A link page is not a home

The appeal is obvious. One link in a bio, a neat stack of buttons, five minutes to set up. For a while it is enough.

But look at what it actually is: your name, on someone else's template, in someone else's colours, with someone else's logo at the bottom. The most important three seconds you get — the first ones — are spent on a page that could belong to anyone.

What the link page cannot do

It cannot signal a tier. It cannot tell a story, hold a gallery behind a password, carry a calendar, or screen anyone. It is a menu, and a menu is not a restaurant.

It also cannot be found. A link page does not rank for your city; it is a dead end for search, not a door into one.

What a site does that a stack of links never will

Your own site is the room, not the sign on the door. It sets the register before a word is read, keeps the private things private, and — the part the link page can never match — it is yours, at an address no platform can restyle or switch off.

Keep the link page if you like it, as a signpost. Just make sure it points at somewhere that is actually yours.

A link page tells people where to go. A site is the place they arrive.

What that place should hold, and what it should never show, is the whole of how we build.