Me, but online

Kabir Goel interviewed me for his website Me, But Online. The interview has yet to be published, so I’m sharing it here for posterity.

Kabir Goel: Your website does a great job of showcasing your activities: bookmarks, writing, speaking, projects, even travel. How do you approach introducing yourself on your website?

Paul Lloyd: This is a question I’ll inevitably ask myself every time I redesign my website… only for me to get distracted by all the other things I want to build.

My home page could undoubtedly do a better job of introducing myself, and maybe I could highlight specific content that may be of interest to visitors. Regardless of how I introduce myself, the totality of my website will always be the most accurate representation of me online.

KG: A lot of people make personal websites for professional reasons. Others use them to blog. And many treat the website as an art form. What are your goals for your website?

PL: Freedom and independence. Posting directly to my website and then syndicating content to other social networks (should I want to) means I needn’t worry about those networks disappearing or ever becoming beholden to them.

If Twitter went away tomorrow I’m not sure I’d lose anything (in fact my life may be enriched). When people complain about Instagram being full of advertisements or moving away from photography, I enjoy pointing them to my own photos page, free of any such concerns, and where it remains under my control.

KG: How have your website and your goals for it evolved over the years?

PL: At first, the idea of having my own website was an exciting prospect in and of itself. It’s easy to forget what a powerful idea publishing to your own website is; it’s a shame so many are willing to give up that power to corporations whose goals rarely align with those of their users.

In the early days, content largely existed as something to build a design around, but once I moved the site onto a blogging platform, writing became easier and the site became an outlet for documenting life events and a platform for sharing – sometimes ill-conceived – rants. I sometimes write about industry topics, but I kind of take a perverse pride in not writing too much about my day job, even if my site is very much an extension and expression of it.

I think the aspect I most enjoy about having a personal website is the ability to record important – and trivial – moments, thoughts or concerns and then be able to revisit them later. Indeed, as much as I feel it’s important to include a portfolio on my site, I find having a record of the projects I’ve worked on to be more useful. I’m not sure my portfolio wins me any work these days anyway, and right now it misrepresents the type of projects I’m interested in – I really should add the last two government services I‘ve worked on.

KG: How did you design and build your website? Where did you find inspiration, what drove your architectural choices, and what issues did you encounter?

PL: Every time I come round to redesigning my site it’s usually due to a combination of factors; a new technology or platform I want to try, a desire to simplify the design and an urge to reduce any underlying complexity.

My site has always been statically generated. For a long time, I used Movable Type before moving to Jekyll and now Eleventy. Keen to play with Deno, I’ve now got one eye on Lume.

I’m more of an information organiser than a visual designer and, attuned to minimalism rather than anything overly decorative, I typically end up with something that’s fairly restrained and paired back. The current design lacks much personality and I’ve been thinking of a mid-life refresh; perhaps using an extended typeface for headings and introducing some more colour.

A long-running issue I have is combining the personal and the professional in one place. I could build two websites of course, but designing one site I’m happy with is headache enough! It also feels somewhat deceptive to present two different versions of myself online. One of the benefits of getting older is you end up caring less about this stuff, so one website it is and shall remain.

KG: You’re the creator of IndieKit, which is “the little server that connects your personal website to the independent web.” What is the independent web and how does IndieKit help further its mission?

PL: The IndieWeb is a community of personal websites, connected by a common set of standards. These follow the principles of publishing content at your own domain name and owning your data. Indiekit lets your website use these standards, connect with this community, publish content to your website and syndicate it to popular social networks.

While I very much believe in the ethos behind the IndieWeb, I find some of its documentation and communication to be esoteric and exclusive – among a plethora of confusing standards, there are acronyms aplenty. In many ways, it’s a bit like a standards body; there’s important work being done and while it’s great that this is conducted in the open, it’s not particularly approachable.

Indiekit is an attempt to bring a user-centred approach to this work, and make it easier for more people to own their content and data. I am somewhat held back by my technical knowledge – Indiekit has been an exercise in learning JavaScript and Node.js – so the software is a little more difficult to set up than I’d like it to be. I’d also like to work with a content designer to make the documentation clearer.

However, the goal for the project will remain the same: to provide an accessible, adaptable and approachable publishing platform, that just happens to be powered by IndieWeb standards under the surface.

KG: What’s your advice for people building their own personal websites?

PL: I think having a personal website is one of the few places online where you don’t have to answer to others, so in that respect, I’d say don’t be afraid to experiment and remember that there is no right way to build a personal website.