In the age of Facebook and LinkedIn, a personal website seems almost outmoded. There are many services that can host content better, get projects up and running faster, and make it all look prettier than a guy tinkering with HTML/CSS and Linux in his spare time can manage. In spite of this, I am drawn to this sort of project. Eventually I hope that this page will be helpful to people I'm connected with, from friends and family to potential employers, but for right now I'm doing this for me.
Learning new tools is something I enjoy and something that helps to motivate me. In college, when I was feeling bored with homework in Math and Physics, I taught myself LaTeX as a way stay engaged with my work. Not only am I creating this site as a way to learn more, but I'm more likely to stay engaged with the site and keep it up to date if there are fun projects to figure out along the way.
Control over my own information is another factor. It has been a bit dismaying to see how much ownership and control social media companies have asserted over their users’ data. While I have no plans to abandon those platforms, I like the idea of having a space that is fully mine and is flexible enough to let me try new and different things.
Finally, this strikes me as being cost effective. Cloud hosting is pretty cheap right now, and it can grow with me at my own pace. Free services on other platforms are often limited, and I would rather not find myself with an extra bill if I want to do something out of the box.