About
What is this website?
This website is a 'personal website,' meaning that it is created, owned, and maintained by an individual person! It is also a part of the 'indie web', meaning it links to and crosses traffic with dozens of other personal websites, which in turn are created, owned, and maintained by other individuals or small groups! Personal websites can be made about anything and for any purpose its owner chooses!But what is this website about?
I'm a fan of the indie web, I like to meet various people, and I like to help people connect with one another, and those three things are what I made this website all-about: the indie web, conversation, and community. Think of it like a virtual café, a small spot for local netizens to spark discussion and hangout online! At its height, this cafe had nearly 200 simultaneous users in chat. But this virtual café wasn't always so populated.It began with a simple chatroom on January 1st, 2023, built for future websurfers to stop in, leave a message, enjoy the ambiance, and maybe, if lucky, bump into another visitor. What began as a sparse trickle of occasional visitors gradually grew into a continuous stream of activity from dozens of newcomers and regulars alike, joining and returning to chat daily. In short, I'm continually grateful for all the really cool people I've had the opportunity to meet here and the various interesting discussions I've been able to participate in!
Beyond this website, there are many more chatrooms, forums and amazing websites worth visiting sprawled across the indie web, where people from all walks of life are having all sorts of conversations about a lot of different ideas and interests. However, we all have at least one thing in common: we've chosen to meet on the independent web.
So what is the 'independent web'?
The independent web (a.k.a. the indie web, the personal web, etc.,) is an open network made up of tens of thousands of citizen-owned websites, maintained by real people who willingly link to one another. No oneunless we're talking about the infrastructure, servers, and data centers the Internet itself runs on owns this network, because the network is merely made up by the sum of its parts: personally owned websites, and almost anyone can make a website!You could also think of the indie web as a network of platforms, with each personal website being a platform. But unlike your typicalread: for-profit platforms that are designed to maximize profits and user engagement modern social media platform, where millions of users meet under the roof of a single application owned by a massive corporation, on the indie web we all connect and interact across each others' personal websites, which are owned and operated by private citizens you can actually reach.
Since each person owns their own platform, they decide how to run it and they decide their terms of engagement with other people across it. This ideally means that we visit and interact with each other on each others' terms, rather than under the terms, conditions, and surveillance of businesses that want to profit off of your attention, your behavior, your content, and activity. If you don't like the content or terms of engagement on one website, you can move on to another or build your own!
What are 'net neighbors'?
'Net neighbor' is but a friendly way of referring to individuals who mutually link to each other's websites, most commonly via web buttonsWeb buttons are small 88x31 graphics (a resolution standard developed in the mid-90s) that are used to link to other websites. You can make your own and share others' web buttons. You can see many such buttons on the hyperlinks page of my website.. Many net neighbors visit each other often and keep up to date with each other's updates. This furthers the analogy of personal websites as homes on the web. Just like your website is under your control, your net neighbor's website is under their control, and you visit eachother on eachothers' terms.What is the 'web revival'?
Web Revival is a term coined to express the rapid growth of the indie web and movement away from massive social media platforms, with thousands of new personal websites being built over the past several years, often in response to frustrations with social media companies and silicon valley. The web revival is not necessarily a return to the 'old' web, but an aim to take what is good from both the world wide web's past and present, while learning valuable lessons from the downsides of both the early web and modern day social media.A quote from MelonLand's web revival page:
"The Web Revival is about reclaiming the technology in our lives and asking what we really want from the tools we use, and the digital experiences we share. The Web Revival often references the early Internet, but it's not about recreating a bygone web; the Web Revival is about reviving the spirit of openness and fresh excitement that surrounded the Web in its earliest days."
Social media platforms aren't terrible by default, but many of the largest ones have introduced significant downsides for many people in the pursuit of massive profits being prioritized over them. Decent social media platforms do exist, some exist even on the independent web as personal projects by individuals and small developers. However, when discussing the dangers and downsides of social media, we're typically referring to the largest and most popular social media platforms known worldwide today, platforms that are owned by massive companies like Meta︎Meta owns a plethora of social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Giphy, and Threads., platforms that made the shift from serving us to primarily serving themselves.
Allow me to draw an analogy about private property that I hope will help pull back the curtain. Social media companies are a lot like shopping malls. Both shopping malls and social media platforms open their doors to the public and hope to draw in as many people as possible. Because you're invited in, because it's free to enter, because there are so many people there, both malls and social media can feel like public spaces. But at the end of the day, both are private property, owned by profit-driven businesses, and why would any business want you on their private property?
"Is it because they're humanitarian-minded community builders who want to build third spaces for the good of mankind?"
Not likely. They invite you inside primarily to extract economic value (attention and data) from you.
Now because these spaces are private property, the companies that own them may have you removedAlthough malls don't make you sign a legally binding contract to enter! at any time. Social media platforms will generally outline why they'll suspend your access in their terms and conditions, which many don't readIf you don't read lengthy Terms of Service documents, it's a good idea to find a website that will outline the main points in human language. I've included one such website at the end of this paragraph. but press "I agree", which constitutes a legally binding contract. And your social media accounts? You don't own your social media accounts. They just give you permission to access them so long as you obey the terms and conditions you agreed to. Unlike a personal website, nothing on these platforms belongs to you, meaning what's done on their platform is under their control. This is important. (Website 'Terms of Service Didn't Read' | tosdr.org)
"Okay, so I don't own my account and there are rules to follow. Is it that big of a deal? It's still a fun place and free for me!"
We're getting there.
Shopping malls have a lot of space for businesses to rent, and foot traffic for those businesses to draw into their stores. Similarly, platforms like Instagram and Facebook have a lot of ad space for businesses to rent, and a lot of attention from users like us to draw onto their websites. Since businesses pay to show ads and convert clicks into sales, the more ads Meta can get you to watch and click, the more they get paid. This is a part of what some people refer to as the attention economy, and it's why social media is freeHere comes the common adage: if it's free, you're the product!, it's why algorithmic feeds are used, it's why they turn every corner to substantially increase user engagement, and why they want to keep you scrolling for as long as possible - they benefit from your attention. And if they can personalize your feed to be as attractive to you as possible, they might just keep you hooked. That might be the primary reason why they track all of your activity and build detailed profiles about who you are: to pitch you the ads that you're weakest to resist.
"But that's fine," you say, "I don't mind seeing and even clicking a few ads, I never buy anything any way! If that's what I have to put up with in return for all the juicy content locked behind the walls of these social media platforms, fair enough."
Just like a shopping mall has security cameras, whenever you're on these platforms, you're always under surveillance. But at least with shopping malls, they don't track your activity to the point of building a psychological profile about you, and their surveillance of you was limited to the premises of the shopping mall! With some of these larger social media platforms, the tracking of you is not just what you do while on their platform. Remember those terms and conditions and the privacy policy you quickly agreed to? They usually include your agreement to the systematic tracking of your activity across your device, and to store that information as data about you.
From Meta's privacy policy (as of July 1st, 2026):
"We’ll use information that advertisers, businesses and other partners provide us about activity off Meta Company Products that we have associated with you to personalize ads that we show you on our Products, and on websites, apps and devices that use our advertising services. We receive this information whether or not you’re logged in or have an account on our Products"
Meta's terms and privacy policy disclose that it collects information about your activity both on its own platforms and, in many cases, on other websites and apps that use Meta's technologies. If you use Instagram or Facebook, Meta collects information such as posts, comments, likes, follows, searches, messages, how long you spend viewing different types of content, what ads you view or click, device information and approximate location.
That last bit about device information and approximate location are important. If you think you're browsing anonymously, you may want to take a closer look at your digital practices. Many large websites take your device finger print, meaning they don't necessarily need your IP or personal email address to figure out who you are and to connect the dots across your overall web activity. This device fingerprint is composed of a large amount of information about your device, and Meta's published privacy documentation describes collecting information such as:
It's the combination of all of this information that builds a unique identifier about you, which is then logged in their database. This degree of tracking is at a level that can't be protected from by just using a VPN, an anonymous email address, and online pseudonym. If you aren't mindful of your digital trailDigital footprint or digital shadow refers to one's unique set of traceable digital activities, actions, contributions, and communications manifested on the Internet or digital devices., if you don't keep separate devicesI recommend looking into digital compartmentalization and cross-contamination. strictly for different purposes, this is how they can follow your activity and use it to build a very accurate profile about you, your habits, and your interests, so that they can create very personalized ads to try to lure you into ad engagement.
(Website 'Am I Unique' Device Fingerprint Reader | amiunique.org / privacy policy)
(Website 'State of Surveillance' article on digital compartmentalization | stateofsurveillance.org)
"Do they sell this data too?"
Many platforms do not publicly state that they sell this very detailed and personal information they collect about you. Some companies, like Meta, do state that they don't sell your information to third parties, but that doesn't mean they won't share that personal data with third parties and business partners in ways that achieve similar economic outcomes.
Even if we could verify with certainty that a platform wasn't selling or sharing your personal data, the amount of data they gather and store about you is still concerning. In many cases, they may gather information about you that you wouldn't feel comfortable sharing with friends or family, or they'll make accurate predictions about you that you might not even be aware of. For instance, this abstract reads, "researchers [have developed] automated methods to extract and analyze these digital footprints to predict personality traits," and this publication from Stanford points to the use of pervasive records of users' digital footprints to infer personality. With this in mind, I don't feel that it's a stretch to say that some social media platforms may understand some of their users at a deeper level than those users may understand themselves. That's some serious information and data about you, a lot of information that I wouldn't feel comfortable letting just anyone handle, but I'll let you decide whether you trust them with that data or not.
If you're growing concerned about the level of data some businesses and platforms may collect about you from your digital habits, the profiteering and use of you as their product doesn't end with user data. I'm not sure why more people don't recognize this as exploitation, but it is user-generated content and access to your friends that draws the public onto these platforms in the first place. Without users and user-generated content, no one would join or stay, and so they profit off of us and the creations we work hard to create right off the bat.
But beyond using your content to lure other users in, companies like Meta tend to write their terms of use in ways that grant them very generous license to use any content you post publicly on their platforms, whether that's to promote their platforms or products, or to use your content to train their A.I. They can do this without ever notifying or paying you for that usage - a personal song you recorded, a painting you're proud of, or a sentimental family photo you shared - if it's posted publically, permission to use it is covered in their contract. Some may argue A.I. companies are going to scrape all the content off the web anyway, so who cares? Well, the difference here is that you're legally agreeing to and signing up for that to happen, and I just don't find that so agreeable or worth signing up for.
I think it's important to say that we should not shame anyone for using social media. I still have accounts of my own that I use from time to time. Again, there are decent social media platforms - Neocities itself functions as a social media platform - and there are legitimate uses for the larger social media platforms we criticize. At the end of the day, it's where the people are - billions of people who use these platforms daily for staying connected, building businesses, and finding communities. The trade-offs are real, and different people will weigh them differently. But I do think it's important to stay informed, to be aware of its downsides and mindful of how we use it, and to be aware of alternative options. Many people stay on these apps only because they aren't aware of said alternative options, a deleting social media would mean further isolation.
Some of the points in that last paragraph were raised in the June 10, '23 version of sadgrl.online's Internet manifesto, a document worth reading, and so I'll leave it off with that as well as a recommendation that you do further research of your own!
So what's better about the indie web?
1.) You don't need to sign up for an account to browse the indie web - most content is completely free to view and interact with. No personal website is asking for your phone number, your name, or asking for permission to read through your contact list or look through your photo album. Rarely any of them are collecting your digital fingerprint (although it is recommended to still keep your guard up and follow best privacy practices.) Most personal websites on the indie web aren't trying to build a profile about you or trying to profit off the masses.
2.) Free and personable. Each personal website acts as an individual platform owned by a real person, a person who is far more likely to interact with visitors and respond directly if you reach out to them, and far less likely to be tracking everything you do to build a profitable dataset about you. The only value most indie website owners hope to 'extract' from your presence is your appreciation, kind comments, and - if you're both lucky - the spark of friendship. This personal ownership also means we don't meet each other under the terms and surveillance of a company that just wants to profit off of us. We're not stuck with an algorithmic feed or profit-driven content moderation by platforms that likewise subject us to all sorts of crap we don't want to see and reels we'll never remember. Instead, we build our own platforms, tailor them to our own standards and desires, see the updates from those we choose to follow, and work together to meet across each others' platforms under each others' terms. Don't like the rules or atmosphere of one chatroom or forum? Just find another! You're not limited to one or two options, there are plenty of great communities on the indie web.
3.) It's decentralized. This points toward network resilience. If Facebook goes down, every user goes down with that ship; if Instagram is blocked in a country, everyone in that country loses access to a world's worth of content hosted on that platform. On the otherhand, if one indie website is blocked or goes down, many others remain up and running. If one webhost is blocked or goes offlineIt's recommended that all webmasters keep a regularly updated backup copy of their website. This way, if a webhost ever goes offline or disables their account, they could easily move their website onto another host and quickly get back online. Registering a domain name through a registrar also helps, as you will be able to point your domain to your new host, allowing regular visitors to continue returning at the same address., many other options are available to get your website back up and online. With your website, you can back it up, export it, or move hosts easily.
4.) Creative control and skill-building. With your personal website, you control its design, content, and features. You get to build it out however you'd like, according to your creative vision, and change it whenever you want as your vision for it changes. No algorithmic suppression, shadowbanning, or format restrictions because your new layout didn't perform well or because you turned in a radically different direction. You can experiment freely. Of course, no one begins with the skills needed to bring their vision to life right away, but building and running your own site teaches web skills, digital literacy, and independence. More than just being a means to stay connected, we can look at webcrafting as a learning activity, as an exercise in self-growth and creation.
Is it safe to browse the indie web?
Great question! I think I'd like to phone a friend this time. Let's ask InvincibleSpeed for their input:"Is it safe to browse the indie web? The answer is a resounding YES! Oh, wait, no, not that one! Oh, now you've done it!
Let's rewind; our question should really be, "Is it safe to browse the web?", or else a question of what makes a website dangerous in the first place. By the very nature of digital exploits, the indie web as it stands does tend to be a less vulnerable online space. In layman's terms, the indie web is safer, but our friend the "-er" makes a world of difference. Danger comes in many forms, so consider the following a beginner's field guide:
- It may not sound like a promising start, but the truth is that if a website does try to do something malicious, there is a good chance it won't work. They don'tnegative makeprogram 'emweb browsers like they used to; modern browsers tend to enable popup blocking by default, regularly implement fixes for known web exploits (no 1990s viruses allowed!!) and most importantly, sandbox elements of the web to varying degrees. In the simplest terms, running code in a "sandbox" prevents it from affecting the rest of the computer in any meaningful way. If you're using any mainstream browser released within the past 10 years, congratulations! You're sandboxing this very moment. Exploits that are capable of escaping your sandbox do exist, but these are rare and very, very expensive (In 2025, a virtual machine escape bug was put up for sale at $150,000(!)). Keep a happy thought; you're probably safer already than you thought you were, no matter where you go online.
- However, other varieties of attack exist that do not necessitate sandbox escape. Your browser is a treasure trove of sensitive information to the aspiring assailant, as is the human in front of the screen. Save yourself the PEBKaC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair) error; if you want to know what makes a site really suspicious, look for the following details: A URL that reads "http" instead of "https" while serving or requesting sensitive data, any form of certificate error, password/data entry fields pretending to be from another website, new tabs to random sites opening even when you don't click on a link (uh oh), or a website that asks you to open your developer console and paste a block of code (REALLY uh oh). It is a long-held myth that websites ending in .org are inherently safer than those that end with .com; in reality, both top-level domains (TLDs) are identically priced and usage of one over the other comes down to the personal preference of the site owner.
- But, hark! All of these exploits require action on the human (your) end. What if one could "get got" by nothing more than their own inaction? If you might, ponder the following series of statistics: At the time of writing, roughly 45.4% of websites in existence contain advertisements[1]. Of all websites containing advertisements, 99.3% of them use Google Ads. In a single 2016 Google Ads campaign, over one billion malicious (virus-infected) ads were served over the course of a year[2][3]. In 2024 alone, there was at least a 167% increase in the number of malicious ads served by Google[4]. The FBI(!) recommends you install an adblocker[5]. Moving beyond the world of statistics, I would posit a challenge: While Neocities is not all-encompassing of the indie web, browse for a day and count the number of ads. How many do you see as compared to the broader internet? If you use an adblocker, how many ads are being blocked? Click now; the answer may surprise you!
[1] = https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/advertising
[2] = https://www.proofpoint.com/us/corporate-blog/post/adgholas-malvertising-campaign
[3] = https://www.pcworld.com/article/415862
[4] = https://www.wired.com/story/malicious-ads-in-search-results-are-driving-new-generations-of-scams/
[5] = https://westoahu.hawaii.edu/distancelearning/tips/guard-against-search-engine-phishing-with-an-ad-blocker/
- Your digital galleon has it all: Sandboxes, a wised-up captain at the helm and forbidden knowledge of the beast beneath advertising. Certainly, nothing can stop you now! Anchors aweigh! Full speed ahead! No please, not the iceberg!! Browser and library developers do what they can, but malicious JavaScript (JS) does sometimes slip through the cracks. Two basic rules apply: Higher complexity makes for a larger attack surface and age means more time for exploits to be found. In practice, indie web content tends to be significantly less programmatically complex than the broader internet. As of writing, this page uses 12 lines of JS (https://onio.club/cursor.js). As of now, the Google homepage uses at least 6,000 lines of obfuscated JavaScript, having been altered in a way that makes it extremely difficult for a human to determine exactly what it is doing. Google performs frequent updates and reviews of their codebases, making it unlikely for any exploit to stick around for long. However, the odds of achieving a meaningful exploit using a cursor.js are slim-to-none. Hacks and supply chain attacks happen every day, but the indie web is a low-value target. The only places such attacks and the indie web intersect will be on 10+ year old WordPress sites or unmaintained 15+ year old JS libraries. In terms of JS-based risk, the indie web presents few openings.
- Inherently, the indie web comes largely unmoderated. A personal site has no content restrictions in terms of what would be enforced by your average social media platform, instead only being beholden to the terms and conditions of a web host, internet service provider, or the law of a given country. This does mean that, on average, the indie web is absolutely more capable of containing typical "rule-breaking content". Though, socially speaking, indie web projects tend to be better about disclosing the presence of such content outright. The plainest advice is simply to go where you want and to avoid the places you don't want to go, be it on the indie web or otherwise.
None of this is to say you should fear the internet. You've been using it for years before reading this text and you look fine to me! But, if viewing things strictly in terms of security, larger "mainstream" websites are objectively more dangerous to browse as compared to the indie web. Nevertheless, the internet is the internet. Break out a tincture of common sense and you'll be more than alright."
Thank you, InvincibleSpeed, for your insight on all of this!
What about dangerous content or people?
Web safety can mean a lot of things. In the section above, we were mostly approaching web safety from the angle of security risks, but one point of concern for many is the safety of the content itself. As InvincibleSpeed noted, the indie web comes largely unmoderated, and by its very nature, people are free to share almost anythingSome content is actually illegal to share and can have legal repercussions, or may go against the terms of service of an ISP or web host. they'd please on their own website. While it's common social etiquette for users to place content warnings and NSFW labels on a splash page before exposing visitors to such content, there's no guarantee your eyeballs will be safe from everything.The indie web is a lot of good things, but one thing I would never call it is safe for kids, and the indie web - as well as the internet at large - should be treated with caution in regards to children, especially relevant if you are a parent, legal guardian, teacher, etc. If I were parent, I wouldn't let my children or young teens freely browse the web in general, and careful consideration should be taken to how you allow your children to interact with it. For those of you who are not parents, it's still good to be cautious of who you share the indie web material with. The same should be said for social media.
I wish it were the case that Internet safety and privacy courses were taught in all schools. The basics should be taught to everyone, and my recommendation for most would be to avoid sharing your real name, age, address, hometown, personal email address,photographs, or any other sensitive personal information that might identify you.. If you upload any photographs, be sure to remove all metadata, avoid showing your face, and avoid showing recognizable locations. You really should be researching best privacy practices, not just for the indie web but for all internet usage at large.
For those who run chatrooms and forums, moderation is in the hands of the owner and perhaps a few trusted net neighbors, but very rarely a professionally paid and trained staff team. Depending on the degree to which a webmaster moderates and contains their platform, there's no guarantee that something unsavory won't make its way in. Trolls are a good example of this, trollsusers who derive pleasure from making intentionally inflammatory, rude, or upsetting statements online to elicit strong emotional responses, mostly out of a need for attention. do exist and occasionally target indie websites! Many such trolls are benign jokesters, but others insist on spreading harmful messages and content. This is why I don't recommend opening a public chatroom or forum to just anyone, especially not without taking these risks into consideration. Personally, I've twice returned to my own chatroom raided by a handful of malicious uses. Thankfully, I'm not an especially sensitive person, but cleaning up those messages still wasn't very fun. I can imagine for more sensitive and vulnerable individuals, a chatroom might not be a good idea. One should not think of an encounter with trolls in terms of 'if' but in terms of 'when', and prepare in advance for that in good measure.
All of this is not to say the indie web is a terrible place, there are plenty of wonderful SFW websites on the indie web, but just like in real life, the web is filled with many different sites and many different types of people, and the further you wander, the more likely you are to run into something harmful.
How do I join the 'indie web'?
You don't need to join the indie web in the same way that you would join a social media platform; as long as you have internet access, the majority of the personal web is free to access︎ with most large social media networks, you need to sign up for an account to access and explore most content uploaded to that network. Most indie websites can be visited anonymously at any time from most countries. without ever signing up for an account! There are many ways to interact with the independent web, ranging from simply visiting and browsing websites, to signing guestbooks, posting in chatboxes, and signing up to small forums, all the way to creating your own website & more! How you choose to engage with the independent web is up to you.While you don't need to create a website to join the indie web, webcrafting has proven to be a very fulfilling and exciting hobby for many. There are plenty of webhosts that offer free webhosting, like Github. Some webhosts, like Neocities or Nekoweb, have a simple user interface and a built-in community platform where you can follow and comment on the profiles of other websites and keep updated with their activity. More advanced users may even want to rent a VPSa virtual private server is a virtual computer running on a server that you can rent, install Linux, and host websites, web services, game servers, etc. or self-host their website from their own hardware, although these options can come with security risksIt's highly recommended that you're well-versed in network security before trying to self-host on your own hardware from home. Improper configurations can expose your sensitive personal data to hackers!.
If you want to build a website, there are tons of resources across the web to get you started with learning how to craft a website. For instance, I highly recommend reading through 32bit.cafe's resource list.
Is my website private poperty?
Building off the private property analogy from earlier - wherein massive social media platforms are likened to shopping malls - your personal website could be thought of like your own small home on the web. You control that webspace, the content on it, the experience people have with it, and how you allow people to access it. But the question of whether you truly own your website is a nuanced matter.For instance, your original source code may be automatically copyright protected, so in that sense, you own what you've created. But what about the hardware that serves it? I tend to think of a website as being more than just its source code, but also as being an accessible place on the web. Is it really a website if it's not online?
If you're self-hosting on your own hardware, your website is closestYou may be still beholden to the terms of service of your internet service provider to true private property. If you're not self-hosting, but instead use a webhost like Neocities or Github, this situation would likely be more like renting an apartment than owning your home. Just like with renting an apartment, you typically agree to some basic rules from the “landlordwebhost,” but these are generally far less invasive than the terms imposed by Facebook or Instagram. For example, Neocities collects IP addresses and basic analytics (such as referring sites), but it doesn’t build the kind of detailed behavioral profiles that Meta does.
Always read the Terms and Conditions and the Privacy Policy of any webhost you use!
Regardless of how your website is hosted, I think the analogy of private property is still useful: while giant social media platform are like shopping malls built for business that you can merely visit and post on, your little website is your home on the web. You decide its appearances, rules, and atmosphere.
Such control over your own website also means you define the terms for engagement with your platform. Some people build their websites to allow visitors to add content - such as with image boards, chatrooms, forums, and guestbooks. Others keep it purely static and read-only. Either approach is great, because ultimately the point of a personal platform is that control and vision for it is in your hands. That's the freedom of the independent web: moving the power to set the terms of engagement away from profit-driven corporations and placing it back in the hands of the people. This shift is what lies at the heart of decentralization.
Why isn't the 'indie web' more popular?
You could say that it's because not everyone wants to build a website, but I don't think that's it. I don't think you even need to build a website to be a part of the indie web. I really think that most people, both young and old, just aren't aware that the indie web exists. The term 'indie web' was coined around 2013, the indie web as a movement really started growing around 2017, but as someone who grew up on the web and making my own websites as a kid, I didn't hear about it until the end of 2022, and a video I made about it went viral in 2026 with nearly 90k likes as of July 1. The indie web ain't dead.The virality of that video told me something: there is a thirst for something like the indie web, and many people just don't know that it's there or how to get there. Across over 3,300 comments, the amount of people who thanked me for helping them discover that it exists was overwhelming. Many people knew they could make their own website, but they didn't know that there was a massive community of people building websites together, meeting and making connections across those websites. That community and connection is 99% of the point.
I really think that a vast amount of people are tired of social media, but I also think they just aren't aware of any altenatives - I wasn't. I don't think all the people who would like the indie web are on the indie web yet. I don't think all the people would like the indie web are even on YouTube. And I don't think that all the people who would like the indie web that are on YouTube will see that video I posted, because it's not the type of content they regularly watch. So there are still people to reach. I also think the process of people abandoning the major social media platforms is going to be a gradual one, a process that took as much time as it took for those platforms to grow as large as they are, a process that may continue so long as social media continues to get worse. So if there are ways to help grow the indie web, it would be to expose people to it, and to show them all the ways they can interact with it, aside from just building a website.
How do I join your chatroom/forum?
You can sign up for a chatroom account here and I ask that you read the full list of rules here.For those of you who just arrived from the indie web video, my claim in that video about the chatroom not needing an account was true at that time of posting back in February 2026. For over three years, the chatroom really was free to use without ever needing to register any account.
We now have an easy account registration process, simply follow the instructions and I will review your request and manually create an account for you. You can read more about why this change was made here.
This change to my microscopic platform isn't a change in my opinion that there is a freedom to be found on the indie web. Many websites are still completely open to anonymous browsing and chatting, and the freedom of the indie web is largely founded on the fact that our interactions and the content we create isn't locked behind the walls of Meta-and-company's data-harvesting platforms. The forum was created in May 2026 to host more deliberate, slower-paced, longer-form discussion. We've learned that chatrooms, as great as they are, aren't always the best space for deep discussion amongst many users. So far, forum activity has been thoughtful and respectful, and we would all like to keep it this way. Thus, membership application consists of a typed application with a 350 character minimum, as well as a mandatory self-introduction post upon acceptance before users are allowed to post or reply globally. You can register for the forum here.
Does this website have a backstory?
I grew up during an age when the web was blossoming with personal websites that you could build easily and for free. Does anyone remember the great free webhosts of the 2000s? Geocities, Expage, Angelfire, Tripod, FreeWebs? I don't fully remember exactly how I found these webhosts, but I do remember playing Neopets as a kid from 1999 through 2003.Neopets was, and still is, a webgame that allowed you to customize your profile, pets' pages, shop website, and forum messages & signatures with HTML and CSS! Customizing your Neopets profile was a very popular thing for Neopets players to do. As such, I was frequently exposed to very stunning CSS across many different profiles, pet pages, and fan-owned websites at a young age. My best guess is that I stumbled upon Expage or Geocities while I was trying to learn how to customize my profile or while searching for Neopets webguides!
No matter what eventually led me to discover these webhosts, one thing was certain: I was quickly drawn to the idea of creating my own website. Much like Neocities and Nekoweb today, there was a social element to Geocities and Expage, where you could list your website and visit others' websites as well. As a kid, I would spend evenings and weekends attempting to build my own fansites for my various childhood interests, whether that was SpongeBob, Super Mario, or a webcomic I would hand-draw and digitize with the family scanner about our two dogs, and looking to others' websites for inspiration. Ambitious as I was, I would try to get people to vote for my websites on Sunkissed's Battle of Sites in hopes of crawling up to the top of the leaderboards.
In January of 2002, I created 'Virtual Town': a web game where you could 'get a job', 'buy a car', 'build a home', and 'raise a family'. This was essentially a very clumsy browser-based Sims game, where players would have to email me the actions they'd like their Sims to take. Best of all, this wasn't even at all an original idea of mine, no, I had copied this idea from a similar website on Expage called 'Cool Village' - down to its very background color, a similar sandy beige! The Mayor of Cool Village wasn't very happy about this at all! As far as our 11-year-old minds understood it, copying that beige background color was copyright infringement, and warranted threatening to call 911! Things calmed down, though, and eventually we became friends. We traded emails and moved on from personal websites to explore various chatrooms, forums, and game worlds like Habbo Hotel, Coke Music, Tibia, etc., and I remember how exploring the web at that time felt a lot like an adventure, you'd never know what you'd find or where you'd end up.
As time passed and we grew older, we began focusing more on other aspects of life. My social activity on the Internet dwindled to just a few social media apps and websites. Of course, my friend and I never lost touched, in fact we've since met up many times in person, and over 22 years later we still talk almost daily. But times changed, platforms rose and fell, and the personal websites we used to spend so much time making became but a distant memory. By the time I had spent over a decade on Instagram and Facebook, I wasn't even sure if personal websites were a thing any more. If you asked me then, my assumption would've likely been that everyone and everything was taking place on major platforms and social media apps. Sure, self-hosting never went away, and someone could still make a website of their own at any time, but who would really find it or visit it? Who would even care? And with webhosts like Geocities and Expage gone, how would anyone even find a websites like those again in the first place? I certainly don't think I would have ever guessed on my own that there were thriving communities of people actively building their own websites, exploring the web, linking with net neighbors and making friends through the websites they had built just like I had when I was a kid!
It's safe to say that personal websites are sentimental to me: I grew up making them and I met my best friend through them. So when I discovered the indie web in 2022, I was delighted and knew almost right away what I wanted to create, something of a childhood dream: a virtual web cafe, a chatroom like the ones we used to hang out on. And now you know what this site is about!
I arrived from a YouTube video
One of my videos went viral around February 21st, 2026, and I still get traffic from that video to this day. As a result of that, a lot has changed! What was initially a small personal website for sharing my unfinished projects and chatting with a handful of net neighbors became a sort of "door to the indie web" overnight. Thousands of people, who had never been informed about the large & active community of people interacting across personal websites, came rushing in!As a result of that incoming traffic, I'm trying to shift the direction of this site to better serve as an introduction for newcomers and to accommodate web enthusiasts of all experience levels. However, I am but a mere hobbyist and not a seasoned web developer - this is not my day job - so my website is unlikely to be a 'one-size-fits-all' solution. Don't stop at this website if it's not for you!
What I am, however, is an advocate of the independent web, which is vast and quickly growing. If you don't find the community experience that you're looking for here, you're sure to find likeminded folk somewhere else on the network, and you're free to build out a platform or community of your own! The "if you build it, they will come," mentality actually can work sometimes ~ it certainly did (with patience involved) for me!
Are you sponsored by Neocities?
For those who asked on YouTube: I have never been paid by Neocities nor have I ever had any personal contact with its owner. I've recommended Neocities because it's the webhost that I have had the most experience with, because it's so easy to use and get started with, and because it has a great community platform for interacting with other webmasters. However, there are many other free and affordable webhosts out there, and a list of them exists on 32bit.cafe's resource list, which you should go check out.Onio.Club has no sponsors, but if you feel so inclined to help my project, there is a 'tips' button on my Neocities profile ^^
I hope to continue building and refining this webpage in the future. If you have any suggestions for this page, feel free to email me oniochat[at]proton.me That's all for now, folks o/