Welcome to my Website!

In the early 2000s there was a sort of fascination with the new accessibility of home-owned computers and being able to explore the internet for the first time for not just academic purposes. While arguably there was not much to do at the time, one of the early forms of entertainment to do online was to make new friends from all over the globe and the best way to do that was to showcase yourself on indie web platforms.

What Is Indie Web? What Is the Indie Web..?

Your own website basically! Indie, coming from the word independent and web meaning website. Slap those two words together and you have your own independent website. Instead of social media companies dictating how you format things and owning your content, you make it all on your own typically by using the coding language such as HTML and CSS. The whole webpage will showcase your brand, your identity, and gives you the freedom to creatively do anything you want. From the buttons, fonts, to the pictures, the formatting, the color of the page, and sometimes you can even change how your mouse looks! Having your own indie website means total creative freedom. The sky is the limit if you can imagine it. While your own web does represent you, it doesn’t need to be about you. It can be a gallery of your art, random dog pictures you like, a study on different color fish, links to other communities on the forefront of your page just to spread the word, blogs, guestbooks, and projects, it is whatever you need it to be. It can be serious or really silly.

What is a better way to show the things you’re interested in for anyone and everyone to look at than to make your own indie web? This is a very great way for independent users to form and create communities with like minded people. There are no standards as to what things should and should not be because it does not rely on centralized platforms that require you to play their algorithm to get max viewership and retention.

History of Indie Webs | Notable websites

In the mid 90s, as there weren’t any notable platforms at the time people opted to make their own personal web pages ISP webspaces, or have it self hosted. That eventually phased out when people found it easier to rely on a third party to set up the domain for you which was cheaper and often free in comparison.

What Is Indie Web? What Is the Indie Web..?

MySpace is a great early on example reaching its peak in 2003 to 2009, it is a social media platform but can be categorized as an indie web platform because of its innate ability of user customization. More so for the social aspect of the platform to showcase yourself. It gave a platform for independent artists to make their debuts and created various communities of like minded people. While MySpace is not a self owned domain, the customization you were allowed to do basically function as one.

GeoCities, another indie web platform, users could make their own pages on the website similar to MySpace but it was less on the social aspect and more of writing about anything you want. Hobbies, Fan sites, art, practically anything you want, however did shut down by 2009.

How To Join The Movement | How I joined

You can either host your own domain (which frankly is a complicated set up you’d probably have to look at on your own time, sorry), or have a website to help you make your own website! Personally I’m setting up or already have set up my own website via NeoCities, which is basically a modern day version of the extinct GeoCities at the low cost of free 99. It requires you to know a lil coding HTML and CSS. Not all require coding knowledge! I won’t go into details on that but I’ll provide a very generous gift to you guys to learn it (youtube). It takes a bit but it is extremely easy, don’t be intimidated by the word “coding.”

Below are resources & some funny things, hope to see you start your indie web journey! Have fun!

Romeo, Romeo, where art thou thy websites to make mine Romeo?

HTML & CSS Resources! (Can be used anywhere not just NeoCities)

To learn more HTML/CSS, check out these tutorials!

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