这甚至是不可能的！）。人们会质疑你，试图让你难过。但他们错了。这是你的订阅源。订阅源和网站一样，都没有什么硬性规则。把他们指向这个页面，告诉他们这是 Ratfactor 说的。