Welcome to the IndieWeb • Buttondown
Hello All! 🤗
Think about you publish and make new buddies on an internet community for greater than a decade – and out of the blue, your account will get suspended for no obvious purpose. And there’s nothing you are able to do about it.
Or think about the web group you had been an energetic a part of for years simply closes down and all consumer knowledge will get deleted after just a few months. And there’s nothing you are able to do about it.
Or think about {that a} website you poured all of your ideas and writing into decides in a single day that it is perhaps a good suggestion to promote entry to all consumer knowledge to an organization that’s coaching their massive language mannequin with it. And once more, there’s nothing you are able to do about it.
Now think about a spot the place you truly personal your content material, your connections, and your on-line identification.
And now, think about that this place is your private web site, underneath your individual area title, underneath your management.
That is the fundamental concept behind the IndieWeb.
A Group of Private Websites
The IndieWeb is a group of unbiased and private web sites and the individuals behind these websites creating instruments that allow a decentralized, people-focused different to the company internet and its social media silos. Initiated in 2010 by Aaron Parecki, editor of the Webmention and Micropub open internet requirements, and Tantek Çelik, co-author of microformats, the IndieWeb has grown into an energetic group with members and followers worldwide.
Occasions
If you wish to get entangled, you’ll be able to attend (and even assist to arrange) one of many IndieWebCamps, that are common brainstorming and constructing occasions that happen a number of instances a 12 months within the US and Europe. They’re a beautiful alternative to fulfill like-minded individuals and work collectively on group subjects and in addition tinker together with your private website. Usually, an IndieWebCamp will span two days. On the primary day, members be taught, share, and focus on concepts and ideas in varied classes. The second day is for creating, hacking, and, on the finish of the day, demonstrating what everybody managed to construct. It’s an thrilling and provoking expertise in a really welcoming ambiance. I’ve been to a couple IndieWebCamps (Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Nuremberg) and it was all the time implausible!
One other nice method to meet individuals and work in your private websites collectively are the Homebrew Website Club meetups that commonly happen in a number of cities across the globe. See https://events.indieweb.org/ for upcoming occasions – and don’t hesitate to start out one thing in your metropolis, when you really feel prefer it.
But additionally when you don’t need or can’t attend in-person occasions or join the IndieWeb chat, there are numerous concepts and applied sciences which have come out of the IndieWeb motion and its underlying principles which might be value trying out.
POSSE
One of the vital helpful and impactful ideas of the IndieWeb is the concept to publish every little thing you create by yourself website first after which syndicate it elsewhere, additionally known as POSSE. This straightforward however efficient precept lets you keep in command of your content material and every publish‘s canonical URL whereas additionally distributing it into the various totally different social networks and on-line communities the place buddies who aren’t a part of the IndieWeb or don’t (but) have a private website may hang around. And since you ideally all the time link back to your original post, discovery of your authentic content material is improved as effectively. You possibly can be taught extra in regards to the many benefits of POSSE on the IndieWeb wiki: https://indieweb.org/POSSE
Webmention
One other IndieWeb building block that you just’ve most likely heard of earlier than is the Webmention protocol. Webmentions will let you acquire interactions like feedback, likes, reposts, or different responses from varied sources and feed them again into your website. The way it works is straightforward: when you hyperlink to a web site in a publish, you’ll be able to ship a Webmention to inform it. If the positioning helps Webmentions, it could show your publish as a response. And you are able to do the identical for all websites that ship you a Webmention. This manner, you’ll be able to have a dialog from one web site to a different, sending posts forwards and backwards.
There are additionally many different promising instruments like IndieAuth, which helps you to use your individual area to register to different websites and providers, Micropub, an API for creating, modifying, and deleting posts on web sites like your individual, or WebSub, an open protocol to ship and obtain notifications when internet content material – just like the feed of a private web site – is up to date.
The IndieWeb – For Everybody?
One grievance I steadily hear although once I discuss to individuals in regards to the IndieWeb is that a lot of its applied sciences are nonetheless not accessible enough to individuals and not using a internet improvement background. And there’s some fact to that. Regardless of a rising variety of helpful plugins, for instance for WordPress or Kirby, and a variety of useful articles and tutorials, e.g. for Eleventy, lots of the options that the IndieWeb presents are nonetheless very a lot nerd territory. All of the extra vital are initiatives just like the wonderful Indiekit by Paul Robert Lloyd, somewhat Node.js server with all of the elements wanted to publish content material in your private web site and share it on social networks.
The IndieWeb has already been enjoying a key function in growing lots of the instruments that make an unbiased, decentralized community of non-public web sites doable. This in itself is invaluable. Now it’s on all of us to implement an increasing number of of these options into our websites, construct much more instruments and options for the unbiased internet, and assist to decrease the barrier of entry in order that the IndieWeb’s imaginative and prescient of proudly owning your content material and on-line identification shall be extra accessible to evermore individuals. Each step we take will change the Internet for the higher. As a result of finally, the IndieWeb is for everyone.
The subsequent chapter of the IndieWeb awaits and the combat for an unbiased, open internet appears extra worthwhile and promising than ever. Tim Berners-Lee as soon as stated: “You may make the walled backyard very very candy. However the jungle exterior is all the time extra interesting in the long run.”
Let’s make this jungle wild, thrilling, and delightful once more.
Right here’s one other combined bag of hyperlinks. Please let me understand how you want them! And when you can consider somebody who would take pleasure in studying this article at present, be at liberty to ahead alongside.
Take Again Your Internet
In 2019, IndieWeb cofounder Tantek Çelik gave a implausible discuss at past tellerrand in regards to the unbiased internet, why it’s best to have your individual area, and the way all of us may take again our internet.
Tantek Çelik was speaking at beyond tellerrand 2019 in Düsseldorf
Tantek Çelik has been active in open web standards innovation, development, and advocacy for over 20 years. He is currently Web Standards Lead at Mozilla, community leader of indieweb.org & microformats.org, and participates in the World Wide Consortium (W3C) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group. He is the author of HTML5 Now: A Step-By-Step Tutorial for Getting Started Today (New Riders: 2010). He co-edited the W3C Recommendations CSS 2.1, CSS3 Color, & CSS3 UI, co-founded GMPG, BarCamp, …
IndieWeb Carnival: Roundup
Manuel Moreale, who additionally sends out the good publication People & Blogs, hosted February’s IndieWeb carnival. The subject he picked was “digital relationships” and he acquired a whopping 44 weblog posts in response. Right here’s his roundup publish:
👉 https://manuelmoreale.com/indieweb-carnival-roundup
“I don’t need to write articles — I need to weblog.”
Greg Storey shares his observations from the latest redesign of Kottke.org and the way a lot it’s a very intentional, content-first design.
“I don’t want to write articles — I want to blog.”
If there was ever a sign that personal sites and blogs are making a comeback, I can’t think anything better than the top-to-bottom redesign of Kottke. After all, Jason’s site is the quentisentail blog or The Blog of Blogs. A lot of thought went into the new look
Go forward and block AI internet crawlers
May it’s simply ignored by a number of the AI corporations crawling the open internet and breaking the basic social contract of the Web? Positive. Does it nonetheless make sense to disallow AI crawlers by way of your robots.txt file? In all probability. And on this case, Cory Dransfeldt’s publish, which additionally contains an in depth robots.txt, will show very helpful.
Go ahead and block AI web crawlers • Cory Dransfeldt
AI companies are crawling the open web to, ostensibly, improve the quality of their models and products. This process is extractive and accrues the benefit to said companies, not the owners of sites both small and large.
Case Research: lynnandtonic.com 2023 Refresh
On this wonderful case examine, Lynn Fisher shares how she approached her newest web site refresh and the way she created the unimaginable avenue scene animations for the positioning.
Case Study: lynnandtonic.com 2023 refresh | Lynn Fisher
Thoughts and process for the lynnandtonic.com 2023 redesign.
aboutideasnow.com
aboutideasnow.com allows you to discover individuals to speak to or collaborate with by looking out throughout the /about, /concepts and /now pages of (at present) 6492 private web sites. And it’s also an effective way to seek out extra attention-grabbing websites to comply with.
Tyler Sticka is a artistic director, designer, author and artist. He’s a accomplice at Cloud Four and co-founder of Backabit, an unbiased cellular recreation studio. His private website, which is built with Eleventy, combines charming illustrations and SVG animations with clear typography and a journal filled with attention-grabbing and helpful weblog posts about design, internet requirements, and Tyler’s personal hobbies and pursuits.
And that’s it for at present. How did you want this subject? Which one of many hyperlinks was your favourite? What would you like kind of of? Do you’ve every other solutions on enhance this article? Hit reply now and let me know.
Cheers! ☀️
– Matthias