A personal web site is one used for informative or entertainment purposes, but not for commercial reasons.

Common elements of a personal web site include a homepage, image gallery, blog, and information about the author of the site. Almost all personal sites will include information about the author's hobbies and pastimes. Many personal web sites are of interest to a limited group of people such as the friends and family of the author.

Because most personal websites are ultimately unprofitable they are often hosted for free in exchange for advertisements being placed on the web site. Hosting companies encourage their customers to upgrade to paid hosting to remove the adverts and for certain privileges such as Server-side scripting.

Some personal websites are built using HTML, CSS and other common web related technologies although more often than not, they are created using WYSIWYG editors.