Personal website

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature rather than content pertaining to a company, organization or institution. Personal web pages are primarily used for informative or entertainment purposes but can also be used for personal career marketing (by containing a list of the individuals skills and experience and her CV), social networking with other people with shared interests, or as a space for personal expression.

The terms "personal web site", "personal home page", "home page" or "homepage" are also used to refer to personal web pages. These terms do not usually refer to just a single "page" or HTML file, but to a collection of webpages and related files under a common URL or Web address. In strictly technical terms, a site's actual home page (index page) often only contains sparse content with some catchy introductory material and serves mostly as a pointer or table of contents to the more content-rich pages inside, such as résumés, family, hobbies, family genealogy, a web log/diary ("blog"), opinions, online journals and diaries or other writing, examples of written work, digital audio sound clips, digital video clips, digital photos, or information about a user's other interests. Many personal pages only include information of interest to friends and family of the author. However, some webpages set up by hobbyists or enthusiasts of certain subject areas can be valuable topical web directories.

Since the early 1990s, most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provided a free small personal, user-created webpage along with free Usenet News service. These were all considered part of full Internet service. Also several free web hosting services such as Geocities provided free web space for personal web pages. These free web hosting services would typically include web-based site management and a few pre-configured scripts to easily integrate an input form or guestbook script into the user's site. Since the early 2000s, the rise of blogging and the development of user friendly web page designing software made it easier for amateur users who did not have computer programming or website designer training to create personal web pages. Some website design websites provided free ready-made blogging scripts, where all the user had to do was input her content into a template. An example of this kind of application is My Blog. At the same time, a personal web presence became easier with the increased popularity of social networking services, some with blogging platforms such as LiveJournal and Blogger. These websites provided an attractive and easy-to-use content management system for regular users. Most of the early personal websites were Web 1.0 style, in which a static display of text and images or photos was displayed to individuals who came to the page. About the only interaction that was possible on these early websites was signing the virtual "guestbook".

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