Let's make the indie web easier(gilest.org)
gilest.org
Let's make the indie web easier
https://gilest.org/indie-easy.html
56 comments
I agree that a certain barrier to entry is a good thing because it means you have to be invested in it. However, setting up your own server and managing a DNS is a far cry from Geocities. Creating a resilient indie web is different from making an interesting indie web
Sure, but setting up geocities today would be something like squarespace.
I'm not sure that setting up an "interesting" Web, which is not resilient would be a good thing though.
I'm not sure that setting up an "interesting" Web, which is not resilient would be a good thing though.
She hosts people at her physical house, why should her digital home be any different?
Because in her digital home, there are people who will sneak in the back door or find a window they can jimmy open. They'll bring in stolen and illegal stuff, then invite all their fence and dealer friends over to join the party, and pretty soon mom's digital home becomes a meth house.
All of that can happen to your physical home, too. When it does, you call the police. When it happens to your digital home, you track it to some other country, then call their police who will do nothing about it.
Yes, but I do a lot more vetting before I invite someone to my physical home, so situations like these are vanishingly rare. As opposed to a digital home which is free to any nefarious person around the home.
(I do host stuff at home, but I don't think it is good to understate the risks)
(I do host stuff at home, but I don't think it is good to understate the risks)
I think the point is that these should be more similar (and they aren't with our current technology).
Because the technical details are extremely different. Your question is disingenuous.
How are these remotely similar? Or is this really good satire?
CG NATs say hi!
My isp has a nat even on ipv6!
My isp has a nat even on ipv6!
Oh the humanity not the terminal!!!
I don't know where to begin with this. "here's a challenge for you developers" who exactly are they expecting to find this an interesting task that is worth their time to work on?
If you want it and/or think it should exist, then I'm not stopping you from making it. If you think I should make it, surprisingly, I do not.
Buy squarespace if you don't want to know anything.
You will only have the same problem tomorrow at some other level. Then it will be "you only think clicking on a tar file and figuring out where to unpack it (or where it was even downloaded) is easy because it's easy for you" yeah ok got it.
I don't know where to begin with this. "here's a challenge for you developers" who exactly are they expecting to find this an interesting task that is worth their time to work on?
If you want it and/or think it should exist, then I'm not stopping you from making it. If you think I should make it, surprisingly, I do not.
Buy squarespace if you don't want to know anything.
You will only have the same problem tomorrow at some other level. Then it will be "you only think clicking on a tar file and figuring out where to unpack it (or where it was even downloaded) is easy because it's easy for you" yeah ok got it.
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned neocities (https://neocities.org/). It's open source (https://github.com/neocities).
It's mentioned in the follow-up post:
https://gilest.org/indie-easy-again.html
https://gilest.org/indie-easy-again.html
NeoCities supports basic HTML pages, but I'm pretty sure if you want anything fancier you have to BYOF. I've seen a lot of NC users whose stuff is built on static site generators, at which point we've wound back up at the terminal (and frankly I'm not sure why you need NeoCities at that point anyway when Netlify et al. already offer free tiers).
> We need more self-hosted platforms for personal publishing that aren’t Wordpress.
Do we really? Of course it's OK to have lots of platforms out there (and the author mentions several), but do we need them for the indie web to grow?
The word need is used so many times in this article, but frankly signing up at Wordpress.com or WP Engine is about as easy as it gets and within minutes you have your own site, access to a huge community and the functionality of thousands of plugins, forever guaranteed that if the host becomes a dick you can just export everything and switch to someone else, etc. The author is talking about having stuff that's easy to install but you don't have to install anything. Self-install and self-host are frankly a non-starter if you want easy, that's not just a technical/UX problem, it's support/maintenance/etc that takes raw hours. WP has been so successful precisely because it's easy for a total novice to get up and running, and there are dozens of hosts who do the plumbing work for you. I'd argue this is a model for something like Mastodon to aspire to.
Do we really? Of course it's OK to have lots of platforms out there (and the author mentions several), but do we need them for the indie web to grow?
The word need is used so many times in this article, but frankly signing up at Wordpress.com or WP Engine is about as easy as it gets and within minutes you have your own site, access to a huge community and the functionality of thousands of plugins, forever guaranteed that if the host becomes a dick you can just export everything and switch to someone else, etc. The author is talking about having stuff that's easy to install but you don't have to install anything. Self-install and self-host are frankly a non-starter if you want easy, that's not just a technical/UX problem, it's support/maintenance/etc that takes raw hours. WP has been so successful precisely because it's easy for a total novice to get up and running, and there are dozens of hosts who do the plumbing work for you. I'd argue this is a model for something like Mastodon to aspire to.
The indie web is unbelievably easy.
What is unbelievably easy:
1. Generating a website
2. Writing content locally
3. Adding media to your local site
4. Making your website available on the network
5. Giving your website a meaningful name with DNS
6. Sharing your website name with your friends
And it’s unbelievably easy to pave that path for non-technical users.
What is unbelievably hard:
1. Finding a reliable route between your friends and your local website
The network you publish to isn’t the network your friends are on. You are on a subnet. And the identifier for your subnet is dynamic. And the identifier for your friends subnet is dynamic.
On the modern web, it’s easier for two devices on the same street in Illinois to rendezvous at a datacenter in Virginia than it is to find a stable and reliable route to the device down the street.
The web isn’t broken. The internet is.
The web is an overlay network on top of the internet. We need a better internet.
Personally, I believe libp2p is that better internet.
What is unbelievably easy:
1. Generating a website
2. Writing content locally
3. Adding media to your local site
4. Making your website available on the network
5. Giving your website a meaningful name with DNS
6. Sharing your website name with your friends
And it’s unbelievably easy to pave that path for non-technical users.
What is unbelievably hard:
1. Finding a reliable route between your friends and your local website
The network you publish to isn’t the network your friends are on. You are on a subnet. And the identifier for your subnet is dynamic. And the identifier for your friends subnet is dynamic.
On the modern web, it’s easier for two devices on the same street in Illinois to rendezvous at a datacenter in Virginia than it is to find a stable and reliable route to the device down the street.
The web isn’t broken. The internet is.
The web is an overlay network on top of the internet. We need a better internet.
Personally, I believe libp2p is that better internet.
I'm right there with you.
It took a few clicks to find the relevant docs, but this is where libp2p explains how it connects private networks. tl;dr via relay servers or by creating two simultaneous outgoing connections to just make a direct connection. Very cool.
https://connectivity.libp2p.io/#hole-punching
https://connectivity.libp2p.io/#hole-punching
It’s incredibly easy now to have a “website” for a vast number of different purposes, via Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Patreon, etc., all of which come with the added value of discoverability. And as always, the cost of ease is control. There’s value in control, but it will always be a trade off.
So arguing for making independent websites easier is really arguing for another level of granularity in the tradeoffs between “social media presence” and “Wordpress”. And I guess I’m not really sold that that’s all that helpful. The loss of discoverability is a step function you hit the moment you go independent, which means that for the vast majority of cases, there’s going to be a “dead zone” of value where having slightly more control just isn’t worth it. I’m just not sure that that dead zone doesn’t end pretty close to where the current tools are.
So arguing for making independent websites easier is really arguing for another level of granularity in the tradeoffs between “social media presence” and “Wordpress”. And I guess I’m not really sold that that’s all that helpful. The loss of discoverability is a step function you hit the moment you go independent, which means that for the vast majority of cases, there’s going to be a “dead zone” of value where having slightly more control just isn’t worth it. I’m just not sure that that dead zone doesn’t end pretty close to where the current tools are.
Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon are, however, walled gardens.
It's actually intensely frustrating how many small businesses (restaurants, bars, etc) have a website that's abandoned at best, and post all their updates on Instagram, almost as frustrating as when public agencies update on Twitter but not on their website. This is a clear downgrade for the public.
It's actually intensely frustrating how many small businesses (restaurants, bars, etc) have a website that's abandoned at best, and post all their updates on Instagram, almost as frustrating as when public agencies update on Twitter but not on their website. This is a clear downgrade for the public.
Yeah, I think that the motivation behind the article is “it would be a social good for there to be more independent websites”, and that’s probably true, but it’s academic.
If you tell someone they should run their own website, their response is generally not going to be, as the post suggests, “how?” It’s going to be “why?”, and if your best answer is “because it’s better for society”, good luck convincing them.
If you tell someone they should run their own website, their response is generally not going to be, as the post suggests, “how?” It’s going to be “why?”, and if your best answer is “because it’s better for society”, good luck convincing them.
You could take a look at this: http://mmm.page/
Small(ish) community that is make cool stuff. The developer is really good with community feedback and pushing features!
The best indie web tools ever were Geocities and Myspace.
Of course, now we like things a little more content focused, but the point still stands, what people need is free or cheap cloud hosting with zero sysadmin work, just pure edit some pages and then have people see them, ideally with some builtin web ring type discovery features.
Any amount of tech work repels anyone other than the tinkerers who don't mind tech that needs maintenance. Usually that means all the content is just about web tech, specifically how much they hate modern bloated stuff.
Also, remember, proboards forums were almost was much of a defining element as personal sites, and were every bit as personal and indie.
Give us forums where you can set per-thread and post custom themes, hyperlink between posts, show threads in a one post at a time mode, lock threads to just you and friends, and filter posts in a thread by tag, and you're probably most of the way there to an accessible indie web.
Markdown + CSS is probably enough for almost all users.
Add the ability to import and export threads and move them to another server if needed, and
If you want interactive content, provide some sandboxed prefab options, like a Gameboy emulator you can make roms for on GB studio and attach to posts, or just give every use a subdomain for arbitrary files they can put into iframes, GitHub.io style.
The sandbox attribute is in 98% of browsers, maybe there's a way to just block the other 2% from seeing iframes, to be fully safe.
Of course, now we like things a little more content focused, but the point still stands, what people need is free or cheap cloud hosting with zero sysadmin work, just pure edit some pages and then have people see them, ideally with some builtin web ring type discovery features.
Any amount of tech work repels anyone other than the tinkerers who don't mind tech that needs maintenance. Usually that means all the content is just about web tech, specifically how much they hate modern bloated stuff.
Also, remember, proboards forums were almost was much of a defining element as personal sites, and were every bit as personal and indie.
Give us forums where you can set per-thread and post custom themes, hyperlink between posts, show threads in a one post at a time mode, lock threads to just you and friends, and filter posts in a thread by tag, and you're probably most of the way there to an accessible indie web.
Markdown + CSS is probably enough for almost all users.
Add the ability to import and export threads and move them to another server if needed, and
If you want interactive content, provide some sandboxed prefab options, like a Gameboy emulator you can make roms for on GB studio and attach to posts, or just give every use a subdomain for arbitrary files they can put into iframes, GitHub.io style.
The sandbox attribute is in 98% of browsers, maybe there's a way to just block the other 2% from seeing iframes, to be fully safe.
- https://www.wix.com/
- https://www.weebly.com/
- https://www.squarespace.com/ (the one with sponsored segments in every YouTube video)
- https://www.ionos.com/websites/website-builder. IONOS is a domain registrar, most other domain registrars (at least namecheap) offer website builders as well.
The keyword is "WYSIWYG". These site builders are targeted for non-tech-savvy people who want an easy solution, they include publishing and not a single line of code or terminal is required.
- https://www.weebly.com/
- https://www.squarespace.com/ (the one with sponsored segments in every YouTube video)
- https://www.ionos.com/websites/website-builder. IONOS is a domain registrar, most other domain registrars (at least namecheap) offer website builders as well.
The keyword is "WYSIWYG". These site builders are targeted for non-tech-savvy people who want an easy solution, they include publishing and not a single line of code or terminal is required.
Even though these are more than social media they aren't quite things you "own". They have subscriptions to remove the watermarks on top of the subscription to have a domain.
Try https://getpublii.com/
Host on Netlify for free. Zero server headaches.
Host on Netlify for free. Zero server headaches.
Publii is great. Basically a local, offline Wordpress as a Windows/Mac app which can publish a static site to Github pages (or other host). Somehow has stayed under the radar for years but it is really nice.
Relevant recent HN post: "Blot turns a folder into a website"[1]
I haven't used it, but seems in line with these goals.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38809145
I haven't used it, but seems in line with these goals.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38809145
For the kind of person who finds terminal commands hard, having a cornucopia of different options to choose from is making things harder than "just install Wordpress", not easier. What's this trying to achieve?
I think it should be as easy as using Notion or something similar.
My old blog was on jekyll but publishing pages was such a hassle I stopped bothering writing anything.
Now I just put a small system together that uses Notion as backend.
I'm opening it up to more people but hesitant to make it a full "service" since whoever uses it is stuck on SaaS pricing... but I could open source it, but then other people would have to deploy it somewhere.
So either it's "learn some command line / programming / deployment skills" or "pay a monthly fee" sadly.
My old blog was on jekyll but publishing pages was such a hassle I stopped bothering writing anything.
Now I just put a small system together that uses Notion as backend.
I'm opening it up to more people but hesitant to make it a full "service" since whoever uses it is stuck on SaaS pricing... but I could open source it, but then other people would have to deploy it somewhere.
So either it's "learn some command line / programming / deployment skills" or "pay a monthly fee" sadly.
There are a bunch of "hard parts" involved, and even if you solve them, you don't replicate the experience of a social media site.
The serving technology is hard.
The dollar cost is high.
The maintenance burden is high.
The authoring experience sucks.
The notification / distribution mechanisms are lacking.
The feedback loops are broken.
Social media sites are simple, free, zero-maintenance, trivial to post, notify/distribute to your friends and others, and build in a feedback system with both automated and human curation.
There's an enormous amount of effort required to provide even a remotely similar level of service.
The serving technology is hard.
The dollar cost is high.
The maintenance burden is high.
The authoring experience sucks.
The notification / distribution mechanisms are lacking.
The feedback loops are broken.
Social media sites are simple, free, zero-maintenance, trivial to post, notify/distribute to your friends and others, and build in a feedback system with both automated and human curation.
There's an enormous amount of effort required to provide even a remotely similar level of service.
I couldn’t agree more. One step I’ve made towards this goal is to have my website content served directly from GitHub. The content is Markdown files that are fetched from the GitHub CDN and rendered to HTML on-the-fly using a Cloudflare Worker.
I’ve extracted out the GitHub fetching into a small npm package: https://github.com/cool-calm/collected-press/tree/main/packa...
And here’s my home page using this approach. The code needs to be cleaned up and I’m still working out the best strategy for caching (Cloudflare KV has been disappointing), but I’m happy with this as a model. https://github.com/RoyalIcing/RoyalIcing
I’ve extracted out the GitHub fetching into a small npm package: https://github.com/cool-calm/collected-press/tree/main/packa...
And here’s my home page using this approach. The code needs to be cleaned up and I’m still working out the best strategy for caching (Cloudflare KV has been disappointing), but I’m happy with this as a model. https://github.com/RoyalIcing/RoyalIcing
Honestly.. I'm a rails and elixir dev with 10+ years building web apps (back end mostly). It's not about the tech. Just getting a self hosted "hello world" static html file on the internet is near impossible, because ISP's make it so.
I could spin up a docker and nginx, set up my router to allow port forwarding, but the ISP will stand in my way. Port 80 or port (8)433 won't come through.
No amount of tech on my raspberry-pie will let me self host.
I could spin up a docker and nginx, set up my router to allow port forwarding, but the ISP will stand in my way. Port 80 or port (8)433 won't come through.
No amount of tech on my raspberry-pie will let me self host.
This. So much.
I kinda do hate Wordpress. I hate that it's so inefficient. It optimises for authors not readers, in that it's easy for authors to create sites and posts, but to display a post to a reader it has to fetch everything from the database and then process all the PHP code into HTML and only finally actually serve it to the user. It needs an actual server, and a database, and all that maintenance and updates, etc.
I want Hugo with a GUI (and ideally runs on a phone). Something that pushes to a static page (so free hosting on Git??b/Cloudflare/whatever) but doesn't make me jump through all the hoops that Hugo does.
I kinda do hate Wordpress. I hate that it's so inefficient. It optimises for authors not readers, in that it's easy for authors to create sites and posts, but to display a post to a reader it has to fetch everything from the database and then process all the PHP code into HTML and only finally actually serve it to the user. It needs an actual server, and a database, and all that maintenance and updates, etc.
I want Hugo with a GUI (and ideally runs on a phone). Something that pushes to a static page (so free hosting on Git??b/Cloudflare/whatever) but doesn't make me jump through all the hoops that Hugo does.
While I appreciate the intent, I don't think we need to underestimate users and what folks are eager to learn when motivated to do so. High school kids who want to get into building sites and apps are frequently outrageously talented.
You're over-optimizing the very first step for a crowd of folks who are likely watching advanced Blender tutorials right now.
What you're not considering is that most people who want to create today are primarily interested in doing it on YouTube or TikTok. This is partly generational, and partly because YouTube has an entirely viable monetization mechanism for those who put in the work.
You're over-optimizing the very first step for a crowd of folks who are likely watching advanced Blender tutorials right now.
What you're not considering is that most people who want to create today are primarily interested in doing it on YouTube or TikTok. This is partly generational, and partly because YouTube has an entirely viable monetization mechanism for those who put in the work.
I just want the I Mac that Jeff Goodblum promised me.
Being able to host a website just by putting files in a certain folder already present with a special icon was a magical feature for my then girlfriend.
Being able to host a website just by putting files in a certain folder already present with a special icon was a magical feature for my then girlfriend.
Did she break up with you when Apple removed the http server in MacOS?
Honestly.. I'm a rails and elixir dev with 10+ years building web apps (back end mostly). It's not about the tech. Just getting a self hosted "hello world" static html file on the internet is near impossible, because ISP's make it so.
I could spin up a docker and nginx, set up my router to allow port forwarding, but the ISP will stand in my way. Port 80 or port 433 won't come through.
No amount of tech on my raspberry-pie will let me self host.
I could spin up a docker and nginx, set up my router to allow port forwarding, but the ISP will stand in my way. Port 80 or port 433 won't come through.
No amount of tech on my raspberry-pie will let me self host.
> Why not build static website generators that people can just unzip, upload to the shared hosting they’ve just paid for, and start using via a browser?
Indeed, why not let them copy a Word document without even zipping anything (maybe even with a button within Word itself to avoid files and folders)? No need to learn any new typesetting systems, Word in the knowledge a lot of non-tech folks have
Indeed, why not let them copy a Word document without even zipping anything (maybe even with a button within Word itself to avoid files and folders)? No need to learn any new typesetting systems, Word in the knowledge a lot of non-tech folks have
> Why not build static website generators that people can just unzip, upload to the shared hosting they’ve just paid for, and start using via a browser?
What is currently the best option / WordPress alternative to start an indie site in this way without using the console?
What is currently the best option / WordPress alternative to start an indie site in this way without using the console?
We could bundle Jekyll in an .exe file using ocran and maybe even add a GUI... I'm willing to make that, but would people use it?
Tiddlywiki is a lot (exactly?) like this.
It looks like Indexhibit is still around, which is really a wonderful framework for folks with a lot of visuals.
(Edited to add link because I accidentally hit send...)
https://www.indexhibit.org/
(Edited to add link because I accidentally hit send...)
https://www.indexhibit.org/
Cli is hard because you need to tweak dotfiles hell or hoping the tool understand your environment, and also know how to upgrade itself. Also using terminal on windows, with native c libraries, with cydwin hell ?.
How do you get simpler than Netlify and a static site generator? Actually self hosting will always be out of reach for most people. Do you want a GUi for making sites? How about square space?
[deleted]
> But here’s the thing: we need more tools for it. We need simpler tools for it.
LOL ... vi still works for me or nano if I'm feeling lazy.
LOL ... vi still works for me or nano if I'm feeling lazy.
You completely missed the point. How is vi easy?
I'm still using Dreamweaver 8 for several web sites. I have to run it under Wine, but it still works.
I think micro.blog is easy no?
if only there was an easy markup language that one could use to make websites...
I'm not sure I'd recommend shared hosting setups. If you're going that route then you might as well host on WordPress.com or squarespace or whatever.
The logical place to serve is of course from your home machine. These days there are lots of users with good access, good enough to serve. Assuming you don't have a crappy ISP that blocks incoming ports.
Even with a dynamic IP address its trivial for a server to keep its domain updated. (Use a DNS provider that supports APIs, like DNSimple.)
But I'm not sure that the actual headline of this article is necessary. Making your own Web server is easy already. If you don't have the time, or skill, to set up a box now, then you likely don't have the understanding of how much is needed "long term".
Web serving is not like posting to Instagram. It's not fire and forget. It takes long-term maintainence. Keep that DNS alive (with money). Keep that server software updated. Understand "this folder on my machine is public". Keep a casual eye on the automatic certificates. Don't freak out when you see endless scripts probing with strange requests. Monitor the comments section (you want engagement right? Until you discover all your sign ups and comments are spammers.)
So yeah, there's a barrier to entry. But perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps a "minimum level of effort" acts as a barrier to keep the really unsafe behaviours from becoming universal.
Put another way, my mom should not be hosting a Web server, regardless of how easy it is to do.