Is it essential to have personal websites?
alabut: Yes, utterly and absolutely.If you're a designer: personal websites are a sandbox where you can experiment with new designs, see what works for what kind of content or app, try out latest trends (if you're like that) or buck them with your own style.There's a book on the subject by Joe Shepter called Personal Web Sites: Top Designers Push the Boundaries with Experimental Design and Graphics.Amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/cfqz67If you're a coder: your site can give you a place to tinker with building basic projects like a blogging engine, picture portfolio, a useful app or etc. And if you blog out your process and share what you've learned, you can slowly build relationships with others and some googlejuice for your efforts.These are all things you need to try on your personal corner of the internet that you can call home and that has your stamp on it - being able to customize a theme on someone else's site isn't enough.