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5 articles
A contact form on a one-person site is a bouncer with a clipboard. A plain email address, a short list of what lands well and an honest note about reply times does the job far better — and makes the whole site feel like a person rather than a portal.
Every few months my list of side projects turns into a tin of assorted biscuits where half of them have gone soft. Here's the entirely unscientific sorting method I've landed on, why it works more often than it should, and the two places it falls flat on its face.
Six independent UK sites — newsletters, workshop logs, a stubborn forum or two — that still feel made by a person rather than a platform. What each one gets right, why it earns a repeat visit, and how to build a shortlist of your own instead of outsourcing your taste to a feed.
A personal website is not a job application with nicer fonts. It's a place where someone should be able to hear you think. Five rules I keep coming back to, using this site — notes, projects and opinions — as the guinea pig.
Every so often I reread something I wrote two years ago and wince. Here are five confident opinions from the site's history that I no longer hold — on posting schedules, social platforms, search, what counts as entertainment, and why I was wrong about wanting a bigger audience.