For a while, it seemed like personal websites had become unnecessary.
Why build your own site when you can make an Instagram profile, a LinkedIn page, a portfolio on a platform or a newsletter somewhere else?
Those services are easier.
They also come with an invisible trade: your online identity lives inside somebody else's product.
Recently, more people seem interested in having a little corner of the web again.
Not necessarily because they want to become famous.
Because they want somewhere that is theirs.
The personal homepage as a room
A personal site doesn't have to be a CV.
It can be a room.
A collection of photographs. A list of things you like. A notebook. A reading list. A tiny archive. A page with a strange animation that serves absolutely no practical purpose.
The point is that it doesn't need to satisfy a platform.
There is no algorithm to please.
No character limit.
No pressure to post every day.
A slower relationship with publishing
Personal websites also make publishing feel less disposable.
A social post can be gone from attention within hours.
A page can sit quietly for years.
Someone can discover it next month.
Or next year.
That changes what is worth making.
You don't need to chase the current conversation.
You can document something you care about.
The return isn't really a return
Of course, personal websites never disappeared completely.
Developers, designers, writers and hobbyists kept making them.
What's changing is the cultural attitude around them.
Having your own site is becoming interesting again.
Not as a rebellion against platforms.
More as a complement to them.
Use the big platforms when they are useful.
Keep a home of your own when you want something permanent.
The small web
Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about the “small web”.
Not smaller technology.
Smaller audiences.
Smaller communities.
Smaller ambitions.
A site can be valuable even if a few hundred people visit it.
It can exist because the person who made it wanted it to exist.
That is a surprisingly powerful idea in a web where almost everything is measured.
Sometimes the best metric is simply:
I wanted this to be here.