Links & Resources

A Beginner's Guide to the IndieWeb for Writers Who Don't Code (But Maybe Want to a Little) [Brennan.day]

A guide for those who may want to have their own website but don't want to do much coding.

A complete guide to Bluesky 🦋 [MacKuba]

An in-depth guide to Bluesky and the applications surrounding it.

Astro (in the indie web) [jbc.lol]

A tutorial on how to use Astro SSG.

CSS & HTML Tips and Tricks [Kevin Powell]

A set of video tutorials on HTML and CSS.

Creating a Zonelets Tagging System [3legged]

A guide for creating a tagging system for the blogging system Zonelets.

Deploy to Neocities 🐈 [Scumsuck]

A guide on how to deploy a website to neocities using github actions.

Email address obfuscation: What works in 2026? [Spencer Mortensen]

A list of various email address obfuscation techniques, their effectiveness, and their drawbacks.

Fediverse [Scumsuck]

A list of fediverse instances for artists.

Git for Webmasters [mcmackins.org]

An explanation of the basics of git and why it's useful for webmasters.

HTML For Screen Readers - Labelling Elements [Bits of Code]

A guide for labelling elements for screen readers.

HTML for People

A basic guide to html and css.

Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day [neatnik]

An essay/mini-guide to being a member of the "hardcore" indieweb.

Alternatively: a piece pointing out the simplicity of "old style" sitemaking (which has never really died), and that making a website doesn't have to involve SSGs, CMS, or frameworks.

Homelab For the Beginner: You Can Self-host Your Own Server on $50 Hardware [Brennan.day]

A guide on how to host a homelab or other type of home server.

How To: Make a band website with Faircamp [the-counterforce.org]

A tutorial for making a website with Faircamp, a static site generator for bands and musical artists.

How to Migrate to Blacksky

A guide on how to migrate an account to Blacksky from Bluesky.

Microformats2 [Microformats Wiki]

The microformats2 entry on the microformats wiki.

PHP For People

A work-in-progress guide to PHP for beginners, inspired by HTML For People.

PHP Tutorials for Beginners [Dani Krossing]

A set of video tutorials on PHP.

Practical Technology

A list of resources for webdev, game dev, and more.

RSS Feeds [Doqmeat]

A guide for (manually) creating RSS feeds.

Resources List for the Personal Web [32bit.cafe]

As the title says: a list of resources for those looking to make or maintain personal websites.

Static Site Generators for Beginners [brennan.day]

An explanation of static site generators and the concepts surrounding them for those completely or almost completely new to web dev.

Thunderbird and RSS [Scumsuck]

A blog post outlining ways to find RSS feeds for various websites.

You Can Make a Website [Osteophage]

An essay/set of resources on how to make your own website.

learnwebdev.fyi

A restoration of learn.co's ruby-focused curriculum.

Archive of Your Own

A no-JS filterable list with an Ao3-inspired layout.

Astro SSG

A javascript-based (but javascript-optional) static site generator.

Bibliodex Template [Osteophage]

A no-JS template for a filterable list of writing pieces, reviews, or whatever else.

Create Your Own Website [32bit.cafe]

A guide to making your own website.

Dokuwiki

A database-free wiki software.

EZGallery [Netfriend]

An image gallery template.

Hamster CMS

A super simple CMS.

Rarebit

A javascript-based template for webcomics.

Tabvoid

A blogging template primarily intended for neocities sites, inspired by Zonelets.

Writing Masterlist Template [Kingdra.net]

A sortable template for writing pieces.

Zonelets

A blogging template primarily intended for neocities sites.

ao3-style.css [Kingdra.net]

A css file for styling exported Ao3 fics.

AlphaVPS

A VPS provider that provides VPS in a variety of configurations suited for purposes ranging from hosting applications to keeping backups.

Comicfury

A free webcomic host. Each comic is hosted as its own site with a (sub)domain, RSS, and custom theme support.

Fedihost

Managed hosting for Mastodon, gotosocial, and Peertube.

Glauca.digital

A domain, DNS and monitoring provider based in Wales.

Heliohost

A non-profit webhost that offers both free and paid services.

Kamatera

A cloud provider who offers VPS with custom configurations.

Nearly Free Speech

A pay-what-you-use webhost dedicated to free speech/expression (the real kind, not the "saying hateful things without consequences" kind).

Nekoweb

A static webhost with server-side includes.

Neocities

A static webhost with social features.

Porkbun

A transparently-priced domain registrar that offers web and email hosting.

Web Hosts [Kalechips]

A descriptive list of webhosts.

Your Own Website: Testing Free Website Hosts [Pixelshannon]

Reviews of various free webhosts.

folk.zone

An attempt to build an IndieWeb commons that provides a variety of services and resources.

omg.lol is the Internet We Need Right Now [Brennan.day]

A review of omg.lol and its associated services.

Bulk Image Resizing Made Easy (BIRME)

A bulk image resizer and converter.

Cat Genetics Articles and Tools [Sparrow's Garden]

Very cool and useful articles and calculators for cat genetics. I used them as one of my references to make sure the Clowders & Claws family trees were as genetically accurate as I could make them (since getting cat genetics glaringly wrong in a plot that relies on them would be pretty awkward, even if it was only background characters!). Not directly web related, but I needed to share it somewhere. :3

Cubeupload

A donation-supported, no-compression image host.

Delphi Tools

A wide variety of tools for file editing and compression, accessbility checks, resources for development, calculators, and more.

File Garden

A free file host.

HTML Entity Decoder & Encoder

An HTML entities decoder and encoder, for when one wants to use HTML entities but can't have them decoded/encoded for them.

HTML Formatter

An HTML formatter. Particularly useful for adding spacing when copying and pasting HTML from Ellipsus documents.

Indie Web Database [petrapixel]

A database of personal websites.

PDS Debugger [debug.hose.cam]

A debugger for PDSes.

PDS MOOver

A tool for migrating, backing up, and recovering data lost due to migration for Bluesky/ATproto accounts.

Pandoc for the People

A free file converter based on pandoc.

Real Favicon Generator

A favicon generator that can create favicons sized for a variety of platforms.

Squoosh

An image compressor, coverter, and resizer.

google-webfonts-helper

A tool that makes obtaining compressed font files easy.

vert

A free file converter.

vsky.network

A PDS crawler that allows you to request your PDS be crawled by multiple crawlers at once.

AO3 Comments and Why People Aren't Leaving More of Them [osteophage]

Ao3's commenting culture and how it was influenced by tumblr.

Aggressive AI scrapers are making it kinda suck to run wikis [weirdgloop.org]

The outsized impact AI scraper bot(net)s are having on wikis, a brief explanation of just how these bots are bypassing mitigations, ways that might work to detect and block them, and impacts that may have on legitimate viewers caught in the crossfire.

Anonymity, pseudonymity, and the agency of online identity: Examining the social practices of r/Gonewild [First Monday]

A discussion of the rules and culture of r/gonewild and the benefits spaces like it have for expression.

Apathetic, Intentionally. Why I don't block AI scrapers on my website. [Brennan.day]

A discussion on blocking AI scraper bots.

Can the Fediverse Help Stop Bad Internet Bills? [wedistribute]

Organizing and activism on the fediverse.

Digital Hopes, Real Power: The Rise of Network Shutdowns [EFF]

Outlines internet shutdowns across the world, how they came to be, and the impact they have on speech and expression.

Has the IndieWeb Become Irrelevant? [Starbreaker.org]

A critique of the IndieWeb movement.

How LLMs & Chatbots Are Bad For the Indie Web [Osteophage]

Discussing the harms of "AI" chatbots to the small web.

How Online Privacy Has Been Championed by Dreamwidth [osteophage]

Ways Dreamwidth has fought for online privacy in the face of bad internet bills.

How Pillowfort Built a Comment Culture Worth Emulating [ostephage]

The features of Pillowfort that led to its culture, and what other sites can learn from it.

How Social Media and Chatbot Bans Could Backfire [JMIR]

A paper discussion recent bans and restrictions on social media for youths, and why these bans are not effective.

Interact With Minors

Why the widespread avoidance of minors online may place them in danger.

Online Masquerade: Redesigning the Internet for Free Speech Through the Use of Pseudonyms [Wiley Online Library]

A disussion of the drawbacks and benefits of full identification, anonymity, and pseudonymity online.

RE: I want to comment on your blog post [starbreaker.org]

Why comment sections are trickier to implement than it may seem, the sacrifices required to keep them running, and why not everyone wants one on their blog.

Screens Are Not Necessarily the Enemy [aetheranne.ca]

As the title says: a discussion of why screens aren't the enemy, pointing out similarities between movements against modern devices and past ones against TV.

The Death of DeviantArt and the art-site shaped hole haunting the Internet [torrent-empress]

DeviantART and why its alternatives haven't succeeded.

There Are No Instances in atproto [overreacted.io]

Why asking "Why aren't there any other Bluesky instances?" is a bad idea.

Traditional Social Media as a Prison

A discussion of racism on social media and how Blacksky is combatting that.

What happened to the fight for the Internet? [dustycloud.org]

Why the fight against bad internet bills seems to have faded.

What's in a Nym? Gender, Race, Pseudonymity, and the Imagining of the Online Persona [Media Culture]

A discussion of the use of pseudonyms in feminist blogging spaces and why pseudonymity is important.

Who does Anubis actually stop? [Farid Zakaria]

A showcase of how trivial bypassing Anubis is using the very thing it's attempting to stop.

Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure

A three-part essay on the web, advertising, and why ad-supported social media inevitably fails.

Wow, I Love the 'Puter! [brennan.day]

An appreciation of computers, from how they work and are made to what they can be used for.

Reflects a lot of the joy I feel about computers myself. :3

Your blog doesn't need a JavaScript framework [iainbean.com]

A discussion of two different SSGs and why the author chose one over the other.

the watchers, pt. 2: the correspondence [vmfunc.re]

An interview with the CEO of Persona, following up on the first part.

the watchers: how openai, the US government, and persona built an identity surveillance machine that files reports on you to the feds [vmfunc.re]

An investigation of the identity verification provider Persona.