Show me your favorite minimal personal websites

October 12, 2022 12:05 PM

Every now and then I come across a website that is very professional, shows contact information, links to random projects completed over the years, and maybe has some photos or other useful stuff. Here is an example. I'm looking for more examples I can check out so I can design my own.

I'm super sporadic in how I update content online, so I know there will be times I use the site a lot and times I use it hardly at all.

I want to create something that doesn't get too rusty when it's not being used, and something that doesn't require learning new software or interfaces or coding or updating servers or any of that over the next 10 - 20 years.

Can you please share examples of websites like this? I want to look at a ton to help me decide what kind of site structure, layout, and content would be good to have on a website that will represent me professionally.

Thanks!

posted by rebent to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Best answer: I'll throw mine into the mix - I recently redesigned the homepage with a very 1996 aesthetic.
posted by COD at 1:11 PM on October 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Ken Benoit An LSE Prof of Computational Social Science (who does a lot of text manipulation via cmd and coding). Clean, lots of info but well-structured.

Jindra Lacko
(quite elegant) Data analysis and visualization especially in R.

Just two sites I enjoy visiting, I cannot speak for how they're coded.
posted by unearthed at 1:32 PM on October 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I want to create something that doesn't get too rusty when it's not being used, and something that doesn't require learning new software or interfaces or coding or updating servers or any of that [over the next 10 - 20 years.]

So the 10-20 years part is theoretically possible, but might be a bit much to ask for, the only thing that comes to mind is just a plain old HTML and CSS website. IE, no content management system, little to no JavaScript.

Based on your criteria, I will caution you on taking advice you might get about using a static site generator like Eleventy, Gatsby, Jeckyll or Hugo.

These are the latest hotness in web dev, and they are indeed, awesome. They sound ideal in the abstract BUT, they can be a bear to learn if you're not willing to put in the time. I built my last website using one, and it was a great learning experience. However, like you, I don't update my site often, and two months went by and I completely forgot how to publish a post. Also, one of the pages on the site is blank because there was a breaking change in the software and I've been too lazy to fix it.

Any CMS with a database (which is uh basically all of them) will be easier to publish in some ways, but these come with their own pitfalls. Security is a major one of them. New security exploits targeted at Wordpress sites, for example, come out all the time and you could run into a situation where in 5 years, version[X] is no longer supported by your webhost and you either have to upgrade it or it goes blank. There are other issues related to CMS-based sites as well that make me hesitant to recommend using one.

So if you REALLY want a hands-off, resilient website. Pure HTML/CSS and minimal (or no) JavaScript is the way to go.

I don't have any specific sites, but you may want to explore the Brutalist Website genre. I'm not a huge fan of the term, but it speaks exactly to what you're looking for: no frills, stripped down websites. Here's a good overview. And here's a directory of sites identified as such.
posted by jeremias at 1:47 PM on October 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I find substacks to be pretty minimal.

Granola Shotgun too, though it has loads of pictures and comments.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:09 PM on October 12, 2022

Best answer: Here's a couple that seem pretty clean, professional and friendly (to me):
Learn LaTeX
A personal blog I saved a link to once
posted by forthright at 3:01 PM on October 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Gossip's Web has a directory of personal websites, many of which match your description. There's also plenty of weird/complex/nonprofessional stuff in it, but I think clicking through might be fruitful for you.
posted by wesleyac at 7:15 PM on October 12, 2022

I don’t necessarily think in your position you should use Hugo*, but a lot of the example sites using the Congo theme may be up your alley. A lot of Hugo themes probably are.

* I like it, though. I have my Hugo+Congo page hosted on Github Pages, automatically redeploying when I push changes. Link to my very bare-bones site (mostly I just don’t have a good use for it atm) in my profile.
posted by supercres at 8:45 PM on October 12, 2022

Response by poster: Thank you all so much for your suggestions. They've been great so far!

I found this site - Blot.im - that allows the creation of really bare-bones websites. Here are some examples that I liked:
https://www.skellis.net/
https://ianamurray.work/
https://www.aarondowd.com/
https://www.tillmanjex.info/
posted by rebent at 6:06 AM on October 13, 2022

Buster Benson has had a variety of minimal designs over the years. Right now, it's quite minimal indeed.
posted by ourobouros at 2:28 PM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't want to throw too much cold water onto your enthusiasm, because I guess it really depends on how much flexibility you're willing to give your original criteria:

I want to create something that doesn't get too rusty when it's not being used, and something that doesn't require learning new software or interfaces or coding or updating servers or any of that over the next 10 - 20 years.

But Blot is exactly the sort of static site generator that I mentioned in my post above. In this case you can A.) let the folks at Blot host your site (which runs the risk of relying on them to stick around and/or maintain the infrastructure) or B.) Host it yourself.

Blot runs on Node, which is a JavaScript server framework and absolutely will need to be updated if you host it yourself. Also, a quick look online turns up examples of people struggling with the learning curve of getting things set up.

If you're choosing to go with Option A: paying a company to provide the infrastructure to host your site, personally I would consider a company who has a much higher chance of being around in 10-20 years like Wordpress.
posted by jeremias at 6:37 AM on October 14, 2022