About PersonalWebsites.org

Who I Am

Hi, I'm Nick Gray. I made my first personal website in 1995 or 1996 on AOL. It was an Apple Newton Shareware fan site. Then I built an animated GIF website called GIF Animation Station. By 1997 I had my own personal website, and I've kept a blog since 2000.

In high school I started a web design company called vs3 Web Services and built sites for local businesses. Later I created BuddyGopher, a search engine for AIM buddy profiles (remember those?). I tried to turn it into a real company but that didn't work out. I've been building things on the web for about 30 years now and I still get excited every time I ship something new.

Why I Built This

Over the last couple of years, I've helped more than 40 friends set up their own personal websites. I'd get on a call, help them pick a domain, choose a platform, and actually get something live. You can see a bunch of them at /browse/tag/nickfriends.

After doing that dozens of times, I realized there wasn't a great directory for discovering personal websites. So I built one. PersonalWebsites.org is a place to find, list, and promote personal sites from real people.

Why Personal Websites Matter

I believe everyone should have a personal website on their own domain. Not because social media is bad — I use it too — but because having your own space on the internet matters.

Your personal website is the one place online that's completely yours. You control what it looks like, what it says, and it doesn't disappear when a platform shuts down or changes its algorithm. It's your home on the web.

There's a lot of talk about the "dead internet" these days — AI-generated content, bot traffic, SEO spam. I get it. But I think personal websites are one of the best antidotes to all of that. When you land on someone's personal site, you know a real person made it. That's increasingly rare and increasingly valuable. Personal sites make the web feel human again.

Submit Your Site

Have a personal website? Submit it to the directory. I'd love to include it.

Questions, feedback, or just want to say hi? Email me at hello@nickgray.net or use the contact page.