home page

For me, my home page (http://www.iki.fi/wwwwolf/) is just a collection about personal information and it has information about some hacks and stuff. And writings. And art. And stuff like that. I don't expect anyone to take a look at it. People just do. It's strange.

It seems that I put more stuff to Everything these days than what I put to my home page, but anyway...

home page n.

1. One's personal billboard on the World Wide Web. The term `home page' is perhaps a bit misleading because home directories and physical homes in RL are private, but home pages are designed to be very public. 2. By extension, a WWW repository for information and links related to a project or organization. Compare home box.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

The purpose of a personal home page

So, what is the purpose of a personal home page?

I've always thought the most important thing is to let other people get to know you. Find out what your interests are and such.

What other people?

Well, anybody with a browser -- Friends, Strangers, and stalkers.

That doesn't make much sense. Your friends would already know you, right? And why would strangers even want to know anything about you?

Um...What if you've got friends that you haven't seen in a while, and they want to know what you're up to? And suppose they've lost your address and phone number, and you've moved three times in the past five years? All they need to do is google your name and there's your page --with your photo and a description of what you do, and maybe a current email address.

Good point. But what if your name is John Smith?

I really can't help it if your parents couln't come up with an original name. What were they thinking?

"The purpose of a personal home page" E2 Writeup, Copyright 2002 Frank Grimes.

This writeup is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5. (For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ ) Alternatively, permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2. (For details, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html)

--Frank Grimes, 2007

The term "home page" is used for a website that belongs to a person or thing. Also it can used as a term for the page you set off from in your web browser. Finally it's used as a description of the main page of a website which serves as an introduction and start point for exploring the rest of the site.

Personal home pages tend to house peoples weblogs and up to date ways to get in touch, and often some content they have made (art, programs, photos etc).

Similarly "things" have home pages designed often as gathering point for people intested in a topic, where they can get in touch and share news about whatever the homepage is dedicatd to. Subject oriented hompages tend deffer from regular web sites in that they are genrerally focused on their topic, where as other sites are more general (such as e2) or provide a service (such as google).