Every week or so I check the links on my site's links page. Any that fail are marked, and any marked links that fail a second check are usually deleted. However sites that I think are "important" in some way (a purely personal judgement, it must be said) are archived off and re-checked occasionally in case they reappear. I sometimes try to track down the new URL if I think a site may have moved. Some hosts are just flaky, I know, so I re-check those more carefully (I'm looking at you, 0catch.com!).

Be that as it may, I've noticed that the total number of links has been gradually declining over the past couple of years or so. That is, I've deleted more dead links than I have added new ones. Of course, dead links only occur when the owner has lost interest to the point of not renewing their hosting, or in the case of a free host, the provider goes bust or whatever. It's my perception that there are a lot of sites which, although still reachable, haven't been updated for a long time.

I don't hunt down freebies as voraciously as I once used to, so I may be missing some new sites that I once would have added to my page. And I'm probably being more picky about the ones I do add. But I wanted to see if anyone else agreed: is the personal site on the way out? Now there are freebie hosts like Renderosity and ShareCG available, and online galleries such as deviantArt, do fewer artists now feel the need to set up their own site?

As an aside, if you know of any cool sites that are not on my links page, and you think they should be, please let me know. I generally only consider places that have at least some free 3D content. I do include some texture and backgrounds sites, but I don't try to cover them all. I wouldn't normally include a gallery or forum site unless it had free downloads somewhere. If free registration is required, or there's adult content, that isn't a barrier. I have markers to warn of that.

Of course, you may take this opportunity to proudly state that your site is still going strong, and I say hurrah, good for you. :) But my real point is to do with the overall trend.

Speaking as one of those old links on your list, I think your assumption is right.  When ShareCG came along, I immediately stopped putting new stuff on my own website and put it all on ShareCG. 

My Python directory still gets a few hits each day via Morphography, so it's not futile; but I'm starting to feel a bit guilty that people continue to pick up my obsolete stuff.  (Well to be exact, it's not all of my stuff; it's almost entirely the Jiggles script, for obvious reasons.)

How else is one supposed to animate realistic Jello in Poser?

[CITATION NEEDED]

I think, with the growth of Web 2.0, personal websites are probably on the way out... to a great extent.

ISP's don't tend to give out free space as part of connectivity packages, as far as I know, like they used to... but that's okay, I guess... there's Google Sites...

...and most folk on the web are seemingly all about Tumblr or Facebook Pages or Pinterest or YouTube... or whatever the next latest, coolest new social web start up is... and then everything else is just a load of Wordpress, Blogger, etc, blogs about the latest things on Tumblr or Facebook or Youtube

I'm pretty sure there's a big proportion of web users now who don't venture much past Facebook.

Not everyone is keen to spend around £70 per annum on unlimited bandwidth (or less if you can live with bandwidth caps) with full php and .htaccess customisation options, etc, largely for their own amusement, like what I do

Just so I can play around with developing things like this:

http://www.renderobotica.com

...to what end, I don't rightly know yet...or host higher resolution image galleries etc.

But, I figure, I spend more on playing the National Lottery... and once that pays off... well, I won't give a monkeys even more... :biggrin:

Actually... I think it's probably pretty important, for the health of the internet, that the likes of us continue to host our own sites...

"Actually... I think it's probably pretty important, for the health of the internet, that the likes of us continue to host our own sites..."

Good point.  Individual websites are sort of like small-town stores.   They don't get enough traffic to be commercially viable.  But in a Superstar culture where everyone constantly goes to the places where everyone goes, because everyone is going there, it's important to have some non-everyone places available.

Yeah, don't put much on my own site anymore. Put em on ShareCG ;).

Laurie

Quote - Yeah, don't put much on my own site anymore. Put em on ShareCG ;).

Laurie

I still checked in at your site, Laurie, and got some things from there directly

I find when folk put their website link in their forum footer etc. here I do tend to find their stuff more readily than if it's just kicking about in the giant mesh vat that is sharecg... not that I don't constantly rummage around there too... of course.

Well, I've had my ShareCG link in my sig as well for awhile ;). Just makes it easier :)

Laurie

Most of the artists that I know have moved to blogs over the full personal website. Easier to maintain and cheaper on the pockets.

Yeah... the thing is too, because folk are used to the whole web 2.0 experience now, and constantly updating feeds of content, it's pretty hard for a static, few pages worth of personal website to really cut it.

It's no longer down to (just) the quality of the content... to get an audience...but rather about the quality of the interaction... to get a user base (or customer base, if your selling something). Anyway.... there's pros and cons to the way it's going I reckon.

Overall, I rather like the way Doug Rushkoff, author of the book "Program or be Programmed" explains his somewhat more cynical take on the new paradigm...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/21/doug-rushkoff-hello-etsy

Quote - http://www.renderobotica.com

LOL. Don't you think you might collect some URL typos at that domain?

Thanks for the comments, folks. Maintaining a full web site is more work than a blog or such-like, and more expensive if it has any pretensions to stability and up-time. Let's hope there will continue to be loonies like me and my fellow site owners for a long time to come. No offence, fellow site owners, if you consider yourselves not to be loonies. :)

Quote - > Quote - http://www.renderobotica.com

LOL. Don't you think you might collect some URL typos at that domain?

Thanks for the comments, folks. Maintaining a full web site is more work than a blog or such-like, and more expensive if it has any pretensions to stability and up-time. Let's hope there will continue to be loonies like me and my fellow site owners for a long time to come. No offence, fellow site owners, if you consider yourselves not to be loonies. :)

He he... hmmm, I should really start tracking the stats

I've noticed recently that more and more model makers, animators and poser artists are posting their efforts on youtube, how i made it, what i did, less and less new freesites, i guess it's the celeb culture taking hold. You haven't achieved anything unless you've had a few thousand hits on youtube. which leads me on to a question....why dont rendo have a dedicated site for animations, be easy enough to maintain, a subsite on youtube or something, it would make sense and bring exposure to the community, hey they could even have a slideshow of the best of the weeks gallery choices......

btw ockham, i've never got jiggles to really really wobble that jello realistically ;)

i keep paying my webhost (yahoo small business),

to avoid  the banners and advertising that pay for free hosting. 

i've thought about selling portfolio space on it, one day. full promos, not banners.

Quote - I think, with the growth of Web 2.0, personal websites are probably on the way out... to a great extent.

ISP's don't tend to give out free space as part of connectivity packages, as far as I know, like they used to... but that's okay, I guess... there's Google Sites...

...and most folk on the web are seemingly all about Tumblr or Facebook Pages or Pinterest or YouTube... or whatever the next latest, coolest new social web start up is... and then everything else is just a load of Wordpress, Blogger, etc, blogs about the latest things on Tumblr or Facebook or Youtube

I'm pretty sure there's a big proportion of web users now who don't venture much past Facebook.

Not everyone is keen to spend around £70 per annum on unlimited bandwidth (or less if you can live with bandwidth caps) with full php and .htaccess customisation options, etc, largely for their own amusement, like what I do

Just so I can play around with developing things like this:

http://www.renderobotica.com

...to what end, I don't rightly know yet...or host higher resolution image galleries etc.

But, I figure, I spend more on playing the National Lottery... and once that pays off... well, I won't give a monkeys even more... :biggrin:

Actually... I think it's probably pretty important, for the health of the internet, that the likes of us continue to host our own sites...

Yep, was thinking along the same lines myself.

I've had various blogs, etc (and these are full websites, you understand) as well as several ecommerce sites, for 12 years. Self-hosted is really the only way to go if you care about keeping control of your own content. Almost nothing that I'd "shared" on the web through my sites that I later wanted to remove from view is still discoverable. And I don't have to be concerned about interpreting the legal ramifications of various user agreements or sudden changes to privacy settings that leave undesirable things open to public view.

Moreover, I've never appreciated the censorship inherent in sites such as Facebook. DeviantArt is pretty darned lax when it comes to that sort of thing, but they still don't permit some things. While I haven't done it, I like to know I could post outright porn if I wanted to. My host allows all legal content. That works for me.

Interesting observation. Apparently the desire for individual expression represented by a standalone website has been subverted by the mad rush to be part of the hive mind that is social media. Between that and 'reality' television, I have begun to appreciate nature's strategy of finite existence. Some things I'd rather not live to see :-)

Quote - Interesting observation. Apparently the desire for individual expression represented by a standalone website has been subverted by the mad rush to be part of the hive mind that is social media. Between that and 'reality' television, I have begun to appreciate nature's strategy of finite existence. Some things I'd rather not live to see :-)

I very much like the "hive mind" analogy there... good one. Albeit, a scary concept to contemplate, in many ways, at the same time...

I do think there are pros and cons to the emerging new internet paradigms... collective consciousness, whether that's online or indeed, in the more traditional, real-world crowd format, can be both mindless or enlightened in equal extremes of measure, I reckon...

...but the latter, enlightenment, I think does have to be fuelled by the enlightenment of individual participants; i.e. crowd as collection of actively thinking, morally introspective individuals = good; crowd as a collection of "unconscious", reactive actors = bad.

The wisdom of the crowd vs mob mentality.

He he... relevantly enough, the crowd composed encyclopedia that is Wikipedia provides a pretty good synopsis, and routes for expansion, on the underlying ideas here, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

Well... now we're definitely well and truly off-topic on an already off-topic thread I suspect? Or are we?? Ha ha!

I wouldn't call Wikipedia "crowd composed" since by all accounts, each given entry is mostly edited by a few, fiercely territorial people, if not by one, fiercely territorial individual. The reports of bullying and fighting among editors there and their hostility to newcomers make it seem almost legendary. It's only the result of a "crowd" because it spans such a large range of human knowledge. But I doubt that there's a whole lot of real collaboration going on among large numbers of people. Sure, it's one large project sharing a URL. But so is Blogger.

Hmmm... yes... I can't comment on that point, I've never attempted to submit any edits to Wikipedia myself.

I should probably have phrased that "supposedly crowd composed".

Course, if such accounts are in any way true, that in itself is sort of interesting, or perhaps telling, as a phenomenon, I suspect... relative to the off-topic topic we seem to have ended up on here?

I've never attempted to submit edits either. I have very little interest in the project beyond using it to answer quick and basic trivia type questions, the validity of which answers do not need to be verified.

However, I have read quite a few articles on it, since it attracts attention as a sort of phenomena, and that is interesting. And whenever I've noticed vandalism, I've read the history of edits, which can be quite amusing.

But I'm by no means a wikipedia expert! ;) I'm just mouthing off some half formed opinions based on passing attention and a bit of reading. Don't take my word for it.

Although i still put my occasion freebie on share CG
I use two FREE artist sites for my professional still  image gallery
and animation clips thatI showpotential freelance clients

http://www.coroflot.com/anabran

https://vimeo.com/fitramediainteractive

they both have a pretty clean look and are FREE

Cheers

With wikipedia, I guess it depends how it's used. If it's taken as a structured index of summarised citations, it's probably reasonably okay... I certainly find it to be pretty effective and useful on that basis. It's no substitute for proper research and verifying one's own sources, etc, of course... but it can be a decent tool as part of that process I guess.

I'm not an academic, so my own usage is generally on a pretty trivial basis...

Quote - Although i still put my occasion freebie on share CG
I use two FREE artist sites for my professional still  image gallery
and animation clips thatI showpotential freelance clients

http://www.coroflot.com/anabran

https://vimeo.com/fitramediainteractive

they both have a pretty clean look and are FREE

Cheers

Yeah Vimeo is a nice service. Hadn't heard of Coroflot, but it looks nice and slick, unobtrusive.

http://www.behance.net is another good artist site, I think, in a similar vein...

Cheers

The Web started out as a democratic system but we need a filter. The upshot is that we look at the best known (best financed) sites. Utube, Gooogle. Rendersity etc. Democracy _ unlimited choice and cannot work.

I'm obviously too old to understand the need for constant connection, knowing where everyone is and what they're doing. Maybe the hive will compensate for what seems to me to be the inevitable loss of individual imagination, comtemplation, the virtues of solitude etc.

For better or worse, the internet means that the crowd/mob might be led/motivated by a broader range of individuals than the usual suspects standing on a table in a beer hall somewhere. People that would never lead a movement IRL may lead one in cyberspace - again, for good or ill. That's the ideal at least. In fact, I think that already we see the usual folks secretly funding 'movements' e.g. 'astroturf', planting memes etc. Even supposedly liberal governments are beginning to try to restrain things on the 'net as well. You just can't have anyone saying anything -someone might actually speak the truth. At any rate, like everything else, I think Eric Hoffer pretty much sums it up,

"Every great cause, begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

What is the best free website host, not counting the NSA fronts...?

Quote - What is the best free website host, not counting the NSA fronts...?

zymic.com, 000webhost.com, awardspace.com are a few good ones that I have used.  What's "NSA"?

What's "NSA"?

*Google certainly. Thanks for the suggestions.

Quote - What's "NSA"?

*Google certainly. Thanks for the suggestions.

I mean what does it stand for?

NSA = National Sheep Association?

EDIT: Ah..."no strings attached", I think?

Attached Link: Iceberg Tip

Quote - EDIT: Ah..."no strings attached", I think?

Oh.  Gotcha.

I don't don't know if it's the best but anglefire has free hosting. They have a web builder tool they like to tout but you don't have to use it if you don't want.

I've been using yola for a few years. (the free version)

Laurie

I don't know about hosting freebies, but for me I post most of ;my images on facebook ... and here, I also have a business site that I plan on having up by the end dof this month.  I've considered offering free Poser itemes there in a special section eventually.  But I do see a lowing interest in personal sites.  I think social networking sites have a lot to do with that.  The content isn't going down so much as the stucture is changing, don't you thnk?

  t lest that is how I see it.

Boni