A website, as I see it, is a page or group of pages maintained by an organization or individual that showcases their work and personal aesthetic. Websites can be hand-coded or made using a template, but websites don’t encompass pages on a social media platform as that’s part of the social media platform’s website rather than its own website.
With the growing popularity of social media, it seems like websites may become obsolete, but there is still interest in younger generations with making their own websites, plus social media platforms are driving creatives away with destructive algorithms and AI, so I don’t see personalized websites becoming obsolete. Personally, I like the idea of having a portfolio website showcasing my work more than I do having a portfolio page on social media.
I think we put things on the internet because it’s hard to get rid of them. While a small website could be erased without much ado, it still has personal meaning to us and those ideas will be incorporated into our next project. Even taking personal websites out of consideration, posting things on social media helps spread our ideas for better or for worse, and I would say most people hope it’s for the better. Putting things on the internet also helps in an age where everything is centralized to a few social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Discord, so it can be hard to find information that’s not on those websites where information is ephemeral. Having your own dedicated website makes it easier to share your information without fear of it being deleted by someone else.