i’m curious and would love to see more of folks’ pages dedicated to the things they care about offline. (and, selfishly, looking for inspiration for myself as well.) i know folks here have them, so want to give an opportunity to show off!
what are some ways you showcase your hobbies and things you care about on your website? how do you bring your offline life online? do you showcase them in blog posts or prefer to make specialty pages about them?
Great topic, I think this is one of the best aspects of a personal website, showcasing your interests!
I have my bookshelf where I keep track of the books that I’ve read and the books that I want to read.
My recordshelf details my vinyl collection.
I’ve recently got my comics page going where I’m slowly updating my comic book collection.
I’ve had my gameshelf page sitting as a list of games for literal years now up until recently. It’s not done by any means but it’s a work in progress that I’ll continue working on.
I’ve setup a placeholder page for my garage where I want to eventually show my Matchbox and Hot Wheels collection.
Over on the blog I’ve got a life tag where I’ve got posts from over the years that go on about every day things.
Personal websites are a great place to express our whole selves.
Remember, a personal website that states your job title is a boring website 
I have an interests section, where I’ve put my favourite music (and a concert log which I plan on restructuring to be more similar to my other pages), the media I like and my travels.
And then I have my journal, which I’ve been trying to write in daily but I’ve been in such an awful mood because of my health lately that it’s mostly filled with complaint.
But I also use all of my other “reading” sections to write about myself too. I am my own favourite topic. Haha.
(EDIT: I also have a huge filtered list of the things I like, and then a less huge, but more detailed list of the things I don’t like.)
I have a bad habit of not talking much about my hobbies and interests on my website. It’s part of my autistic masking, something beaten into me as a kid even though I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was in my 40s.
I’m trying to do better in my blog’s “entertainment” session.
wonderful thread! i seem to tend towards making specialty pages (not being as drawn to the blog format as some)
as an artist naturally one of my first pages was an art gallery :3 more recently ive made an OC page to go along with it. i dont make art or work with my ocs as much as i used to, but its still an important hobby of mine ^^ I also have a photo gallery for the few pictures I take that I like. a craft page cataloguing the craft projects ive made
recipe page both practical and fun. spring page for stuff about spring i enjoy (flowers, four leafs, tadpoles)
maybe one of these days ill make a page about my home improvements, to document how far its come, but im not sure, it almost feels too intimate to post online ^^;
Most of my site is about my hobbies and collections. I like writing about them and where I can will include a little bit of history or a “how to.”
I write the pages mostly for me and my wn amusement, but years ago I learned that back in 1922, when the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was first formed, its original mission statement was to “inform, educate and entertain”.and that’s somethingI try and remember when writing.
I’m most likely going to add a page based on my posts in the DIY thread. Fun way to recollect the things I’ve restored or built!
Having my entire Pokemon collection (with some exceptions that I have been procrastinating taking photos of lmao) on my website has encouraged me to be more organized in my ‘real life’ as well, which then makes it easier to catalog things on the website, which makes it more fulfilling to organize irl… it’s a helpful cycle that really improves my wellbeing when I have the motivation to actually just. take a picture of the things I get!
I also post some personal essays and thoughts about my life in my blog, I like them a lot and feel that they give a good insight into who I am and why I’m here and whatnot.
I feel like my online and offline lives are fairly intertwined- I post about magic, which entails things I do IRL as well as theory, and I post my art, some of which is digital and some of which is traditional media. My blog posts are often about, or at least touch on, things going on in the physical realm as well.
loooove seeing how other people do this! i guess i go for specialty pages more often, though i don’t post too much about my irl life online. my main one really is a (very much in progress!) subsite for my pets - cattledog.city! i want to add a photo gallery at some point, but we’ll see if i do that
Honestly, my website is just an extension of the things I like irl in most cases. VampSpace is my long-going vampire obsession made “physical”, The Paper mainly consists of my reading endeavors and some art and neat articles from a book I have physically. The home page is the only part mostly unrelated to offline hobbies.
I had actually not thought of this before, but I’m happy that it is such an “offline” site haha
When its about things that have happened to me or stuff i just started doing or enjoying, then i write a journal entry about it. if it’s something i like and want to share easily, i make a page for it! An example would be the page dedicated to my cat,where i plan to upload more images of her, but most notably my recipes page, which includes pictures i take of what i cook!
I have a whole section of my site for projects. Apart from writing and the website itself, all my projects are offline and off computer, and I put photos or scans of the results (and sometimes the process).
Honestly I really subscribe to the idea that i think it was you that told me this, Xandra you should do a bunch of stuff offline so that you get inspiration for your life online. I love writing about my thoughts on my website, most of which are related to my IRL life, and I consider my pokemon plush collection to be a ‘real life’ hobby that has become enriched by putting it on my website… sorting my plushies into collections has been very fun
I don’t.
If I do post content that’s personal and about my life, the most likely outcome is that down the road, I’ll be reviewing the impact that the content has on the whole site and determine that it’s distracting from the things I want people to look at.
It’s not a hard and fast rule. Some people are very good writers of anecdotes and if that’s their focus, all the power to them, but personally, I’m not interested in sharing my soul or experiences with strangers. That’s what people on the Internet are.
Where the Internet does become excellent is sharing your hobbies and works, which I would argue is distinct from your life.
While I would be inclined to agree with the previous poster above me, I can’t 100% say so because I feel like there is going to be a small ounce of real life stuff that’s going to be incorporated into your online personas/website regardless. I could just as well be wrong but the fact that a lot of things are online and very receptive to the idea of being online makes it a slight bit easier to consider online over offline advertising. Slightly.
Going to the topic on hand though, I haven’t been able to implement/incorporate any real life stuff in my current iteration of the website, but I have thought about showing off my collection of stuffed animals and figurines if not just a link to a site I use for that purpose. I do use a site called MyFigurineCollection for the purpose but I still not sold on using it a whole lot because it encourages the inner collective in my head and I have to get the official merch instead of making my own.
Maybe books read and games played could be put on the site somewhere, that’s for sure. Just haven’t been able to work on it as I end up getting - erhm, other matters… (Read: Nintendo Switch gaming and some reading of books)