My advice to anyone running a personal website: Put your head down and don't listen to
anything anyone says about it. Ignore any dire pronouncements that include the words "genre," "medium," or "revolution."
Avoid referer logs, popularity rankings, and vanity searches at all costs. Use whatever tool makes sense to you. Write your code by hand or not. Distrust all political parties. Never put a label on yourself unless you're sure it's really what you are, and even then don't. Avoid cults of personality, even when they're your own.
Remember that a personal website's only defining characteristic is that it's personal. And, as such, no one
has to "get it" but you. It doesn't have to "advance the
medium" or "make the world a better place." It just has to
make your world a better place. It has to fill some need in
your life. It has to make you happy.
Do what you love, baby. And don't stop doing it for anybody.
----Taken verbatim from the 10/10/00 log on http://powazek.com whose author is the creator of http://fray.org.
Of those of us who have personal websites, how many of these guidelines would we agree with, and how many of them do we already adhere to?