I find myself thinking about writing more than usual at the moment. This is partially because I am inspired by more people sharing their own thoughts and stories, but also because I want to record how I’m feeling, and what’s happening on a day-to-day basis.
It was a few years before I realized that worry stones had a name, that they were borrowed from cultures other and older than mine. Heck, it’s been more than a few years since I’ve even held one. But in the last few weeks, before and after launching the redesign, I’ve kept working away at this website, much as I’d distractedly run my fingers over a smooth, flat stone.
RSS: now more than ever!
You get to choose what you subscribe to in your feed reader, and the order in which the posts show up. You might prefer to read the oldest posts first, or the newest. You might group your feeds by topic or another priority. You are not subjected to the “algorithmic feed” of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, where they choose the order for you.
Cameron’s blog is back, and very nicely redesigned/aligned it is too!
Don’t forget—it’s IndieWebCamp London next weekend!
We all want to create successful work. We want our voices to be heard. We all want to be recognized or, at least, respected. But instead of trying to please everyone, you should deep down inside of you accept the fact that it is not yours to decide if others like your work. This will give you immense freedom. Suddenly, you can start to just write, without worrying whether your readers like what you’re saying or how you are saying it.
Strong agree.
Websites sit on a design spectrum. On one end are applications, with their conditional logic, states, and flows—they’re software.
On the other end of the design spectrum are documents; sweet, modest documents with their pleasing knowableness and clear edges.
For better or worse, I am a document lover.
This is the context where I fell in love with design and the web. It is a love story, but it is also a ghost story.
Every day, millions of people rely on independent websites that are mostly created by regular people, weren’t designed as mobile apps, connect deeply to culture, and aren’t run by the giant tech companies. These are a vision of not just what the web once was, but what it can be again.
This really hits home for me. Anil could be describing The Session here:
They often start as a labor of love from one person, or one small, tightly-knit community. The knowledge or information set that they record is considered obscure or even worthless to outsiders, until it becomes so comprehensive that its collective worth is undeniable.
This is a very important message:
Taken together, these sites are as valuable as any of the giant platforms run by the tech titans.
This gets me right in the feels.
I can’t believe I was lucky enough to contribute to 24 Ways seven times over its fifteen year lifespan!
Geocities, LiveJournal, what.cd, now Yahoo Groups. One day, Medium, Twitter, and even hosting services like GitHub Pages will be plundered then discarded when they can no longer grow or cannot find a working business model.
Considering the needs of someone who wants to make and maintain a website, without the ridiculous complexity of “modern” web tooling:
How do we make web content that can last and be maintained for at least 10 years? As someone studying human-computer interaction, I naturally think of the stakeholders we aren’t supporting. Right now putting up web content is optimized for either the professional web developer (who use the latest frameworks and workflows) or the non-tech savvy user (who use a platform).
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems.
Anil Dash on the war on hyperlinks.
It may be presented as a cost-saving measure, or as a way of reducing the sharing of untrusted links. But it is a strategy, designed to keep people from the open web, the place where they can control how, and whether, someone makes money off of an audience. The web is where we can make sites that don’t abuse data in the ways that Facebook properties do.
When people ask where to find you on the web, what do you tell them? Your personal website can be your home on the web. Or, if you don’t like to share your personal life in public, it can be more like your office. As with your home or your office, you can make it work for your own needs. Do you need a place that’s great for socialising, or somewhere to present your work? Without the constraints of somebody else’s platform, you get to choose what works for you.
A terrific piece from Laura enumerating the many ways that having your own website can empower you.
Have you already got your own website already? Fabulous! Is there anything you can do to make it easier for those who don’t have their own sites yet? Could you help a person move their site away from a big platform? Could you write a tutorial or script that provides guidance and reassurance?
I know the anxiety of sharing something with the world. I know there is a pressure to match the quality we see elsewhere on the web. But maybe we should stop trying to live up to somebody else’s standards and focus on just getting stuff out there instead. Maybe our “imperfect” things are already helpful to someone. Maybe this shouldn’t be so hard.
This looks like a nice way to get a blog up and running:
Blot turns a folder into a blog. Drag-and-drop files inside to publish. Images, text files, Word Documents, Markdown and more become blog posts automatically.
It came to my attention after writing my blog post about how we choose the web we want that the pessimism is about not being able to make a living from blogging.
Brent gives an in-depth response to this concern about not making a living from blogging. It’s well worth a read. I could try to summarise it, but I think it’s better if you read the whole thing for yourself.
You can entertain, you can have fun, you can push the boundaries of the form, if you want to. Or you can just write about cats as you develop your voice. Whatever you want!
I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment:
You choose the web you want. But you have to do the work.
A lot of people are doing the work. You could keep telling them, discouragingly, that what they’re doing is dead. Or you could join in the fun.
A great introduction to indie web building blocks from Jamie.
A terrific—and fun!—talk from Zach about site deaths, owning your own content, and the indie web.
Oh, and he really did create MySpaceBook for the talk.
Max describes how he does bookmarking on his own site—he’s got a bookmarklet for sharing links, like I do. But he goes further with a smart use of the “share target” section in his web app manifest, as described by Aaron.
By the way, Max’s upcoming talk at the Web Clerks conference in Vienna sounds like it’s going to be unmissable!