Personal Websites Aren’t Dead
What’s going on, Internet? This post “Personal Websites Are Dead” has been making the rounds this week and it’s as dumb as it sounds. Naturally, I disagree. Strongly.
“Personal websites are dying because platforms got better.”
“Your Substack profile is a website.”
The post boils down to this: platforms are easier, reach is outsourced, maintenance is annoying, and feeds have replaced homepages. Sure. But that’s not proof personal websites are obsolete. It’s proof most people stopped valuing ownership.
The web didn’t change. People did.
The tradeoff is simple. You either own your space or you rent one. Renting is convenient until the landlord changes the locks, rewrites the rules, or decides you don’t fit the algorithm today.
A personal website isn’t about traffic spikes or “momentum”. It’s about autonomy: opting out of surveillance feeds, tracking, friction, and platform churn. A corner of the internet that isn’t trying to convert, optimise, or harvest anything.
If anything, the personal web movement shows the opposite of what this post shared on Medium (lol) claims. More people are tired of platform dependency. More people are building small, simple sites again. Not for reach. For identity. For community. For longevity. For personal archives and homes on the web that don’t disappear when a company pivots.
Maintenance can be a burden depending on your skill level, but it’s all part of the craft. If someone finds updating a theme (easy example - I know) too hard, fine. But it’s not evidence the personal web is dying. It’s evidence they were never that invested in the web to begin with. Which brings me back to a question I keep asking: why isn’t making websites easier by now?
Personal websites aren’t dead. They’re just not fashionable. And that’s fine. The open web has always thrived on the people who keep publishing, keep tinkering, and keep owning their corner without needing permission.
The future of the web doesn’t belong to platforms. It belongs to whoever shows up and keeps building.
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