With all this talk (even if joking) about personal creator sites, I’m seriously considering setting one up, but I’m seriously going to miss the whole interacting with people thing. Any tips? How did fandom “work,” if you’ll pardon the broad question, back then?
When everything’s separate, the individual sites are archives. They’re like destination stores, not places that attract walk-in foot traffic.
Fandom has always involved socializing and interacting, but it hasn’t always been in the same place as the archive. Right now, on Tumblr, art and chitchat are mixed together. On LJ/DW fic and chitchat were mixed together. The other stuff, whether it’s vids or anything else, gets awkwardly embedded or linked to, and you go look at it directly if you’re interested. (I get way, way more views of my vids from AO3 than from Tumblr, for example. You can put a video here, but people aren’t in ‘pause to watch’ mode when they’re browsing Tumblr.)
More people had more basic tech skills, even if that’s only a super low level knowledge of html. Big social media sites are aimed at the complete tech dunce. It can be awkward, confusing, or tiring to go back. OTOH, personal sites had even more customization than the most out-there Tumblr layout.
Basically, you’ll be hanging out on Twitter or Discord or wherever and posting “Hey, I put something new up!” with a link to your art site. It’s what people do on Tumblr now for fic. Back in the day, it would have been a mailing list instead of Twitter. Human interactions are always part of it.