About my personal site
Fun back story on the name
I’ve wanted to on myname.com since I first found out what domains were. HugeDomains decided it was worth something and was squatting on it - they wanted $895. I tried negotiating with them and they wouldn’t budge.
In 2021, I was listening to an episode of the My First Million podcast where Steph Smith gave an idea for a subscription box business of FSA-eligible products. I loved the idea and literally pulled over off the highway to buy fsabox.com for $12. I ultimately decided that I wasn’t super interested in building that business out, so I listed the domain for sale. It sold a month later for $800. I used that money to finally buy alexbreen.com
What’s the goal of my personal site?
Now that I had the domain, I needed to do something with it. I’m not a freelancer, so I don’t need to use it to get clients. I don’t consider myself a blogger, so it’s not primarily an editorial site - although I may want to share some thoughts here and there.
I decided that my main goal for the site was simply to be a place to help me make friends online. I want to be able to convey what I’m about and what I’m interested in. If someone happens to come upon my site, I want them to see what I’m about and think “This guy might be worth having a beer with”.
Sites I used for inspiration
I searched Reddit/X for inspiration from others who built interesting personal sites. I’ve included some of my favorites below:
Bryant Codes (https://bryantcodes.art/) - Bryant has one of the coolest sites that I saw while doing research. It’s very immersive and I love the style - It gives retro vibes mixed and the playful styling makes it clear that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, but also has amazing taste.
Daniel Simu (https://danielsimu.com/) - Daniel’s site is another one that is designed to show off the creator’s personality. He does it with a more simple site and shows that you don’t have to have all the cool immersive features for the site to convey your personality. The site does a really good job helping you know what Daniel’s all about and linking to his different work/profiles on the internet.
Håkon Underbakke (https://www.haakon.dev/) - Really clean and minimalist. I like that it greets you upfront, tells you about his projects, and ends with a clean about me. Plus a retro video of (presumably him) as a kid at the bottom adds a cool bit of humanity/connection to it.
Niño Ross https://oninross.github.io/infinite-imaginations - Niño’s is just really clean, with really cool animations that make it feel oddly satisfying to navigate through the site. It’s interesting because it’s not trying to be “out there”, it’s just really clean and beautifully done.
Build Times (https://eduardoboucas.com/) by Eduardo Boucas - Eduardo built his site “The Build Times” to look like a traditional newspaper. His site is mostly a series of (cool) blog posts about different projects/technical concepts and this is a fun way to tie into it from an editorial perspective.
My Site
I decided to go with a corkboard inspired layout because it seemed like a simple way to stitch together the different pieces that I wanted to include on the home page. I took inspiration from Niño and tried to add some subtle animations as a nice finishing touch as you navigate the site.
