Overview

The following is my entry for the Indie Web Carnival: a monthly event where we are invited to respond to a prompt set by a member of the indie web community. The December prompt, set by V H Belvadi, is:

What would indie web look like in 5 years?

Here I describe the indie web I would like to see, but also broader than that: a view of how the web experience itself could be, not only for users, but content creators and developers. I also try to poke holes in my ideas and how this might impact different audiences and organisations. It’s absolutely naive and idealistic, but hopefully inspiring too.

A word of warning: it’s a very long thought experiment as my ideas grew exponentially and it felt important to capture this “time capsule” as our host suggested.

TLDR: The fundamental idea is that the content and how it’s structured would be determined by its author(s), while the experience would be determined by the users. This would be a personalised, malleable, and portable web that could be repurposed to meet everyone’s needs.

The corporate web

When I think of the corporate web versus the indie web, I think of a big divide in intention and audience. The corporate web to me is about standardisation, growing an audience, expanding your reach, engagement and, ultimately, selling something to someone. Even content that is ‘free’ has a cost in terms of surrendering our personal data for the privilege to take part in this experience.. and it is a privilege: The organisations and influencers that shape this experience can just as easily take it away. It’s a symptom of the capitalist world we live in.

Social media - such a dominant force on the web today - is a prime example of the influence of the corporate web: most platforms offer a one-size-fits all interface with limited customisation options. Accessibility accommodations are at the mercy of the whims of monolithic juggernauts with more money than sense or morals.

Our interactions have been reduced to likes and shares. Success is measured in metrics such as follower counts and page views, even if you have no interest in such things. We’ve been conditioned to be always on, always ‘connected’ to each other. We can’t make anything today without thinking we need to share it with our audience - or so we’ve been told.

Timelines dominate the landscape of this world: every experience is fleeting, transient. Algorithms decide for us what - or should I say who - we get to see. Paywalls and tiered subscriptions keep content away from us, and for those of us who try to give back through platforms like Patreon and Kofi, it’s exhausting and ultimately futile to try to support everyone who is trying to make a living in this space (Oh, if only I could)

On today’s web, it takes real effort to go against the grain and curate your own experience, and even then, only in the confines of what these platforms allow.

We’ve been sold the dream that this is what community looks like. However, the result is an experience that’s never been more isolating, more anxiety-inducing, more subversive and ultimately more toxic to who we are as human beings. If that sounds like an extreme claim, consider when was the last time you didn’t feel compelled to check Facebook/X/Instagram/Threads/TikTok etc. Maybe you might realise that the web is shaping you more than you are shaping it.

The indie web

By contrast, the indie web to me is the domain of the creatives, the radicals, the free-thinkers. People on the indie web are not “users”, they are webweavers, carving out their own personal corner of the web in which to craft their own identities and experiences through joyful self-expression. In some cases, their patch of digital turf represents their professional identity, but even then there is always a spark of creativity. They show up as themselves, not what’s most marketable.

No two indie websites are alike. People are free and actively encouraged to try things, to experiment, and to enthuse about the things that matter to them, with no heed to an audience. Some of those experiences could be more accessible - heck, so could mine - but everyone I’ve encountered is open to improving the accessibility of their websites. This is a community of makers: people sharing their skills in crafting web experiences simply because they delight in doing so.

To be clear: this isn’t a new community: the personal web has always existed. We just forgot about it as we migrated to the silos the tech bros built for us (themselves). We moved into walled gardens and lost something along the way (Sidebar that you should really read Maggie Appleton’s article on walled gardens). We’re like Peter Pan, the boy who grew up. We forgot how to fly.

I also think of the indie web as a space where people can be vulnerable. It feels like many marginalised groups have found a home here, while corporate platforms do more and more to deny them a voice. Activism and grassroots community initiatives naturally find their allies here.

People on the indie web are also more open to others’ experiences. We may not always agree, we may have very different values and tastes, we may not want to explore some topics, but in my experience the community is more respectful of each others need for space, a voice and protection from harm. There’s more of a sense of community, inclusion and truly valuing each other’s contributions than you would find in any Reddit thread.

For example, I’ve written about my own struggles with my mental health here. These are very personal reflections and not for everyone. I’m comfortable sharing this and I provide trigger warnings, but this kind of raw vulnerability would never be welcome on LinkedIn, or at most reposted as social currency.

In contrast to the corporate web, there’s also an acceptance of learning in public on the indie web. It’s okay for what you share to be a work in progress rather than the finished article. Digital gardens are very popular: sprawling, constantly growing knowledge bases that people intentionally cultivate, enriching the body of work for everyone.

There’s quite a technical feel about the IndieWeb 'brand' - and I’ll admit I found this intimidating at first - but this doesn’t feel like a community of tech bros. Everywhere I look, people are willing to offer their expertise freely, and there are numerous ways to participate in the indie web, depending on your comfort level. You don’t literally have to build your own website and host it on a computer in your basement to take part.

The values of the indie web - to own your own content, to post on your own domain, to make what you use - can be seen in the very actions of the people here. That attitude doesn’t come from or need technology. It comes from each of us who are building this space, irrelevant of skills or experience.

In short, I think the indie web is pretty awesome.

A real user-centric web

My vision of a web built on indie web values is one that places user needs and customisation at its core. As web authors, there would be a fundamental shift away from thinking of our website as something that needs to be designed for the many to something that by design caters to the individual. We would prioritise content that is malleable, portable and ultimately might look very different for the end user than what we intended.

The user experience would be one that is bespoke to the individual: this would be set at the browser level (or the OS level?) with people able to customise every aspect of their online experience. The choice would finally be with the users.

This tailored experience would be inherent in every aspect of what we think of as the web. People could choose up front what methods they use to interact with websites - mouse, keyboard, voice etc - and customise these to their liking, and it would just work. A true semantic web would have accessibility and usability standards baked in.

Websites would be authored declaratively by describing the purpose of the content, rather than the look of the interface. Data would be meaningful and relational and could be repurposed to suit different contexts (I’m probably describing something like GraphQL, though I admittedly have very limited knowledge of how it actually works).

The actual look and feel of websites would be primarily determined by the user. Users could set focus styles, text colours, fonts and font sizes at the browser level. Content would be tokenised and meaningful, allowing styles to be applied consistently. Do you rely on high contrast text? Choose your colours and text size in the browser and experience consistency across websites. This would be like a custom stylesheet, immersive reader, or Windows High Contrast mode, but one that you could apply everywhere.

Does this browser-centric styling mean all websites would look the same? Potentially, but only if you wanted them to. You would also be able to set these customisations on a per website basis. Maybe you prefer articles from one site to look a certain way, and the image gallery from another to look very different. For example, you could switch between timeline and masonry layouts at will.

Interactions and behaviour would also be user-driven. Web browsers would ship with a library of functional widgets, vetted by the community, that are ready to consume content. All websites would use these core building blocks. Do you hate carousels? Don’t enable them and choose a fallback instead, maybe a grid gallery, for example. These browser provided building blocks would provide a baseline experience for everyone. Again, the default would be that everything just works.. for everyone. How much you customise it would be up to you.

The community would create more bespoke widgets and themeable templates that use those widgets. These could be designed for different contexts, but there would be a move away from types of websites towards types of content. Prefer reading long form content? There’s a template for that. Prefer short, bitesize videos? There’s different widgets and templates for that. Ultimately people could choose how they want to view and interact with the kind of content they engage with.

But if the choice rests with the users, what does this mean for website owners?

Perhaps they could still provide a preferred experience - a template using the widgets they feel best showcases their content - or maybe they wouldn’t and would leave it up to the user’s browser settings to determine what their site looks like. Again, portable, semantic content would be their primary area of concern. Much like we are now seeing a shift towards writing content for AI bots, they would be writing content that can be repurposed and remixed easily. Again, it’s content that would be a priority in the user experience.

If they did decide to provide a default template, they would have the option to use the core library of widgets and/or create their own widgets: the catch is that all widgets would be shared with the community. Why? Walled gardens simply do not align with the values of this new web. If you’re uncomfortable sharing your works in progress - I am - this would be a community of mentors, ready and willing to encourage and enable you to upskill. You’d be able to see how anyone built anything, much like how Pico-8 games are both easily shareable and editable.

UI widgets would be composable: they could be assembled in whatever makes the most sense, inheriting the particular features we want. The community would create more widgets to build on or complement those provided by web browsers. I’m sure standardisation would emerge organically, but experimentation would be actively encouraged. We would always find new ways to show off and interact with content.

These widget creators would themselves also benefit from inherent customisation. The very interfaces they use to author widgets would be customisable. They could choose the authoring experience that best works for them. This would result in varying degrees of abstraction depending on how comfortable people are working with code, making the barrier to entry much lower. This could range from a Visual Studio style code editor, to a drag and drop node interface, for example. I’d personally use something we already have with blueprints in Statamic: you choose and configure the fields you want, either by creating a YAML file or using a drag and drop interface. This authoring experience is separate to front end presentation, which you create with views. I’m sure other frameworks have similar concepts.

Browsers would come with built in editors that could be presented as text or GUIs, for example. The community could also create more editors, a bit like how people share different linters. These could either be add-ons to the browser or entirely separate tools dedicated to authoring widgets and templates.

A community of creators and curators

I keep mentioning the community. How would you experience this community of individuals? Well, do you remember how, in the early days of dial-up internet, your ISP would provide a portal of information and sites you might like to visit? Such a landing page would be your entry to the World Wide Web. Again, you could customise this to suit. It would aggregate all your website feeds and updates from friends. You could grab content at will, remixing it to create the landing page that works best for you. Maybe this would actually be your Homepage: a place to call your own and share with others as your first web presence, if you wanted to.

Again, you could share homepage templates much like how people share Notion templates. You could probably still use search, but you’d also be able to explore simply using links, going as far down the rabbit hole as you’d like. We’d return to the joyful serendipity of discovery.

The future of the indie web

The indie web alone cannot make my vision of the web happen, or else it would remain confined to the indie web which would downgrade its impact. There would have to be a real systemic culture shift in how we perceive value and how we think of web content to achieve what I’m describing.

However, I think the indie web could lay the groundwork for such a future. Micro formats such as user and x already enable us to declare the purpose of our content so that it can be consumed by other websites, and Webmentions allow websites to talk to each other. Open standards protocols like ActivityPub are hotly debated. I think the indie web community could lead the way in standards for a portable and composable web.

Creating community resources and open source projects are also an established feature of the indie web already. The idea of creating something for others just because you can and see a need. I use Artemis as my RSS reader, created by the lovely James of James’ Coffee Blog. It’s a thoughtful implementation of a very common use case and how I explore the voices of the indie web.

My vision of the future takes this idea and expands it to the web experience itself: we need the webweavers, engineers and architects who still delight in working with web technologies to create the authoring tools for everyone else to contribute. We also need the artists, philosophers and tinkerers to share their vision, to inspire and push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Curation and connection are already commonplace in the indie web community. We already have the technology for RSS feeds and webrings.

On the flip side, maybe this democratisation of tools and web weaving technologies would actually stifle creativity. I don’t believe it would, but there’s a risk of veering towards pretty but cookie-cutter templates like Ghost or x. I want everyone to experience the same joy in creating their own website - the same sense of community - without diluting the self expression that made it so tantalising in the first place.

Would this new web support commercial interests?

If your first thought was “well how would anyone make money from this?” then I have to admit I can only leave you unsatisfied. I don’t have an obvious answer to how such an experience could be monetised, nor how it would benefit private organisations that are quite happy with the status quo.

Quite honestly though, I wouldn’t want it to be monetised for fear of poisoning the well with all the things currently wrong with the corporate web. Maybe the path forward, in line with a culture shift, would look more like mutual aid: there wouldn’t be selling services so much as there would be reciprocity and community based efforts to ensure everyone had their needs met.

Sharing the web and its resources unconditionally could not only be part of this new culture, it could be baked into the very architecture used to power it. There remains a digital divide for many on this rock we call home and a true open web would ensure even those with limited resources are able to participate equitably.

I really enjoy Chris Ferdinandi’s Go Make Things newsletter and they touched on the resistance to such ideas recently in their discussion of a community fridge:

A resource rooted in sharing rather than throwing crumbs to the poor is completely foreign to how so much of modern culture operates.

What would our society look like if people were actively encouraged to engage with their local and global communities using the framework established by this new web? Not some restrictive social media platform that you could only access by selling your soul to some

CEO crossroads demon, but a true open web where information and expertise is shared freely. This isn’t the kind of web experience that could ever be managed from boardrooms.

The web I’m describing would be a true community web. Self sustaining, self governing, self improving, and ultimately wielded as a tool for people to share their ideas, seek inspiration, and solve the world’s problems. When was the last time you thought of the internet like that?