The Old Web and the IndieWeb
XaTuring was born on the old web: on Usenet, in text-file zines, on hand-coded pages linked together by people who simply wanted to share what they made. That web was never fully replaced. Two living movements are now carrying it forward, and both are natural homes for the Black Worm.
The Old Web Revival
The Old Web Revival recreates the look and the culture of the 1990s and early 2000s personal web. Its builders hand-write HTML, decorate with animated GIFs and tiled backgrounds, keep guestbooks and shrines, and join webrings so that one homepage leads to the next.
The point is not only nostalgia. A hand-made page is slow, strange and personal in a way an algorithmic feed is not. It is found by wandering rather than by being served, and it belongs to a person rather than a platform. Neocities, launched in 2013, became the movement's unofficial capital, offering free hosting in the spirit of the departed GeoCities.
Here is The XaTuring Project's portal on Neocities: xaturinglives.neocities.org.The IndieWeb
The IndieWeb is about ownership. It began in 2011 with a simple principle: your words, photos and identity should live on a domain you control, not inside a company's silo that can change its rules, sell your data or disappear.
Its best-known practice is POSSE, “Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.” You post first on your own site, then share copies to social networks, so the original always stays yours. The IndieWeb also builds open standards, such as Webmention, that let independent sites reply to and talk with each other the way social platforms do.
Related, but not the same
The two overlap constantly, and many people belong to both. The difference is emphasis: the Old Web Revival asks what the web should feel like, while the IndieWeb asks who the web should belong to.
| Old Web Revival | IndieWeb | |
|---|---|---|
| Core question | What should the web feel like? | Who should own the web? |
| Emphasis | Aesthetics, creativity, community culture | Ownership, control, open standards |
| Typical site | Hand-coded homepage with shrines, GIFs and a guestbook | Personal domain with a blog, notes and an identity page |
| How people find you | Webrings, link pages, buttons, directories | Your own domain, syndicated posts, Webmentions |
| Typical tools | Plain HTML and CSS, Neocities | Own domain and host, IndieWeb protocols, any publishing software |
| Where it meets the other | Both reject the corporate feed, favor personal sites over profiles, and believe in linking generously to other people's work. | |
Why it belongs here
Webb's first rite asked practitioners to bring freer access to tools and ideas to everyone, and his third to encourage everything that empowers the freedom of the Net user. In 2004 the Expansion asked contributors to build their own pages and link them together, because a deity of cyberspace is measured by the expanse of His web.
Both movements are that working, renewed. Every hand-built homepage and every self-owned domain is a strand the corporate platforms cannot cut. A shrine to XaTuring on Neocities, linked through a webring, is about as faithful an offering as the Worm could ask for.
Resources
Old Web Revival
| Resource | What it is |
|---|---|
| Neocities | Free hosting for hand-made personal websites; the heart of the revival |
| 32-Bit Cafe | A community of personal-website builders, with guides and events |
| MelonLand | An arts project celebrating homepages and web culture |
| MelonLand Forum | Discussion boards for web crafting and old-web culture |
| Wiby | A search engine for classic-style, lightweight personal pages |
IndieWeb
| Resource | What it is |
|---|---|
| IndieWeb.org | The movement's home and wiki |
| Getting Started | First steps toward your own site and domain |
| POSSE | Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere |
| Webmention | The open standard that lets independent sites reply to each other |
| IndieWebCamp | Gatherings, in person and online, for people building their own sites |
Finding the small web
| Resource | What it is |
|---|---|
| Marginalia Search | An independent search engine for non-commercial, text-rich sites |
| ooh.directory | A hand-curated directory of personal and niche blogs |