I promised. It’s here. Spoiler alert, it’s just going to be the usual but it is a direct sequel to an article intended as such from the start. So it’s a new thing I’m doing.
That’s probably better than most series I’m waiting for, so you have that going for you
— Alfredo, about the previous article
Have you ever head of the Dead Internet Theory. Have you ever searched for something only to be confused when served barely legible pages full of sponsored linked? You scroll down Google but the real article telling you clearly that wonderful answer never comes. Have you ever spent time on a social network only to find promotional posts and reposts? Doesn’t everything look like automated content farms trying to extract shady revenue out of you? The Internet is DEAD dun, dun dun and it’s all bots!
In truth, the Internet, or the Web more precisely, didn’t die in 2016, but it doesn’t feel like it used to. It sure feels different, though. I was a very young teenager when I got my first Internet connection, in the early 2000s. The Web was a very different place. It was bustling with activity. Between old static Geocities-like sites, and blogs everywhere, there was so much to discover. Even big websites were browseable. There was so much to discover, so much to discover.
I wasn’t having the best of times back then, to put it mildly. That window into the world was what I needed. It made such a difference in my life, I can honestly say I don’t know how much more time I would have had without it. At the palm of my hand was an ocean of possibilities. I could suddenly learn about different people, people I could resonate with. I could discover so many concepts that would have been so much further from reach. It made the cacophony less noisy. It made life worth fighting for.
That’s why, when I read “The Small Web” by Parimal Satyal, it resonated with me, a lot. I really recommend that you read it. I remember so many things. So many voices I had heard in this place: the remnants of a long gone creative web I had wandered. Everything, to me, little more than a child, was strange, new, and dare I say beautiful. I remember how common it was to browse website that were written by people, not companies. In France, a lot of ISPs gave you a small hosting space. And people used them. Many of them were even formative for me.
This article is an ode to what was. Who has a website nowadays? I’ll rephrase, name a person that is not trying to sell you anything that has a website. Name someone you personally met. I’m a software engineer, I’m paid doing web development, I don’t count. Of course I have website: I’m a nerd. Why is every website you browse nowadays so devoid of actual human interaction? Even, and especially social networks. Why do search engines funnel you toward SEO traps and struggle to bring up anything even remotely pertinent. Why is every website you go to trying to track you?
And don’t start me on AI! I’ll complain about that another day!
Let’s get back on track. I really want you to read “The Small Web” by Parimal Satyal. If you want extra credit, read its precursor: Against an Increasingly User Hostile Web too. Did I mention it explains that sensation of “suckiness” that you experience browsing commercial websites, like you’re a small animal running around in a cage to the three points of interest that have been placed in there for you? I have to clarify that by commercial websites, I do not mean just websites trying to sell you products. Any website who hosts commercial intentions of some sort is concerned by that descriptor.
The Small Web is that concept of a small personal web, made for humans by humans. And I miss it, and clearly, I am not alone. I want it back. I want that magic of visiting absolute strangers websites and to be delighted. I want revel in the difference of others as I once did, far away from the sterile walled gardens that are social networks. Did you know that, at home, no one can stop me from swearing? I could publish nudes if I wanted to. Don’t keep your hopes up though, you’d better wait for Half Life 3.
I hadn’t realized that I had been a part of it in some way without knowing. I’ve had some sort of a personal website/block for at least 15 years although only the last 10 have had a continuous existence that you can still browse nowadays. This blog is a window onto myself. I’ll keep it open because I care. And I would like you to do the same. Show the world, show me, who you are. Be amazing, be beautiful, and shout it to the world. Build a personal website, yesterday.
“But making a web site is hard” will you say. And the answer is : it’s as hard as you want it to be. You don’t have to use a Rube Goldberg machine as your blog generator like I did. I’ll write my own for real at some point because that’s what engineers crave. Making your own CMS or static generator is like a forbidden fruit: deliciously tempting. But I digress. Making a website can be very simple. It’s just a bunch of files on your computer that you move to another computer. And then people ask that second computer to give them your website.
You don’t even need any specialized tool!
Literally the default text editor of your operating system will do the trick. Of course, you can use a slightly more elaborate tool to make your life easier. For the programmers reading, yes I could recommend Emacs <3, Vim, or VSCode, but I’m trying to be accessible here.
Neocities (I’ll talk about them later don’t worry), has links to a few good tutorials. I also can’t laud Mozilla’s work enough with their Mozilla developers resources (formerly Mozilla developer network), that are listed in the options from the Neocities tutorial list. MDN is a wonderful – resource well written and exhaustive. I use it all the time at work, whenever I need to come back and get a quick reference. Learn HTML and CSS and you’ll be good. And try things as you go. You need a surprisingly small amount of knowledge to start making a website.
If you want a bit more of a hands down approach, just download this web page, edit it and you have a web page. link them together with anchor elements and you have a site. My blog has a bit of fluff because I’m extra at time. Here’s a very simple starting page:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>This is the title of the page that display in your browser's tabs</title>
<meta name="description" content="This is a description that will appear when you share your link on a messaging app, or in search engines, or social networks if you link it there, and many more other places. I'd recommend making it shorter than this example. Think of your reader.">
<style type="text/css">
body {
background-color: Beige;
font-family: serif;
color: black;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is the main title/heading displayed on your page</h1>
<p>This is a first paragraph, write anything here.</p>
<p>This is a second paragraph with <a href="https://blag.necronomicon.fr/">a link/anchor</a>! This is a second link <a href="page2.html">that links to a page2.html file on the same website</a>. Create a second file with that name on your computer</p>
<h2>This is a sub title/heading!</h2>
<h3>This is a sub sub heading</h3>
<p>And this paragraph is part of the sub sub heading. and just under it is a picture or image!</p>
<img src="https://www.iana.org/_img/2015.1/iana-logo-homepage.svg" alt="Official logo of the IANA">
</body>
</html>Just make something, about anything. Write about your band, about your recipes, about your life. Share your art, your thoughts, your feelings.
Just be yourself. It doesn’t need to be good, it doesn’t need to be inspiring, it just needs to exist.
That’s great and everything, but I’m sure you’re thinking that putting a website on the Internet is very complicated. You need clouds and spells and stuff. Actually, remember when I said you just need to put your website on another computer?
That other computer, sometimes called a server, runs what is called a web server that… serves web pages. So you could do that, just have a computer at home and have people from the Internet come to get your website from it, or you could ask someone else to share their computer with you.
That’s most of what you need to get started. Have fun! Change the colors! Look up how to change the colors. Learn more later if you’d like but know that it’s yours, and that you made it.
Neocities is the wake of the venerable GeoCities. It tries to recreate the magic of GeoCities with its countless little personal sites. It has a cute logo, a lot of features, and you can even edit your pages online.
You could also join a weird little community and host your website there. You could check out tilde.town, or another one from the tildeverse, or try out Itchi.
It might be scary at first but don’t be afraid, read a little, ask for help and you’ll soon realize that it wasn’t difficult at all.
You could also pay company a few insert currency name and get a hosting space that way too. But do you need to? Do you need to serve millions of requests every fraction of a second? Not really. Do you need to run complex toolchains? Nope.
Now, there’s one last point I’d like to address. I could have recommended to just use an hosted blogging platform like Wordpress’ but what happens if the site is not profitable and it closes. I know how to get my data back, but it’s my job. You’d need to spend a lot of time and do you need your website’s home page to be 5MB?
With bells and whistles come a lot of risks and complexity. A lot of the personality is lost. I’m hoping to see a reflection of the writer in their website, not a generic template.
No, the Internet is not dead, Facebook, maybe, but not the Web, nor the Internet.