This website is my own little corner of the internet. Historically though, this site, has been a bit "distant", a more professional reflection of my own self.
Its purpose has been to share documentation on things I have done, and allow people to reach me on other platforms. This site is only a small slice of my personality with Twitter and Instagram filling in the more "personal" gaps.
But recently, I have logged out of Twitter and it was over 3 years ago that I deleted Instagram entirely. My reason for getting rid of both was
- Creepy advertising. Particularly from Instagram. My wife, who still has instagram has had a number of extremely personal adverts that she never searched the web for.
- They had no purpose. Twitters main purpose for me was to "build an audience". Building an audience seems to be the catch all advice these days for influencers in the indie maker space. But, I'm not making a product at the moment - so it serves no purpose.
- Ownership of data. Slowly, I'm wanting my data to be more contained on my own website. I don't want to have tonnes of logins and platforms to check, scroll and update. I want to have my little corner of the internet that I can prune and shape.
But enough of the tin foil hat, tie dye tshirt and discount James Bond villain sayings. The question is, what am I doing about it?
Well the first step is in a new page I have added.
Introducing /photos!
As you could guess from the URL, it's a page for my photos! Specifically ones that I am proud of an label as "photography". How it works is a more exciting process that I will explain in another post. But, to cut a long story short, I can upload photos directly from my phone to my site. And all the data is kept in the repository (I may move them to a CDN in the future). On my homepage, I have also added a photos slider that displays the 5 most recent images. Soon, it will be available as an RSS feed, so that people can subscribe to it like you may follow an instagram account you like (but I'm working on that!)
The downsides
My website is obviously not a social platform. The photos I post here will not get as much exposure as on Instagram. And without using Webmentions, there is no simple way to comment on these posts.
This is just the first version of the photos page, but marks the start of me moving my data onto my own website. Next up is my reading list, tweets (notes), and music!