--- alias: "The IndieWeb, Personal Web, Personal Websites, IndieWeb" public: "true" slug: "the-small-web" title: "The Small Web" prev: false next: false --- # The Small Web > Referenced by: [This Knowledge Hub](/garden/this-knowledge-hub/index.md) Small personal websites created by individuals - [My Personal Website](/garden/my-personal-website/index.md) - A callback to how the web was before social media, which homogenized content - These pages are diverse and typically won't have ads or marketers - Comparable to [The Cozy Web](/garden/the-cozy-web/index.md) in that way The small web as a whole is [Freeform](/garden/freeform/index.md) - Individual sites may be [Chronological](/garden/chronological/index.md) still - Individual sites link between each other in ways similar to wikis - These can form [Webrings](/garden/webrings/index.md) ## Browsing the small web - Follow [Webrings](/garden/webrings/index.md) or other links from known small websites - [Marginalia](https://search.marginalia.nu) is a search engine for non-commercial content with a "random" button and filters for the small web explicitly (amongst other useful filters!) ## Building personal websites [IndieWeb](https://indieweb.org/) contains various resources - Their [building blocks](https://indieweb.org/Category:building-blocks) are standards people can use to help the small web connect with each other consistently - They discourage the use of site builders or templates that end up making sites look too homogenized Free hosting for static websites: - [Neocities](https://neocities.org) - [Codeberg pages](https://codeberg.page) (and any other [pages-server](https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/pages-server) instance) - Like on [Incremental Social](https://incremental.social/pages)! - [Github pages](https://pages.github.com) - [Weird](/garden/weird/index.md) (in development) ### [Streams](https://indieweb.org/stream) [Microsub](https://indieweb.org/Microsub) is a proposed protocol to support this - That way, people could use microsub clients to subscribe to multiple streams and get them in one feed - Effectively a [Federated Social Media](/garden/fediverse/index.md) that works through personal websites - Announce new posts using [WebSub](https://indieweb.org/WebSub) This also allows your personal website to be the one source of truth for your posted content - Effectively solves the problems described in [Hey Creators, Please Make Firehoses!](https://jonbell.medium.com/hey-creators-please-make-firehoses-8d0c48c075e4) Multiple streams can be hosted by one site/person so people can subscribe to the kind of content they're interested in How viable would it be to include chat messages in a stream as well? - Perhaps with [Chat Glue](/garden/chat-glue/index.md) you could link to specific branches I chatted in ### [Digital Gardens](/garden/digital-gardens/index.md) These sites may be useful to occasionally check up on rather than get notifications from on every post/change - Although [Garden-RSS](/garden/garden-rss/index.md) could allow those who want to receive notifications to do so ### The future [The Internet is a series of webs](https://aramzs.xyz/essays/the-internet-is-a-series-of-webs/) talks about transitioning from our current consolidated web back to the indie web ## Why people want the small web There are tools these days that make making websites incredibly easy - Back in the day geocities was pretty complicated but a lot of people managed to make pages there - Neocities has an extensive page on [Learn How to Make Websites!](https://neocities.org/tutorials) Hosting can be expensive, but static websites are cheap - There are plenty of free options out there for hosting static websites - Ideally you'd use some sort of system that is easily transferrable to other servers, and possibly even supports nomadic identities - [Free hosting for static websites:](/garden/the-small-web/index.md#665b6ac0-d3ca-41d8-9534-929ac2907c2e) - People are creative and love creating things ## Recommended videos about the small web