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.