Who is the Indie Web?

The Indie Web is made of people. It’s made by me. It can be made by you too. There’s no gatekeeper. You can join anytime without anyone’s permission. The Indie Web is made by everyone.

The Indie Web community is a small but growing group of people from several countries. We’re on a few but not not continents. We are hiding in plain sight, or rather we’re not hiding at all. We have jobs in tech and not in tech. We build our own software or install other’s (like Wordpress or Known). We are designers, developers, devops, UX and non-technical folks.

The Indie Web community is not as diverse as it could be and needs to be. Admittedly, the community is overwhelmingly white men. There are some women and some people of color. But we need to do much better at reaching out to people, at being more inclusive and at sustaining a diverse community. Because if the Indie Web is going to succeed, it must represent the rich plurality of people in the world.

We are working hard at making the Indie Web not just for us by us, but for all of us by all of us.

Where is the Indie Web?

The Indie Web is everywhere. The Indie Web is nowhere. The Indie Web is anywhere you can access the internet.

Personal Websites

The Indie Web is simply the web when it’s owned and controlled by individuals on their own domains. The Indie Web is that place where someone publishes a creative work to her own website. The Indie Web is on individual’s personal domains and in the interactions directly between them. The Indie Web is when just a copy is syndicated out to imperialist website silos. The Indie Web is of the internet on our personal websites.

Conversation

The Indie Web is, of course, just made of people. The Indie Web community regularly gathers in an IRC channel #indiewebcamp on freenode.net (with a Slack bridge called, indiewebcamp). There’s also a web version at http://indiewebcamp.com/irc/today.

IndieWebCamp

Once per year, we meet in Portland, Oregon, United States for the Indie Web Summit (started in 2011). Additionally, other IndieWebCamps have been organized in multiple cities in the United States and in Europe. We hope to add more cities and in more continents.

Homebrew Website Club

Also, in multiple cities in the United States and in Europe smaller groups meet up more frequently and more informally at a meet up called Homebrew Website Club. At HWC, we share with each other our progress in building and improving our websites. We encourage each other to continue our improvements. And in some cities, there is a silent writing hour where attendees simply write new material for their website.

Both Homebrew Website Clubs and IndieWebCamps are free and available to anyone who owns their domain or wants to. Anyone can also organize a Homebrew Website Club or an IndieWebCamp in their city.

How Can You Get on the Indie Web?

The Indie Web is not a place separate from the web that you already know and use. The web that you’re probably reading this article on right now.¹ The Indie Web can be almost anywhere on the web.

Domain

The first step to getting on the Indie Web is to own your domain. ²

A domain (or sometimes called a “domain name”) is the part of a URL that looks like example.com. On my website, my domain is veganstraightedge.com. It doesn’t have to end in “.com”. It could be .org, .net, .info, .biz, .me or country codes ³ like .io, .it, .co or all kinds of new TLDs⁴ like .limo, .club, .ninja.

You can buy a domain from any number of registrars. I recommend hover.com if you’re just buying one or a few domains. If you find yourself owning 10 or more, I suggest using dnsimple.com. I implore you to avoid godaddy.com. Even if they’re selling the domain you want for a few dollars cheaper than others. Everyone I’ve ever known that used GoDaddy regretted using them later.

Try to think about the longevity of your the name you choose. Will you still want to use this domain in ten years? In fifty? Always a reliable classic is your name at some TLD. shanebecker.com, shanebecker.me, etc.

Some websites that provide the publishing software (like SqaureSpace or Wordpress) will also sell you a domain directly through your account settings. And when you buy it through them, they also configure it to Just Work™ for your site.

For example, when you sign up with Wordpress.com you choose a subdomain for your Wordpress blog: veganstraightedge.wordpress.com. But when you buy veganstraightedge.com through Wordpress, they set it up so that only veganstraightedge.com is ever shown to the world instead of veganstraightedge.wordpress.com.

It’s critically important that you don’t use a subdomain (like veganstraightedge.wordpress.com or veganstraightedge.tumblr.com) as your primary website. The reason is that you don’t really own any subdomain.⁵ If you ever decide to move to different publishing software (like from Tumblr to Wordpress) none of your URLs can be moved. And good URLs don’t change.

Publish

Once you’ve got a domain, publish something. Publish lots of somethings. Publish to your heart’s content. And then publish some more.

Publish short text notes. Publish longer structured articles with titles and HTML formatting (if you want). Publish bookmarked links, photos and videos. Anything that you currently publish on other sites, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

Later on in the process of expatriation from the corporate silos that currently control what and how we publish to the autonomy of the Indie Web, there’s a process called syndication where a copy of your post is sent to a silo for greater distribution or visibility for people you want to see your post but don’t go to your site. E.g. friends and family on Facebook.

We call this process of syndication POSSE. That stands for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. I’ll cover POSSE in more depth in a syndication specific post.

About Me

Or about you, really.

On your site, there’s probably a header, sidebar or footer place for you to put some information about yourself. Your name, your photo or avatar, some URLs and usernames on other sites. If you feel comfortable doing so, your phone number and/or email address. Maybe even a short paragraph or two bio about you. You can expand this even further by creating a page (typically called “About” at the path of /about). You can also add a resume/cv and/or portfolio. Or you can do something completely different. It’s your site, your identity.

Summary

Get a domain. Find some publishing software (or if you’re feeling adventurous, build your own). Publish some posts. Include an about me section. Write an about me page (and for bonus points, a resume).

Now you’re on the Indie Web!

There’s some additional technology under the covers that will improve your experience, but all of that requires that you’ve done these parts first.

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Why Get on the Indie Web?

In a word, autonomy.

Call it freedom or agency or control or ownership. Call it any number of things, but no one knows how to live your life better than you do.

The current state of the web for most of us most of time looks like this. We go to one website or app and publish some post. Then we go to another site or app to publish a different kind of post. Or maybe we cross post it from one site to another. All of those sites and apps are by other people or corporations. They all have a different set of users with different usernames, and different networks, with their own cultures and norms.

New sites and apps come along. We try them out. Some go out of business or get acquired and “sunsetted”. The sites get shut down. Our posts and URLs get destroyed forever. Rinse and repeat on another site over and over.

Nevermind the communities that take shape on these sites. Nevermind that when these sites get shut down the communties get disappeared too. We all find support through communities. If a community that we’ve come to depend on disappears, that can have a real impact on our lives.

Get Free

All good things are wild and free. But we can’t be wild and free on an imperialist website silo¹ that’s owned and controlled by someone else, especially a silo owned and controlled by a corporation whose business model is surveillance and advertising. We can only be wild and free through a model of self-determination and mutual aid.

Any website that we publish our creative works to controls the terms and context under which we publish.

Some reasons to control your own website instead of solely trusting silos are: content censorship, terms of service, privacy, advertising / monetization, the algorithm, identity, longevity.

If they want to delete our posts or account, they can for any reason with no warning. If they want to sell or give information about us and our activity to advertisers, law enforcement or governments, they can without our knowledge or consent. If any money is made from your published posts (say, from advertising views), you don’t see any of that money.

Stay Wild

We love power and hate authority.
— Crimethinc

By participating in the Indie Web, you are helping to create an alternative to the corporate-owned, advertising-subsidized surveillance state of imperialist websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube (and all the rest).

The Indie Web looks like owning your personal website and publishing all of your creative works there. Notes, articles, photos, videos, events, rsvps, likes, bookmarks… all of the things. You publish how and where you want. Your friends, family, followers and fans can read and view your posts how and where they they want.

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What is the Indie Web?

It’s not a place. It’s not social network. It’s not a website, Slack channel or secret club. It’s not on the dark web. It’s not a new protocol. It’s not a new format. It’s not an app or specific software.

Fundamentally, the Indie Web is an idea!

The idea is that any person can and should have their own website on their own domain that they own and control.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe that as a culture we must expand our definition of human rights to include two more things.

1. All humans have the right to access, read and participate on the Internet free of restriction, censorship and surveillance.
2. All humans have the right to own a website that they have complete control of free from censorship for the entirety of their life and that is preserved after their death.

The Indie Web is a small step forward toward these goals.