I’ve been building websites for a long time.
Not in the sense that I have some impressive career as a web developer or that I know everything there is to know about websites. I don’t. I just like building them.
I’ve built full WordPress websites, small one-page tools, little experiments, websites for small businesses, and websites for individuals. I’ve started projects because I thought they might become something. I’ve started others simply because I wanted to see if I could build them. I’ve even managed to sell some of them. I’ve also abandoned most of them. That’s probably the part that doesn’t get talked about much.
When people talk about starting a website, there is usually a reason behind it. Maybe they want traffic. Maybe they want to put AdSense on it and make some money. Maybe they want to build an audience around a particular subject. Maybe they have a business and need a website. Or maybe they want to build a site, grow it for a while, and sell it once it starts getting enough traffic.
I’ve done some of those things myself.
I’ve also built websites for other people, sometimes charging less than what someone who calls themselves an expert might charge. I know things. I can figure things out. I’ve spent enough time building websites to know my way around them. But I’m not an expert.
That’s probably one of the simplest ways to describe how I approach a lot of things.
I know some things, think about others, wonder about plenty more, try things, find things, build things, and then go to work.
And after doing this for years, I started wanting a website that didn’t have to be anything in particular.
That’s where Unheard.me came from.
I didn’t want another news website. I didn’t want another niche blog where I had to decide what I was allowed to write about. I didn’t want to pick one subject and spend the next few years trying to convince Google that I was an authority on it. I didn’t want another website where every article had to have a purpose beyond the fact that I wanted to write it.
I just wanted somewhere to put my thoughts.
That sounds simple, but for me it is actually quite different from most of the websites I’ve built. Most of those websites had an objective attached to them. There was something I wanted the site to do: get traffic, make money, help someone, test an idea, sell something, learn something, or see if an idea would work.
Unheard.me doesn’t really have to do any of that.
It’s my personal diary, except that it is on the internet and other people can read it.
Maybe diary isn’t quite the right word. A diary usually feels private. This isn’t. It’s more like a place where I can leave things.
If something has been on my mind and I want to write about it, I can put it here.
If I build something and feel like writing about how I built it, I can put it here.
If I find a website, tool, idea, or something else that I think is worth mentioning, I can put it here.
If I have an opinion about something, I can put it here.
If I spend some time thinking about something and still don’t have an answer, I can put that here too.
And sometimes I might write about absolutely nothing important. I think that part matters.
There is a strange pressure around having a website now. Everything seems to need a niche, an audience, a strategy, a content plan, and a reason for existing. I understand why. I’ve built enough websites to know that those things can matter. But I don’t want to apply all of that to this one.
Some things I write here might be useful. Some might be interesting. Some might be completely random. Some might make sense only because I happened to be thinking about that particular thing on that particular day. Some posts might get read by a lot of people. Others might sit there quietly for years.
I’m okay with that.
The name Unheard.me is also a little strange when you think about it. I’m putting things on the internet because I want them to be somewhere people can find them, but I don’t necessarily need everything I write to be loudly heard.
That’s not what I’m looking for.
I don’t need every post to go viral. I don’t need every thought to become a discussion. I don’t need thousands of people to agree with me. If someone finds something I’ve written and gets something out of it, that’s nice. If someone disagrees with me, that’s fine too. And if nobody reads something, it can still have been worth writing.
Maybe that’s one of the biggest differences between Unheard.me and the other websites I’ve built. With most of those sites, no visitors meant something had gone wrong. Here, not necessarily. If I write something because I wanted to get the thought out of my head and onto a page, the job is already done.
I’ve always liked the idea of making things. That’s probably why I keep coming back to websites. There is something satisfying about having an idea in your head and then turning it into an actual page that someone can visit.
I’ve made plenty of things that didn’t last. Some websites were sold. Some were abandoned. Some were probably never as good as I thought they were when I started them. That’s just how it has gone.
I don’t really see Unheard.me as an attempt to finally build the one website that will last forever either. It might change. I might change. What I want to write about might change. There might be periods when I write a lot and periods when I barely write anything. I don’t want to promise a posting schedule or pretend that I know exactly what this website is going to become. I don’t.
For now, I just know why I wanted it.
I wanted a place that belonged to me. A place where I don’t have to choose between writing about websites and writing about something completely unrelated. A place where a useful thing can sit next to a useless thing without either one needing to justify its existence. A place where I can write about something I know, something I’m trying, something I found, something I built, something I think, something I wonder about, or simply something that happened to catch my attention.
It won’t always be insightful. It won’t always be interesting. It won’t always be useful. And I’m sure I’ll write things that I’ll look back on later and think I could have written better.
That’s fine.
I have built enough websites for other reasons. This one exists because I wanted somewhere to put my thoughts.
So that’s what Unheard.me is.
At least for now.
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