Boloop-made explanatory illustration: a personal point of view connects original work and carefully attributed recommendations.
Boloop’s homepage once did a thorough job of listing what it contained: Skills, software and articles, each with a tidy entrance. That was also the problem. A reader could see the categories without necessarily understanding why I had put these things together.
A louder slogan would not resolve that on its own. A personal website can collect other people’s work and document its owner’s experiments. The homepage needs to explain how those things relate to the person behind it.
Eventually, I brought the message back to something simple: “Making things with AI.” It describes what I actually want to share on Boloop: AI images, projects developed with AI and experiments with personal agents.
Start with the question the page is answering
During an October 2026 design review, Boloop had used a homepage title such as “Good tools. Thoughtful work.” Nothing in it was false, but it did little to make a particular person memorable. Numbered sections, repeated cards and a sample resource panel made the page explain a directory system more than a person.
A software directory helps readers find things. A personal homepage also explains why I choose and introduce those things. Both can coexist, but their first-screen jobs differ.
We then moved the homepage toward a personal notebook, separating original notes from external recommendations and adding recent activity drawn from actual publication records. The process included a wrong turn: work history briefly occupied the most prominent position. On October 22, I explicitly changed that direction again, putting my current interest in AI creation and development first and keeping career history on About.
That correction was useful. A fact can be true without deserving the most important position on a homepage. Its placement should follow what the site wants to express now.
Make three kinds of ownership easy to distinguish
Boloop presents my experiments and projects, my original Skills, and software, Skills and reading by other creators that I recommend. These should not share a vague identity.
My projects should lead to real case studies where readers can inspect the result and its explanation. An original Skill should clearly state the task it addresses. Recommended software should plainly say it is software I recommend, retaining the creator and original project link.
This does not require a row of badges on every item. Clear section titles and introductions, followed by accurate attribution, do more work. An empty author field should not become the site owner’s name merely to complete a layout. Putting someone else’s achievement on my website does not turn it into my project.
The homepage’s main button now leads to project case studies. “Making things” has something concrete behind it to inspect. The resource library remains available for a different need further along the reader’s visit.
A personal voice can come from choices and writing
Boloop keeps its public identity text-based. I did not add a portrait to the homepage or use a generated person to stand in for me. Article listings also remain typographic.
That puts more responsibility on specific writing: what I am doing, what was recently published, what I wrote and what comes from someone else. Dates in the recent-activity strip come from published content. When there is no suitable item, an empty state is preferable to invented activity that makes the site appear constantly updated.
In the design, we reduced repeated slogan headings, numbering and card explanations, arranging writing and recommendations into lighter lists. Software keeps its real icons, avoiding decorative “app windows” that could be mistaken for actual product screenshots.
These are Boloop’s choices, not a universal prescription for personal sites. Photographs, illustrations and grids can all work. First decide whom they represent and what they show, rather than using visual elements to invent a story where experience is missing.
A copy change reaches beyond visible copy
After the homepage title became “Making things with AI.”, checking its visible H1 was not enough. The page title, summary, structured data and social images needed to match the new expression too.
We checked the English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese homepages at desktop and phone widths. The main button needed to open the case directory in the current language. Share previews could not continue emphasizing the old theme removed from the homepage.
The change also had explicit preservation requirements: existing layout, text-selection highlights, pointer effects and animation would not be rebuilt simply because the copy changed. A change in personal expression did not require replacing an established interaction experience.
That is a practical constraint. Write down what this revision is correcting before making it, and it becomes easier to distinguish necessary changes from new ideas that happen to arise during design.
Clarify ownership before writing your homepage
If your AI-built site also feels like an unoccupied directory, try a writing check. Ignore the logo and read only the first screen, section titles and a few items. Can they answer these questions?
- What does this person care about now?
- What has this person actually made that I can inspect here?
- What is being recommended, and who originally created it?
If the answers are unclear, start there rather than immediately rebuilding the visual system. Replace broad adjectives with concrete activities. Replace “our products” with the actual creator relationship. Connect the main button to a project or piece of content that exists.
This revision has brought Boloop’s homepage expression into line with my current interests. Whether it brings more reading or visits requires later observation. The step completed for me is simpler: when a reader arrives, the page can now say directly what I want to do here.