While perusing the IndieWeb wiki, I stumbled upon a quote from a blog post written on adactio.com. The quote was:

My website is adactio.com. I love my website. Even though it isn’t a physical thing, I think it might be my most prized possession.

These words stayed with me after reading them. Jeremy (adactio.com) eloquently summarises a feeling I too have about my website: it is a home for my content that, despite being digital, means a great deal to me.

The phrase "internet home" is one that has stuck with me for a while. One could compare a website to a home in many ways. A "home page" is a page on the web that is yours. A personal website, by extension, is a set of pages that you own. Whether or not you built your website from scratch is not important: what matters is that you have something on the web that is on a domain you control. Having a website gives you freedom to control how your content is represented on the web, from the design down to the typography.

My personal home has expanded in scope a lot. I love working on new additions to my site, big and small. I am presently working on adding JSON Feed support to my site. Yes, adding another feed type to my site is a violation of the Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle but this is my home, a place for me to learn. I love my website and want to improve it in the ways that matter to me.

I know many bloggers have written about why they blog and have a website. I have in the past, too. I wanted to take a moment to share a reason that I don't talk about as much, thanks to the prompt from Jeremy: running a website, while sometimes tedious, is a labour of love. I can write content and publish it using a design that I personally really like. I don't worry about content accessibility on this site because everything is designed in such a way as to be easy for people to read and navigate. My site is a place where I can explore coding in a way that I otherwise cannot. I can work on things that matter to me on this site, whether it is new pages, ways to publish content, or anything else related to the inner workings behind this website.

If you have not yet started your own website, I would encourage you to do so and publish some content. See what you think. Blogging or having a website is not for everyone but you'll never know if blogging will become your next big obsession -- just like coffee is to me! -- until you give it a try. If you do start a blog, let me know. I'd love to look around and see the way in which you choose to represent your content on your site.

Also posted on IndieNews.

Bath time 💚🌿

..i have enough? No.. no 😊 pic.twitter.com/IixwR4An6K

— Robin (@Melophilus) November 18, 2021