The Brand Called URL

2. The personal is the professional.

There used to be a clear boundary between the professional and the personal. But the line between the two is blurring, especially for free agents and entrepreneurs. When you go to design your personal Web site, don't let your site sink into this false divide. You are what you do. That's not all that you are, but it's a very important component -- and a very powerful expression -- of who you are.

If you want to see how some people have put this principle into practice, just look at such sites as Matt Drudge's Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) or Harry Knowles's Ain't It Cool News (www.aint-it-cool-news.com). The site, the brand, and the person are all bound up together. And that's precisely the point. Matt Owens's Volumeone (www.volumeone.com) is another great example. It's a beautiful Web site -- but it's more than that. As well as being a portfolio, it's also a kind of online magazine about design. His views, his experiences, and his tastes come through as much as his work does.

This principle has slowly begun to take hold. That's why having a personal domain to associate with your email address or URL has become the most prestigious domain that you can have -- so much so that people are having to register their domains in other countries, since the ones that they want are already taken in the United States. If work is personal, why shouldn't domains be personal too? Few of us want to hide behind the banner of a big company. More of us want to hang out a shingle. And if you hang out that shingle, you probably want to put your name on it.

Now, that doesn't mean that you have to run out right now and register TrudyLopez.com or DigitalDan.com. But you should think about the way you present yourself online. So, for example, if you're not going to get your own domain, pick a service that's compatible with who you are. If your brand is identified with raging against the machine, you don't want "att.net" or "msn.com" as part of your URL. And if you want to keep some aspects of your online life private, as many of us do, you may want to establish double domains: private.nathan.com and public.nathan.com.

The underlying design principle: Be direct. Tell people who you are, and don't try to separate the "work you" from the "you you."

3. You're not just building a Web site. You're starting a conversation.

You're not building a site just so that Web crawlers can log your presence on the Net. The whole point is to generate conversations with other people. So ask yourself, Is this site going to make people think? Is it going to make them want to talk to me? Is it going to make them want to refer the site to someone else?

Other people have to be able to reach you: to rebut you, to challenge you, to inspire you, to entertain you -- and yes, to hire you. You've got to design your site with those goals in mind. That's why most so-called community sites don't work: They don't truly foster conversation.

But the ones that do work take this principle and run with it. Some of them are touching, such as Abbe Don's Bubbe's Back Porch (www.bubbe.com) and Derek Powazek's Fray (www. fray.com). Others are frivolous but somehow satisfying, such as Derek's Kvetch (www.kvetch.com). Whatever the specifics of each site may be, they all offer their audience a voice. They all invite conversation, although you don't need to participate in these sites to appreciate them. This lesson is one that publishers are already starting to learn: If you don't give people an opportunity to participate, when they do come to your site, they'll just move on.

Another rule: The more personal the conversation, the better. But making a conversation personal requires involvement and accessibility -- two attributes that scare most people. And opening yourself up to feedback can sometimes be unpleasant. The kind of feedback that most people get from their site is usually encouraging, interesting, and thoughtful -- but sometimes it can be vitriolic and nasty. Some people will interpret your having a site as an open invitation to be mean. But that's not enough of a danger that you should avoid creating a site altogether. After all, none of us enjoy all of the conversations that we have in our offline life, but we don't use that fact as an excuse to refrain from all conversations. And in business, conversations are essential to getting anything done.