Why You Should Have a Website – and How To Do It

You should have a website. You have something to share that only you can share,

something that other people can enjoy, learn from, and be entertained by: your life.

Most people that I tell this to laugh and tell me that they can’t think

of anything to put on a website. This is because a lot of the personal

webpages out there aren’t very helpful or even very interesting: some

poorly designed page with blinking tags and silly animations with very

little to say and a few pictures of dogs and cats and the webmaster at

various parties. Most people are afraid of falling into this mode, and

justifiably so.

But most people don’t realize the really great stuff that they have to

share: it’s not (necessarily) their pictures of their dog or their cat

or what kind of ice cream they like: most people who don’t know you

really don’t care and can’t get anything out of that. Instead, think

back on the things that you have done. Maybe you’ve written poetry

about your garden. Maybe you’ve done some pencilled sketches of a

tree-filled horizon. Maybe you play a little guitar on the side. Maybe

you’ve picked up a thing or two about carpentry. All of these things

represent valuable contributions that you could make to the rest of

mankind.

Share them! Type in your poems! Borrow a friend’s scanner to scan in

your pictures and paintings and sketches — and record that groovy guitar

lick you just came up with. Write a little piece on the correct way

to dovetail on a clothes bureau or that nifty recipe you have for walnut

cookies.

Now putting it on a website doesn’t mean it will be read by millions.

Maybe only a handful of people will, and most of those even will be

your friends and family. but in the process of realizing what you have

to share and expressing that, you will have enriched yourself. And those

handful of people who came to your page will be that much more edified

about the world. And who knows? Maybe your page will be read by

thousands of people a day! But don’t start with this mentality or you’ll

get caught up in the (false) enormity of it all.

So now I hope I’ve got you pumped up to make a page. How should you

go about doing it?