If IndieWeb wants content, burying it under a ton of tech soup is the exact opposite of what they claim they want.<p>How do the developers not realise that this set of protocols is completely unworkable for 90% of users?<p><i>Please</i> stop developing systems where the engineering is front and centre. If you want to put content UX first, you need to do exactly that, with a one-click solution that gets users up and running instantly.<p>If you users have to go anywhere near a command line, or Docker, or they have to hand-edit HTML or CSS, you're creating walls most users aren't going to scale.<p>At the moment this looks more like NerdNet than IndieWeb.
If you spend time in IndieWeb discussion circles, such as chat.indieweb.org or the get-togethers listed on events.indieweb.org, or if you spend time wandering through the indieweb.org wiki, you will find evidence that many of us share the view that UX must come first[1].<p>There <i>are</i> one-click-setup IndieWeb entry points. The most prominent is micro.blog which gives you a personal blog/site with all the latest IndieWeb goodness and costs $5/month.<p>But most people interested in the IndieWeb these days are devs, i.e. nerds, and want to roll things themselves, which is why IndieWeb-related blog posts can feel like tech soup.<p>This is something IW members would gladly see change! Adoption by non-nerds is something the IW cares about. David Shanske[2], for instance, has spent much time in the last decade on Wordpress plugins that gives you much of of the IW tools out of the box [3].<p>Finally, you don't need to use <i>all</i> of the tech to be "doing IndieWeb". Having your own domain is the first and most important step. Then maybe you[4] try making a few pages: raw HTML, generated from Markdown, Django, whatever. Then you can add Microformats. Then maybe add a script to send WebMentions, or use a free hosted service to do it for you. Then branch out in whatever direction you choose. At all of these stages, your site is still IndieWeb.<p>[1] I'm not as active in IW circles as I was a few years ago but still consider myself part of it: my personal site has microformats, I use Micropub to update it, etc.<p>[2] david.shanske.com<p>[3] <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dshanske/#content-plugins" rel="nofollow">https://profiles.wordpress.org/dshanske/#content-plugins</a><p>[4] Generic "you".
Digital homesteading is the essence of the IndieWeb. Building things with one's own resources and know-how is part of it's DNA, whether or not that is acknowledged.<p>Because it's anti-platform and pro-ownership, content is secondary to the means of distribution. It's why it is bound to be a tech-heavy sub-culture and never a real alternative to big platforms.
No. Exact opposite. Opening it up to everyone is what kills everything good, the endless september of grocery store tabloid aisles and clickbait. Gatekeepers are good, restrictions on participation are good. The internet was better when it was a self selecting place for interesting interested people and not the global walmart.
This is the way! There _has_ to be friction when getting access or the uneducated hordes of the internet will spoil it. I only use mailinglists and fediblocked instances for "social" media. Mainstream mastodon is useless and just a bad parody of x or fb.<p>Mailinglists are great, because more and more people do no longer know how to use email or follow the instructions to sign up for a mailinglist, so many interesting people tend to gather around the lists.
"Bad roads act as filters", Joseph Wood Krutch, 1967.<p><<a href="https://wist.info/krutch-joseph-wood/53557/" rel="nofollow">https://wist.info/krutch-joseph-wood/53557/</a>>
Eh, I feel like the issue with this logic is that being technically savvy and having interesting things to say aren't really that heavily correlated. Plenty of people are incredibly knowledgeable about non-technical fields and have tons of things they could say about them, but aren't technical enough to setup a website (or in many cases, edit videos/run a YouTube channel/etc either).<p>Meanwhile there are also plenty of tech folks that have zero empathy or interest in quality that can easily get past any technical barrier you put in front of them, like the more talented folks at companies like Anthropic or Meta.<p>Making things difficult to set up tech wise doesn't select for intelligence or skill or creativity, it selects for people that work in tech as their day job.
Hi! I started a startup, Known, that did exactly this in 2014, explicitly as part of the indieweb movement. The open source code is still around.<p>The trick is the economics here. A one-click solution is great, but right now the indieweb solves an ideological but not a hard _user_ problem. There isn't enough "there" there to either justify investment or get enough customers to cover the costs of a service.<p>The closest is micro.blog, which is a genuinely great service that bakes in this tech under the hood. But the tradeoff is that you can't run it on your own infra; it's a centralized service that is compatible with the protocols but isn't quite a genuinely indieweb tool.<p>I've wondered if there might be something around providing better tools for logging an agent's activities, or for publishing from a sensor / server / etc, but that's all speculation. Without a genuine hard user need, it's hard to imagine how this would work as a turnkey service.
I'm pretty new to this so I can't speak for IndieWeb, but I wouldn't blame them. People who seek independence from the social silos are usually engineers or other web-aware people. It is only natural that they want to solve the problem with the knowledge they possess and tools they know - and I think it's fine. If you look back at how internet evolved, it was always like this - the geeks and nerds coming up with something fun but naturally hard to get into for the regular folk. But then it would get more and more approachable until it adopted for the said regular folk.<p>I think the IndieWeb is at this early stage. The adoption for a broader audience will come naturally (if this survives), but for now - let them cook
First of all, techy nerdy people like things to be easy too. They're just somewhat more likely than other people (on average) to overcome not-easiness.<p>Second of all, how long is IndieWeb supposed to cook for before it's supposed to be ready for a broader audience? This is no shade on the IW folks if they like what they're building. But if what they're building is supposed to catch on somewhat, what's the path supposed to be? The project seems to be 15 years old already: <a href="https://indieweb.org/IndieWebCamps#" rel="nofollow">https://indieweb.org/IndieWebCamps#</a>
They realize it's "unworkable for 90% of users" and they don't care.<p>Part of the Indieweb philosophy, like Libre software, is to "scratch your own itch" - no one's paying you. You do the stuff that's interesting to you. It's not a business. The point is not to take over the market.<p>The planet needs fewer marketing pinheads, not more. I would like it if we passed various laws that killed off a lot of the marketing pinheads, basically eliminating their jobs one way or another, and encouraged more people to create the things they want, rather than submit to the things that are popular.<p>The pinheads rarely create much of substance and mostly just sit around strategizing all day on how to rent seek. They have a lot of free time and money they can use to lobby the government and make it worse. They dress this all up as capitalism though it isn't really. We should strike back.
>They realize it's "unworkable for 90% of users" and they don't care.<p>No, you don't understand, it's bad because it does not provide ""value""
the irony is that the scratch your own itch mindset also explains why indieweb struggles to grow.<p>there’s nothing wrong with building software for yourself. but if your stated goal is giving everyone ownership over their online identity, then usability stops being marketing and starts becoming part of the mission.<p>good ux isn’t selling out. it’s removing accidental complexity so more people can benefit from the ideas. otherwise you’re not building an alternative to big platforms, you’re building a club for people who enjoy configuring web servers.
that it was so perversely gatekept is what made the early internet so enjoyable though.<p>I find it all the more appealing with that barrier to entry because I miss the internet that this community is nostalgically trying to replicate and reproduce.
Its initial 7 steps: having your domain, managing your site, creating your pages... are quite accessible. There is some unavoidable complexity, such as configuring DNS. However, with interest and AI, there are no real limitations.
It's 2026, we have LLM's and one-click everywhere. And still people have to pay "techs" to setup hosting and domains for them....
Of course <a href="https://xkcd.com/2501/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/2501/</a>
Haha, I had to laugh a lot about this.<p>This is essentially DNS, every single step of the way. Hosting wouldn't be hard if ISPs weren't so hostile with carrier-grade NATs, if HTTP/S wouldn't rely on DNS primarily, if legitimization were using actually mTLS instead... and all of the things usually break because of DNS and (lack of) proper standardization.<p>DNS in its current form is such a shitshow of RFCs overriding RFCs overriding RFCs...and not a single moment was spent on the configuration of DNS, or a protocol to request a domain, or a protocol to authenticate a domain, or a protocol to host something for a domain, ...<p>/nerdrage
Peak HN comment. Barely anyone knows what a "domain" is, no-one knows what DNS is. Very few people would even know what questions to ask AI.
Reddit /r/sysadmin "Everything is DNS because I don't actually understand what I am doing or what is happening"
I know people in tech consulting advising large finance enterprises for 3+ years who barely know what DNS is.
> If you users have to go anywhere near a command line, or Docker, or they have to hand-edit HTML or CSS, you're creating walls most users aren't going to scale.<p>Oh, no?
Doing a quick look over the article and your comment, I gotta agree. If you want stupid simple and content first, why wouldn't you use the gemini protocol? Pages are in mark down, no way to embed gotchas in it.<p>Its not one click, but is massively simple and building up tooling around it to make it easier would also be super simple.
People who aren't willing to put any effort into learning how computers and the internet work are free to stay on Xitter and Facebook. Not everything has to be for everyone.
+1. unless I see IndieWeb in AppStore and real volume of real people use it, it is all tech people toy hobbies<p>(which seems diametrically opposite of IndieWeb: no HTML - iOS/Android is the king, no browsers, no desktop, no terminal, no GitHub, gated App Stores, rich media, videos is the king)
Indieweb is sometimes tied to self-hosting to give people configurabilty and flexibilty.<p>It does keep indieweb for the few and not the many.
>If you users have to go anywhere near a command line, or Docker, or they have to hand-edit HTML or CSS, you're creating walls most users aren't going to scale.<p>>If you want to put content UX first, you need to do exactly that, with a one-click solution that gets users up and running instantly.<p>You clearly don't understand the IndieWeb movement, which consists of amateurs and professionals who are motivated to go the extra mile and learn this stuff. The reason the Internet is the way it is in 2026 is precisely because we’ve eliminated all friction and have cultivated the dumbest possible user.
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Really cool!
Have you checked out Nostr as well? I prefer the mental model of Nostr, it seems to be more in line with POSSE than Mastodon and the AT protocol.
I prefer Org Social a million times over Nostr :) <a href="https://en.andros.dev/blog/8c640241/why-org-social-when-you-can-use-anything/" rel="nofollow">https://en.andros.dev/blog/8c640241/why-org-social-when-you-...</a>
<a href="https://github.com/tanrax/org-social-host" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tanrax/org-social-host</a><p>> <i>If you don't update your social.org at least once a month, you will lose the domain and the nickname will be released</i><p>I usually don't post once a month. Nickname released, that's a security problem.<p>Looks as if: org-social.org is a single point of failure? Hmm<p>I wonder if there's ways to solve those problems. Maybe you'd end up w sth like AT Proto in the end
If you don't want limitations, host your social.org site yourself, or move it to GitHub Pages or similar services. org-social-host is a free hosting service I offer openly to help you get started, but it's not unlimited.
Interesting, will check out!
Has nostr evolved beyond brocoins at this point?
> microformats2 solves one problem: making your content machine-readable without publishing parallel files or building an API.<p>Which isn't generally a problem that ever needed solving. Just like the previous onthologies, all this does is feed your adversaries while being useless to your human visitors.
This intrigued me a lot! I have been searching for a way to break out of the social silos, but all the other alternatives just weren't doing it for me. They usually chased thr nostalgia of the 90s for nostalgia's sake, but apart from making me nostalgic for 10 minutes I haven't found much use of them.<p>This seems different. It embraces the modern web and tries to fit in, while still giving the creator full control over their yard.<p>I might be overly optimistic, but I'm excited for this! I will try to make my myzopotamia.dev blog join the IndieWeb as soon as I find some time
Good work! Both the explainer and the implementation! I'm using indiekit which basically comes with IndieWeb batteries included! <a href="https://rmendes.net" rel="nofollow">https://rmendes.net</a> and I'm working to get it implemented on <a href="https://textcaster.app" rel="nofollow">https://textcaster.app</a>
I feel like the DRY concern with RSS feeds is overstated. I can’t remember the last time I had trouble with automagically generating an RSS feed using whatever open source framework I was authoring with at the time.
But the unDRYness of RSS is pretty stark. It's literally a dupe of the list page of any website. I've often been frustrated at having to maintain two versions of the exact same content, and deal with XML, when `h-entry` exists.<p>RSS was invented <i>just</i> before the semantic-markup revolution (i.e. the end of table layouts). Bad timing.
I don't think anyone enjoys generating or reading RSS feeds. You have many alternatives, but none surpass the popularity of RSS...
I feel some uneasiness when I go to a website branded as "indieweb," and see a link to the author's CV prominently on the page. Sometimes you also see a professional taken headshot of the author or an enthusiastic description of his work history at prestigious institutions. And it's always a professionally made blog. You know the drill.<p>It feels like walking into a brightly lit clothing store in a fancy mall and seeing the anarchy symbol on all items. Look closer and you'll see an almost four digit price tag.
I see more simple blogs about the joys of having a blog. It’s still much better than the cottage industry around growth hacking your Substack.<p>A personal website is whatever you want it to be. Mine is getting more personal with every passing year because I don’t need a job. I want to geek out about stuff. However people’s websites are a product of the society they live in. Them bills gotta get paid.
"But you live in a society"
Though I don't brand my site as indie web, my own website is a bit like this - I have a link to my consulting site and a headshot on there.<p>Why is that so bad? My professional life is a part of who I am. One could call me an IndieWorker, in that I'm self employed....
A CV on your personal domain is the most IndieWeb thing you can do, it means your professional identity lives under your control, not LinkedIn's. The "anarchy symbol on expensive clothes" critique works when someone claims to reject the system while feeding it. IndieWeb does not claim to reject professionalism, it claims that your content should belong to you and outlive any platform. The headshot, the CV, the polished blog... those are fine. Locking them inside a silo that can shut down, sell your data, or vanish is the thing being criticized.
Were you aware that the .dev domain name belongs to Google?
Once again I will say my theory of how the internet became a few walled gardens: NOBODY WANTS TO HOST. Hosting sucks. It costs time and money. There are constantly new exploits to work around.
Great writeup, and welcome aboard!<p>A few things I would add:<p>- Make it a habit to share other blogs that you love. The IndieWeb relies on word of mouth and human curation. I love "what I enjoyed this month" posts.<p>- Be lavish in your praise and hearty in your approval. Email your appreciation, initiate conversations. Static sites without user tracking can feel like talking to yourself at times. Reader mail feels awesome.<p>- Have fun! Personal sites should be personal. Allow yourself to be incomplete, to be whimsical.<p>- Digital gardens are great. Not everything needs to be a chronological feed. This is your space. Arrange it as you please.
IndieWeb is a form of social media. People have a certain image of themselves, and the internet helps them live up to it. Whether we're writing comments on HN, posting toots on Mastodon, uploading videos to TikTok, or writing a post on our own blog, there’s a lot of self-expression involved.<p>However, for a lot of people, platforms like TikTok are more appealing than IndieWeb, but for some, it's fun to set up an OpenBSD VPS, a static web server, and learn to write better in text files using their favorite editor.<p>A self-determined workflow can be more important than being seen. However, one doesn't rule out the other, and the Author and IndieWeb offers some good tips.<p>Thanks for the post.
> MySpace: in 2019, during a server migration, it lost all the music uploaded during its first 12 years, more than 50 million songs from 14 million artists.<p>How much of these are archived by third party? If not it's huge loss to humanity...
What about all my content on Friendster ?<p>Man was I bummed.
So many numbered and non-numbered lists...
Although not explicitly part of the indieweb protocols, RSS and Atom feeds are important too.
They're not just "important", a blog without RSS/Atom feed is like a car without wheels.
h-feed is recommended for the IndieWeb, making your HTML your feed, and RSS/Atom for the rest of the planet.
I don't know about you, but I don't know of <i>any</i> native (non website/javascript) software that supports h-feeds. IndiePass was only ever for smartphones and it's fully dead. h-feed is more of a html integrated mark-up for posts than any form of actual separate feed file. This is claimed to be a positive aspect of h-feeds, not being a separate file... but it really isn't. I keep track of all the other indieweb sites I care about via normal rss/atom feeds. h-feeds were an aspiration that did not actually come about. The rest of the indieweb protocols rock though.<p>I looked around andros.dev and found no (real) feeds so I'll probably just forget the site in a week. If it had had a feed I'd have added it to my desktop native readers.
Well, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just letting you know what they recommend :D<p>By the way, andros.dev has an RSS feed.
> Well, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just letting you know what they recommend :D<p>The great thing about hosting your own website is that you can decide for yourself what "standards" and "recommendations" actually make sense for you.<p>> By the way, andros.dev has an RSS feed.<p>You should add <link rel="alternate"> links to the RSS/Atom feed. The way people (or at least I) discover RSS feeds is to paste the blog/article URL into my feed reader - if that can't find the feed then I more than likely just give up and move on. All I can find on your site is a button in the side bar that doesn't even work.
It's at <a href="https://andros.dev/blog/feed/en/" rel="nofollow">https://andros.dev/blog/feed/en/</a><p>Had to look at the page source to find it, since without JS, the bottom left button does nothing.
By the way, what you're saying isn't true. That link isn't present in either the HTML or the JS, the URL is sent via WebSockets. You had to open the modal to see it.
Modals use JS, that's normal.
It doesn't need to be a modal and can (should!) fall back to a simple <a> without JS. It also didn't work even with JS for me.
First, you're assuming my entire website should work without JavaScript. You don't understand my design reasoning, nor have you asked about the underlying cause.<p>Second, for a modal, I should use a `<dialog>` that opens via a `<button>`, which it already does. JavaScript does the magic. Not a `<a>` as you suggested.<p>Finally, if it's a bug, which I find very strange because it's a very simple piece of code and no one has reported it, you're not posting it in the right place. An email or the contact form would have been more appropriate.
I tried manually typing a handful of common feed URLs relative and absolute, a firefox feed auto-finder extension, and a quick ctrl-f for feed in the source. But I guess if running an application is required for your webpages I'm better off not subscribing. That's not my kind of jam but it is understandable if your blog is for profit or it's purpose is to get you a job or something.
That's why I created a modal that explains the different RSS feeds for subscribing and their possibilities.
My blog is over a decade old, and I've never used advertising, had sponsored articles, or tried to monetize it (except for asking for donations to maintain the server). I've written freely, sharing knowledge, creating tutorials, and developing courses. Your comment makes me lose the motivation to keep doing it.
> “Use what you make: use what you build every day. ‘If you aren't depending on it, why should anybody else?’”<p>Having difficulty imagining this constraint.<p>For example, I use my iPhone’s Note app daily for personal notes. I don’t currently host a site, but if I did I might have content/write on no more than monthly cadence, or per-project.<p>Does this rule suggest that I should ‘publish’ more (ie. elevate private note content to public more frequently) or build something for my private notes to be hosted on my server? Or something else?<p>In the first instance we’re talking about that micro commentary you get with social media sites. Becomes something like Kottke’s site. A feed of interesting things.<p>In the second instance you’re using your server infrastructure more, and so it’s not a machine you interact with only infrequently.<p>Or am I totally missing the point?
Today it's quite easy to keep your private notes on your infrastructure, manage them with your iPhone, and even store them in plain text: Joplin, Syncthing, WebDAV (<a href="https://en.andros.dev/blog/9abcdcfe/your-denote-notes-on-the-iphone/" rel="nofollow">https://en.andros.dev/blog/9abcdcfe/your-denote-notes-on-the...</a>)...
> “Today it's quite easy…”<p>Not sure if you’re responding to my confusion (“Having difficulty imagining this constraint”).<p>I’m not asking about implementation of a solution nor of capability, but how the maxim “use what you make” is envisaged by the authors as a mechanism of engagement, management and quality for the IndieWeb. Why is it a pilar?
so indieweb is like your own personal website?
That's what it means. The web, but indie (not corporate).
I don't think it's incompatible with a forum, corporate website, or any type of content.
At a basic level, yes!
I also have my own personal homepage [1]. The content isn't that great, but I do have some curated content on there. What kind of topics and people are usually involved in the IndieWeb community? I'm thinking about joining, but I'm still debating it.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.makonea.com/en-US" rel="nofollow">https://www.makonea.com/en-US</a>
I like your website design! Next.js, React, TailwindCSS in Vercel? Is this your design? It's very nice.<p>They have monthly and annual events; perhaps you can discover them for yourself! However, I recommend that you first understand and apply some of their philosophy!
Exactly! It's Next.js 16 + React 18. I'm using the App Router, the frontend is on Vercel, and DNS/CDN/WAF are on Cloudflare. The style is neo-brutalist, but since it wasn't well-received in Korea, I softened it into a custom UI.<p>The animation is the Gooey Navigation I designed myself. I'm glad you like the design.
Today we've added support for IndieWeb to the Qbix Platform, so people can have a powerful way to publish and maintain sites on the IndieWeb: <a href="https://github.com/Qbix/IndieWeb" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Qbix/IndieWeb</a><p>Qbix Platform is based on PHP, and everything else (MySQL, NginX, Apache etc.) is optional. PHP can be used by itself to host your site, including turning it into a static site, and even manage HTTPS certificates for you.<p>But even beyond that, it can also enable personal mesh networks without the Internet. It's completely free and open source, and designed to work out of the box. Here is the overview of how it all works:<p><a href="https://qbix.com/server.html" rel="nofollow">https://qbix.com/server.html</a>
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The Internet is already independent - warez and torrents amd smuggling sites and groups prove this<p>Anyone can go right now to a DNS registry and set up a url with tld and as many redirects as needed and host locally or remote servers.
Managing or owning your own server is already a way to decentralize the network.
You can always do it like in the old days and ask your friends to add your IP to your host file.
Replace one with another. Strange, isn’t it?