Rediscovering a more personal web

What started as an innocent Google search a month ago to find a note-taking app that supports Markdown* led me down a rabbit hole of discovering digital gardens, the indie web, the personal web and nostalgia for a simpler time on the internet.

The indie web is an alternative to the corporate web that dominates so much of our online experience now. Founded on several principles including owning your data, making and using what you need, and importantly having fun, it encourages a more individual approach to our online presence.

In particular, I can recognise how the web has become fragmented and siloed already in my lifetime. The “walled gardens” of Facebook, X/Twitter etc control what we see of the internet, who we can connect with and how. That sense of discovery and creativity is lacking in many of our online interactions. Our experience is packaged, funneled and filtered, and reduced to likes and reposts.

I’m also really struck by how, for my parents’ generation, the idea that you could visit someone’s personal home on the web - a space filled with creative self-expression and experimentation - isn’t really a thing. When my dad uses the internet, he checks Facebook or he searches Google and lands on a company website. I don’t know that he’s even seen a personal site before.

I feel it in my own online activity too. As can be seen from this site, I haven’t blogged since 2022. I abandonned the toxic cesspool that is Twitter around the same time, and my social interaction on the web is now almost exclusively limited to Instagram, and the occasional Facebook group.

However, I find even in those spaces, I haven’t been creating or sharing anything. I’m trying to change that this year by sharing my art. However, for the longest time i’ve been liking and commenting on posts, without posting anything on my own timeline. I joined Threads recently on a whim and I just.. I have nothing to say.

In rediscovering a more personal web, i’ve been reintroduced to all the artefacts of blogging that I haven’t seen in years: webrings, tagclouds, blogrolls, rss feeds. I’ve found myself genuinely more excited about the social web than I have been in a long time. I miss my community of blogging friends. We are still in contact, but it’s not the same. I find the noise of social media so tiring these days.

I’ve already discovered a small handful of cosy, delightful personal sites. Spending time exploring their spaces as I sip my morning coffee is food for the soul. I’ve started attending the Europe/London IndieWeb online meetup too and everyone has been very welcoming.

The truth is, the personal web didn’t go away, it’s always been there. Passionate individuals have continued cultivating their own homes and neighbourhoods on the web. We’ve just been so blinkered by the major social media platforms that we’ve forgotten what the web can be.

So i’m creating my own little home here on the web. I’m slowly pulling in here my activity from elsewhere. Expect things to be a bit rough around the edges for awhile as I fix broken links and recreate my own timeline. There’s also a lot of technical gubbins to add to make this a true indie web site.

It felt fitting to resurrect my old blog, Stray Dog Strut. However, i’m no longer using Wordpress. Although it’s not a requirement of the indie web, my renewed enthusiasm for taking control of my web experience means i’m building this site from scratch. I’m using the Eleventy static site generator which affords me the convenience of modern web development, combined with a very hands on approach to using HTML and CSS that i’ve been missing.

Moving forwards, I plan to adopt the “publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere” (POSSE) approach. In this way, anyone who wants to can see what i’m up to here, and I will have control over what I want to share on social media silos. What resonates with me most about this approach is having the assurance that I control what in my digital footprint stays and what goes. Social media platforms may come and go, but so long as I maintain my own personal site, my slice of history will still exist.

(*I’ve been reacquinted with the Bear notetaking app which is just as lovely as I remember)

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash