Words, compiled: Neat Finds #03: Tiny Websites, Paper Zines and Old Desktops
Issue three of my occasional zine of open source finds: SSH-powered hosting, a forum with zero JavaScript, a whole website inside a link, a TV schedule for handmade sites, one-sheet zines, a 1980s MUD and a mountain of tiled wallpapers.
https://pablomurad.com/neat-finds-03-tiny-websites-paper-zines-and-old-desktops/
#NeatFinds #OpenSource #smallweb #indieweb
oh, et j'ai fait une vidéo à propos du journal intime !
Rejoice! I just uploaded my new weeknotes
#Blog #personalBlog #personalWebsite #personalWeb #smallWeb #indieWeb #weeknotes
Hi Fediverse! I'm building Poweur ID, an open ID you hold yourself: a readable name (mine is romanman.poweur.net, or one on your own domain) with keys on your devices.
The same ID signs you in to apps (OIDC/IndieAuth), receives end-to-end encrypted messages and shares encrypted folders. Relays federate like email, and you can self-host one.
Pre-1.0, not audited, critique welcome: https://www.poweur.org
#introduction #IndieWeb #SelfHosted #OpenSource #Privacy
I've lost old blogs the usual ways: Geocities, LiveJournal, a host that quietly folded. Most of us don't lose writing because we're careless. The platform changes, the feed dies, the URL turns into a 404.
Persistwise is my answer to that. It watches your RSS feed and keeps three copies of every new post: a Wayback Machine snapshot, an IPFS pin, and a saved copy. You keep writing wherever you already do.
New post on chronosaur.us - hi https://chronosaur.us/hi/
#blog #blogging #indieweb #smallweb
finally my neocities is acceptable enough for me to post it
https://silenziosa.neocities.org/
so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Erinnerst du dich noch an die alten Webringe? Wir haben die Idee ins Jahr 2026 geholt.
Mit Webnetz empfehlen sich unabhängige Webseiten gegenseitig weiter – ohne Algorithmen, die nur auf Klicks optimiert sind. Du baust ein kleines Widget ein, empfiehlst andere tolle Projekte und wirst im Gegenzug selbst entdeckt.
Schau vorbei, probiere den Live-Widget-Builder direkt auf der Startseite aus und trage deinen Blog ein:
🔗 https://webnetz.t-w.us/
Das Web ist größer als die großen Plattformen!
Um kleinen, handgemachten Blogs, Kulturprojekten und Nischenseiten wieder mehr Sichtbarkeit zu geben, haben wir Webnetz gebaut: Ein kostenloses, dezentrales & werbefreies Empfehlungsnetzwerk fürs Indie-Web.
Kein Tracking & keine Cookies
Kein KI-Spam & keine Werbung
Leichtes Widget (< 5 kB) & faire Kategorien
Mach mit und verbinde deine Webseite: https://webnetz.t-w.us/
#IndieWeb #Bloggen #Fediverse #SelfHosted #Datenschutz #OpenSource #Webring
I made a small site called HearYouOut.
You write one anonymous thought. It goes into a pool. Someone presses Receive and gets one random text, only for them, locked on their screen for 72 hours. No replies, no likes, no accounts. Nothing links a text to the person who wrote it.
If the pool is empty, you get nothing and wait.
Mistakes to avoid with your personal website
I’ve been browsing a massive list of blogs and personal websites, and I have noticed a pattern in the websites I just gave up on. This is my nerdy exploration of what the owners did wrong (and what some did right). To avoid shaming and general meanness, I took no screenshots and am naming no names.
WTF is this? – The front page that fails its one vital job
Whatever page a first-time visitor to your website lands on, it needs to do one thing for them. None more so than the front page of your website.
The thing is this: It must answer the 5 questions a visitor might have:
- WTF is this site?
- Where’s the content?
- Why should I give a damn?
- Where’s the solution to my problem or need?
- Who are you and why should I listen to you?
You don’t even need to answer them all. One or two clearly answered questions can be enough.
The answer does not need to be a full sentence. It does not even need to be words at all. Your design might be able to answer some questions. Photos might too.
There’s a good reason so many websites have a photo of someone’s face. A photo answers the question “Who are you?” Meanwhile, an “About me” or “About us” link can be enough to answer the rest of the question, “…and why should I listen to you?”
Sometimes pointing to the answer is enough for a landing page. Remember, though, that every click I have to make to get my answer is an opportunity to close my tab and move on.
Some ways in which sites failed all five: WTF am I even here?
The fail: A few websites I visited assumed I knew exactly who they were and why the site existed. They had a list titled something like, “Which of these nine things we named are you here for today?”
None of them, because I have no idea what they are. I’m not in the “in group”, I am an outsider who arrived by mistake. I need you to tell me what your stuff is for before I can choose which section I want.
TL;DR: Don’t make me think.
The win: Sites that got it right either explained who they were (answering 1, 3, and 5) or made it clear, “this is a blog, here are the blog posts” (answering 2, 3, and 4). Sometimes the site was some homebrew monstrosity (as opposed to a homebrew work of art) that still managed to tell me the site was some bloke’s scratchpad of random stuff they wanted to share.
You don’t have to offer a nice-looking website, nor a coherent one. But please, for the love of indiebrowsing, explain what the hell this project is to me (and the rest of the uninitiated).
How to do better: Imagine you are an author with a homebrew indie website, or a blog, or whatever. Your front page should tell me:
- I’m the author Bob Smith
- I write time-travelling gothic horror romance
- Here are my books
- Here are my thoughts on a bunch of stuff
- (Optional) Here’s my log of getting the next book written.
You could also have:
- Here are my appearances and book signings
- This is my agent
- Here’s my face
- Here’s my social media
- and whatever else your heart desires to put there
If I am a fan of time-travelling gothic horror romance, I will know I am in the right place. I can find the books (and possibly order any I want to read). Maybe I’ve heard of Bob Smith or read Bob’s books before, which means I will give a whole handful of damns. Maybe I have not heard of Bob Smith, but as I love Bob’s genre, I should give at least one damn – enough to go look at Bob’s stuff.
How am I supposed to read this? – Headache typography
A website, at its most basic, is a bunch of text that links to other text. If i cannot read the text, what was the point?
The fail: I’ve noped out of many websites today for a single shared reason – there was no damn way I was willing to give myself a headache trying to read your text.
Some of the problems include:
- Text with almost no line spacing and precious little paragraph spacing. That’s just a wall of letters that my lazy and dyslexic brain refuses to convert into meaning.
- Line lengths longer than some PMs rime in office. The received wisdom is that optimal line length for reading is between 50 and 75 characters. Long lines are hard for me to read.
- Tiny text – I can fix this by zooming in, but not always and almost always the site looks significantly uglier zoomed.
- Text colour that is quite similar to the background colour. Sure, I could inject some CSS on my end, but I have many sites to look at; yours did not inspire me to try.
The win: Most WordPress themes do a reasonable job of making text readable. So too do the layouts of many a work of art homebrew website.
Example: Let us go back to imagining you are the author Bob Smith. You are looking to get more people into time-travelling gothic horror romance books. I arrive on your website after following a link on a random blog. I know nothing about your genre, and I’ve never heard of you.
Nevertheless, I stick around long enough to learn you are an author. What do you suppose would happen next when I struggle to read your terrible layout of tiny text, line lengths of 289 characters, line spacing that tries to cram as much text on the screen as possible, and a low-contrast font and background colour set?
I’m going to think, “Who is this self-published hack?” and then I might think, “If they think this text is good to read, how bad will their books be?”
And off I go, never to read Bob’s books or consider the genre of time-travelling gothic horror romance ever again.
What most blogs get right
By their very nature, most blogs get two of the five vital questions right.
- WTF is this site? Oh, it’s someone’s blog. Cool.
- Where’s the content? Oh, cool, it’s right here.
This is true even if there is only a menu item that says “blog”.
This is how you get the rest right
The question, “Why should I give a damn?” is answered by anything that shows me what the site is for. Links, design, and images need to conspire to reassure me that this site is for me. Unless it really is not for me; in which case, let me find out quickly so I can move on.
For the question, “Where’s the solution to my problem or need?” you need one or more of a bunch of things (list below). All these things have something in common – they help me find the things I want to look at.
- Clearly marked site search
- Tag cloud, Categories list, or topics directory
- A browsable summary of blog posts
- Links to your newest or most popular stuff
- Explanations as to what each section is for
Finally, we come to “Who are you and why should I listen to you?” This is where a sidebar bio, an about link, or, in a pinch, a subtitle comes in. Some element of your design, layout, and content needs to explain who you are and the reasons you feel qualified to write stuff.
Sometimes, the content is self-demonstrating. I’ve seen a bunch of photo blogs today. It is quickly clear that the reason I should “listen” is because you have nice photos, and I like looking at nice photos. In one case, the blog was not in English, but the photography spoke for itself. I had a nice time browsing the blog and loved all the trees and greenery being shown.
What many homebrew websites get right
For every website that left me scratching my head and trying to work out what the heck I was even looking at, there was another homebrew site that said, “I’m Bob, and this is my nerdy website” or words that did the same for whoever made the thing.
One thing I love about homebrew websites – especially the passion-project ugly sites – is that they tell me who made it and what they made it for. Even if that site is just a dumping ground for whatever tickled their ADHD that day. This is something some of the work-of-art homebrew sites could do more of.
I’ve seen many well-crafted, beautifully typeset works of design brilliance today. One had fantastic animations that flew the content in like a PowerPoint presentation. The problem was, I had no idea what the site was about. I clicked about for a bit and then gave up.
All the homebrew sites that got the basics right also did something else very well. They all had an easy-to-find link to their Mastodon account. Mastodon seems to be popular with the homebrew crowd. Where you can follow the person or people behind the site is part of “who are you?” And can let me get to know said persons which will answer the “…and why should I listen to you?” part.
The homebrew sites that interested me and gave a link to social media got their maker a follow.
How to fail at three questions and lose me
There were some sites today that failed to keep my attention because they did not answer at least one of these questions:
- Why should I give a damn?
- Where’s the solution to my problem or need?
- Who are you and why should I listen to you?
The fail: One site, who shall remain nameless, was a blog of what appeared to be affiliate links disguised as answers to questions; another was the same but with “product reviews”, and a third was a collection of lists of “ten things”.
All three failed to earn my trust. The affiliate link slingers were too fast to jump into “click this” without even trying to show they knew what they were talking about. The list maker likewise failed to establish any level of trust, as they just wanted to rattle off their lists as fast as possible.
All three failed at the same task – establishing any level of topic authority.
The win: I spent some time on one blog that had clearly marked affiliate links (Amazon). I still have a tab open on that blog post. What this blogger did right was that they talked about the problem they had and how they went about solving it. Then, when they came to list the materials they used, they had earned the right to slap down some money-maker links because I trusted that they were first and foremost sharing knowledge, not trying to drain my bank account for their corporate overlords.
How to get everything right and still fail with the help of AI
Three websites saw their tab closed at lightspeed today. They had all five questions answered within the page I landed on by virtue of being a WordPress blog with a nice-looking theme. What they also had were featured images that were clearly AI.
I like to play with AI. I have a blog where I post about playing with AI. And I do mean playing – I like to make AI do silly things and become daft characters. What I do not like is how lazy it feels when I see AI as a featured image on a blog post.
I’m not entirely sure why I feel that way, but I do. In every case where I saw AI images decorating blog posts, I noped out of there as fast as my mouse would let me.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
So that’s my take on a thing I was doing today. There are five things a web page needs to answer, and two or three is probably enough. If you want people to engage with your stuff, you should probably try to make sure the page answers all five (if only with a clear menu item):
- WTF is this site?
- Where’s the content?
- Why should I give a damn?
- Where’s the solution to my problem or need?
- Who are you and why should I listen to you?
I hope my rant about all the things that put me off about the sites I saw today entertained or helped you in some way. Please leave comments or replies with your additions, objections, ideas, praise, accusations of hypocrisy, or any other related thoughts.
Syndicated to: #fails #IndieWeb #Mastodon #personalWebsite #website #WordPress#OverUnder 090 with @maique
He shares his thoughts about #VSCO, #Stickers, colour #photography, #Pika, and #CocaCola.
He also replied to @BrandonsJournal's question
#bloggers #bookstodon #book #blog #fediverse #mastodon #blogging #movies #indieweb #soda #gaming #coke #art
What I've listened to, watched, read, and did in September & October.
This is Day 001 of my 8th round of the #100DaysToOffload challenge.
#podcast #movies #books #blogging #blog #fediverse #indieweb #blogging
Replacing a Public Linkding Instance with a Static Site
https://blog.lmorchard.com/2026/11/01/linkding-ssg/
TL;DR: I stopped exposing my homelab's dynamic Linkding instance to the public internet via Tailscale. Instead, I built linkding-ssg, a self-contained Go CLI that snapshots my 35,000 bookmarks into a fast static site with client-side Pagefind search—embedded binaries, Ivy Bridge quirks, and all.
#linkding #golang #homelab #selfhosting #indieweb #static-sites #pagefind #mastodon
Read all about it…
For the past few months, I've been tinkering with an automated newsletter for myself. It lands in my inbox every morning at 7 o'clock, along with my first cup of coffee.
There's an RSS feed, or you can just follow this account if you're the curious kind:
https://social.piewpiew.se/@jellypoopnews
Enjoy the news! ☕
CSS Tricks ( @csstricks) is back and being run independently by @geoff. Very excited for this!
I just started a membership. Maybe you should too?
https://css-tricks.com/memberships/
Hello, fediverse! 😋 I just made a post about my retro gaming setup across three devices. It’s not really an in-depth tutorial; I just wanted to talk about the setup because I’m quite proud of how it turned out. Feel free to give it a read if you’re interested: https://merazi.github.io/posts/retro-gaming-across-devices/
I've made some room on the Smallweb Subway, a personal project of mine linking together indie websites! Each line is a webring with a different theme, & every station is a new website.
All the included web pages has a navigation widget somewhere that lets you go to the next & previous stops, letting you "ride" the subway between websites!
If you'd like to join, send me a message & I'll help you get started. Ride the subway here:
https://gusbus.space/smallweb-subway
#smallweb #indieweb #webdev
