Today I learned about the “Indie Web”, a sort of web revival of the early internet days when everyone made personal websites and linked to each other rather than using the handful of big corporate sites.

People seem to be either self-hosting their websites or using a hosting service like “neocities”. The result appears pretty authentic to the late 90s/early 00s: a wide range of polish, very niche and specific interests, page visit counters, guest books, chat rooms, random little games, etc.

It’s tempting to get into. I figure that this might be something that would appeal to a lot of people on the fediverse too, so I thought I’d share. Here are some random pics of people’s websites:

  • FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    this is probably going to become the normal internet again after the inevitable social media age verification laws get passed.

  • bayaz@fedia.io
    1·
    6 months ago

    Whenever I see something like this, I like to give a quick pointer to Gemini (the protocol, which has nothing to do with the AI): https://geminiprotocol.net/

    Pages don’t have the unique html look and feel of individual web pages – everything is basically just text and maybe static images. But, it does have a small, personal feel. I don’t spend a lot of time there, but it’s fun to browse on a slow day.

  • ollie is online ~ (they/them)@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    This has been my favourite part of the internet for the past few years since i discovered it.

    For those interested, most people make their sites on Neocities, as mentioned by OP - though I personally prefer Nekoweb. Both are great places to get started for free though, you can’t go wrong with either.

    The basic HTML and CSS you’ll need to know is quite simple and fun to learn, so even if you don’t continue maintaining your site, I think it’s a really good creative exercise.

    If you do get involved in the community, it’s a really fun way to get to know‎ people, (whether like-minded or not so like-minded) and a great creative outlet!

    My website isn’t as fancy as some of the indie sites I’ve seen,‎ but it’s been a really fun thing to come back to on occasion and use as a creative outlet.

    I’d love to see some other people here’s sites!

  • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Fuck yeah!!! Everyone should make a site like this! I’ve been having tons of fun with mine recently.

    The indie, the Fediverse, the Gemini Protocol, and Protoweb (and Linux, of course) have made using the computer genuinely fun again.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
    01·
    6 months ago

    YSK: That Google Cloud has a free tier that’s good enough to host your private website. I host two corporate “brochure sites” and my Headscale server on that one single VM.