How to Create a Personal Website: The Decisions That Come First

What if I genuinely don't know who my primary audience is yet?

Think about who you've actually wanted to send a link to in the past few months — that real, specific memory is usually a better guide than an abstract attempt to define an audience from scratch.

Is it a problem if my answer to "what's the one action" changes over time?

No — the site can and should evolve as your goals change; the point is having clarity for the current version, not locking in a permanent answer.

How honest do I need to be about what I currently have to show?

Completely honest — designing around content that doesn't exist yet is exactly what produces the half-finished "coming soon" sections that undermine trust more than a smaller, complete site would.

Should these decisions be made alone, or is it useful to talk them through with someone else?

Talking them through with someone who knows your work can surface blind spots, particularly around what you actually have to show — you often underestimate your own relevant work.

What if my available time or budget only supports a very minimal site?

That's a completely legitimate answer — a well-built single page beats an ambitious multi-page plan that never gets finished within your actual available time.

How do these planning decisions differ if I'm building for a business versus purely personal use?

The underlying questions are the same, but a business context usually makes the target audience and desired action clearer faster, since there's typically a more specific commercial goal driving the site.

Should I write these decisions down, or is thinking them through mentally enough?

Writing them down, even briefly, tends to expose vague or contradictory thinking that stays hidden when the process is purely mental — it's a small extra step that catches real problems before they become baked into the finished site.

What if my answers to these questions conflict with each other?

That conflict itself is useful information — it usually means one of the underlying goals needs to take priority over the other, and resolving that tension now is far cheaper than discovering it after the site is already built.

How much time should this planning phase actually take?

For most people, a single focused sitting — an hour or two of genuine thinking — is enough to reach real clarity, though the value comes from honesty, not from the time spent.

Is it possible to over-plan and delay actually starting the build?

Yes — these decisions are meant to take a single focused session, not become an extended research project of their own; once you have honest, specific answers, moving to execution is the right next step.

Should I involve other people in making these decisions?

A trusted second opinion can be useful, particularly for the 'what do I actually have to show' question, since people often underestimate their own relevant work — but the final decisions should reflect your own honest assessment.

How do these planning questions change for someone with a very unconventional career path?

The same underlying questions apply, though the answers may take more thought to articulate clearly — an unconventional path often has a more interesting story to tell once you've done the work of identifying its actual throughline.

Can these planning decisions be made differently for a business-focused personal site versus a purely career-focused one?

Yes — a business-focused site typically has a clearer, more transactional 'one action' (booking, purchasing) while a career-focused site's action is often softer (an email, a conversation), which shapes how directly the site should push toward that action.

Is it worth creating multiple draft answers to these questions before settling on one?

For genuinely difficult cases, yes — writing two or three different framings and comparing them can clarify which one actually feels most accurate and compelling before committing.

What's the relationship between this planning phase and the actual content-writing that follows?

This planning phase produces the strategic answers; the content-writing phase translates those answers into actual sentences and sections — skipping straight to writing without this groundwork tends to produce content that sounds fine sentence by sentence but doesn't add up to a coherent overall site.

Does this planning process differ meaningfully for a done-for-you build versus a DIY one?

The underlying questions are identical either way — a done-for-you service still needs your honest answers to build the right site, so this planning work isn't something outsourcing the build lets you skip.

Should I share these planning answers with whoever is actually building the site for me?

Yes, explicitly — a done-for-you service can only build the right site if it has clear, honest answers to these questions upfront, so treating this as internal-only thinking wastes the value of having worked through it in the first place.

What if I realize partway through building that my original answers were wrong?

That's a normal part of the process, not a failure — revise the specific answer that changed, and adjust the affected content accordingly, rather than treating the entire plan as invalidated by one changed assumption.