Personal Web Sites
Personal web sites, more commonly known as home pages, are a common first step on the internet for people learning to build web sites. Home pages are generally identified as such by the use of ISP given or free domain space to host the site (i.e. site.com/~username or geocities.com/2345/username). Very few personal sites venture out onto purchased domains and paid hosting.
Personal sites commonly detail the real names of adult family members, their interests, general location, and some method of contact - usually an email address. If you can find a persons home page, you should be able to contact them, or at the very least have a few leads to progress with.
There are a number of personal site directories that may aid you in locating home pages. Unfortunately, these lists represent only a small number of personal sites online.
General search engines are also an option for locating personal pages, however this can be difficult at times. Search engines commonly use link popularity as part of determining a web sites rank, and it is uncommon for personal web sites to have more than a few, if any, inbound links. Brushing up on the advanced features of search engines will go a long way with these types of searches.
The popularity of blogs may also result in the steady decline of personal web sites published on the internet, making this type of search less useful as time goes on. As blogs are ready made out of the box sites, which offer free hosting, and no requirements for web page building skills, more and more will turn in this direction for their personal slice of the internet.
Updated: 28th June, 2005
|