Love how many of the sites listed here have brutalist low-JS design. The only thing I despise more than the new social media focused internet is, JS-heavy blogs containing one post that explains how that monstrosity was created.
Then after a few months the author will rewrite the blog again with a different framework and add another entry explaining why and how they did it.
Here's mine. Built with Hugo and deployed with GitHub Pages. The whole publication process is automated with GitHub Actions and takes a few key strokes to go from an idea to execution.
Honestly I don't think a low JS usage makes a website better. For me, I always cherished a separation of concerns approach, where I am trying to make a website work as good as possible with HTML and CSS only (including print stylesheets).
JS on the other hand is for me where the fun interaction comes from, where the little details can shine through, where visualizations can be made interactive so the user can play around and really start to understand what's going on.
But yeah, I guess in the golden age of React and Angular, I also understand why people hade JS bloated websites.
Here's mine, there is multiple scavenger hunts, games and challenges hidden on the website and/or in the code:
Isn't it astounding how much more brittle those react-y monstrosities are?!
If you look twice some toolbar will silently begin to fail loading and you'll have to bump your browser to get the full experience back again.
While back someone posted a web1.0 randomizer, everything still worked, granted its static but, its like those old 90s pages are the new time capsules.
This is way more organized than anything I have seen like this before. They have a section on how to host a meeting with before/during/after meeting tips. That definitely gives the impression they've got their act together as a group and are trying to make it easier for newbies.
I think I might try and join in on one of the virtual meetups. I'm in North Carolina, so hard to find something in my time zone, but eh.
My site is one of those that modern folks call "virtual gardens" sometimes. Love to have new visitors, and I'm allergic to SEO for my personal stuff, haha.
You should know that your headshot photo doesn't scale down correctly on Firefox/Pixel 7. Currently it overflows the right side of the page causing horizontal scrolling.
Hey, I like your site! Especially like the selection of fonts you linked, thanks. Also checked out the static site generator you linked to, and thought you might want to know that their website gives an error unless you include the "www." prefix in the url.
I'm gonna add you to my list of potential guests for my https://peopleandblogs.com because I really enjoy your site. So you'll get an email from me at some point in the future.
I find most of these sites follow the brutalist web design trend[0]. Nothing wrong with that. In the end, if the site is user-friendly and does what its supposed to, and is otherwise easy to navigate and is readable, then why not?
So much of the web are these copycat 'zines' which are jam-packed with all sorts of bells and whistles and have a sidebar packed with ADs and the content is laced with affiliate links so they can 'monetize' their web presence.
I enjoy other people's little 'corner of the web' which isn't housed in a walled garden social media platform, like the bulk of content these days.
Ya I love finding sites that are uniquely someone's, not SEO optimized knock-offs. I personally might not find the design appealing, but I appreciate when someone makes their site theirs. Likewise, most will not enjoy my site's design, but it's mine.
So it's really called brutalist web design? Someone mentioned it to me on IRC but I thought it was just the adjective he used to describe the https://motherfuckingwebsite.com. Had no idea this had turned into an entire design trend.
I wanted to note that homebrew websites and SEO optimized websites aren't necessarily opponents here, or in opposite corners. They are often the same tech under the hood.
Case in point: SvelteJS. It's absolutely great for a homebrew website. It's also maintained by the NYTimes, which I subscribe to and like myself, but which also has a large chunk of its business in the SEO optimized website category (see: Wirecutter).
It does it in a classy way which doesn't feel so much like ads are being stuffed down your throat - but that business is SEO optimized down to its bones.
Just skimming the front page of Wirecutter now, a NYTimes owned property, shows articles like "The Best Sunscreens for Your Face", "The best beard trimmers we tested side by side surrounded by their attachments", "The Best Women’s Razors (for Every Body)" - these are all so textbook and by the SEO playbook they could be taught in a course.
Hello everyone! I have been co-hosting the Europe Homebrew Website Club for the last year and a half.
During the calls we come together to chat about websites: what you are building, what you want to build, and how you can build it! If you are interested in the web, I (and the rest of community!) would love to see you!
Hi, I'd like to come, too (virtually ofc). A few months ago I started a (very minimalist) blog [0], using a very simple blogging engine I wrote myself [1] in under 400 lines of Emacs Lisp.
Just a static site where I write stuff I think about. My idea is to write a new page every time I get the feeling I've written the same HN comment multiple times. Currently working on posts about ads and copyright which are topics I've commented on many times.
> what you want to build
I want to improve the website design. Haven't managed to create a header that doesn't look ugly yet.
> how you can build it
Some time ago I made a comment here on HN recommending pugjs for static sites and writing HTML by hand:
Not long afterwards I realized it has been unmaintained for years. So I forked it and took over maintenance. Deleted the parts I didn't need. Now it's a new variant of the language and it's powering my own site.
Hey James - I appreciate your enthusiasm about this idea. I technically never stopped https://www.theninhotline.com, but after a few years, it was clear that social networks like Twitter and Facebook had taken over as our primary channel.
About two years ago, I decided to rebuild the site (partially to get some hands-on experience building a PWA) and have basically been doing a gut-job of the frontend. I removed tracking pixels, frameworks and other javascript cruft, and brought focus to the RSS feed again. I spent time building a library of website 'cover art' too, which I cycle in periodically - typically when I post a new update to the blog. There's a lot more cleaning to do, but I'm happy to be actively iterating on the ol' website again.
I'm based in Philadelphia, but I've got a lot going on IRL compared to when I launched this site 24 years ago, and I don't think I could do a regular meetup. But keep on fighting the good fight!
I love the indieweb philosophy. I'm a bit off the topic of the tech sites shared here, but I have a recipe site (mostly from around the world) with my partner. This is the domain (in spanish, sorry!): https://www.foodisea.com
Have been following your feed for a while now. Got really inspired by the HWC and started a programming meetup in my city. Also because I build https://heyhomepage.com which fits the niche.
Might see some of you in Nurnberg!
Here's mine, https://drollery.org (I have not put much effort into the mobile version, it's a bit wonky since a recent styling update, best enjoyed on desktop). This is mostly in exercise in "why not?"
I used to be a regular in-person attendee here in Brighton pre-pandemic. My site is statically generated with some IndieWeb enhancements (webmentions in and out, micropub, posse, etc.) I mostly use it as a hidden log of my study sessions and for notes. A few times a year I'll write something longer form.
Hi James! Love your implementation of instagram stories, I had the same idea but never got time to implement it. Looking forward joining of your meetups.
Heck yeah! I attended HWC Americas regularly for about a year, I need to log back on and catch up with folks. It's a great crowd, everyone has their own interests and goals and it's fun to cheer others on. When you spend so much time hacking on your own website, it means the world to get positive feedback!
If you nerd out about implementing protocols, there are some IndieWebers that will go out of their way to help you develop or test new ideas. We'd stay up into the night getting our servers to talk to each other in some never-seen-before way. Good times!
For myself, back in the ‘90s, I was really into spending a bunch of time, hand-crafting Web sites, but these days, I just use rather lightly-modified WordPress sites.
Anyone remember the famous SatireWire Cubist Web Site story[0]?
Since we're all sharing our corners of the web, I guess I'll link mine as well.
I only have 6 posts over 4 years, mostly due to me thinking my ideas aren't "original" enough to warrant lengthy write-ups, but I know that's not exactly true.
I’d love it if the indie web guys made some kind of Astro style static site framework with built in components you can just drop in for integration with the various fediverse services. Every time I look at the instructions, it looks like a time sink trying to get everything set up.
I’ve never seen this before but I think it’s right up my alley (save the part where I’m pretty introverted as far as meetups and video calls).
I just went down a rabbit hole looking at the RSVP specs, h-cards (which I remember from way back but thought was dead), and comments. And, I need to go deeper!
I love this. I'm a huge fan of static site generators and simple, authentic designs. It looks like lot of people who dig the indieweb philosophy use Jekyll and Hugo which is great, because they are still such amazing SSG's. Projects like this make me hopeful that everything wont be replaced by JS frameworks or Nextjs etc. For those interested
I had a personal blog back in the days, started out with selfhtml and went from there. Somewhere on the journey WordPress came out and I transitioned to it. About 2 years ago I started a personal blog about rowing, since I bought a rowing machine. The blog is written in German, yet often people autotranslate it with Google to match their language, since rowing seems to be a worldwide niche topic. You may find it here: https://harder-better-faster-stronger.de
[+] [-] rednafi|2 years ago|reply
Then after a few months the author will rewrite the blog again with a different framework and add another entry explaining why and how they did it.
Here's mine. Built with Hugo and deployed with GitHub Pages. The whole publication process is automated with GitHub Actions and takes a few key strokes to go from an idea to execution.
https://rednafi.com
[+] [-] cookiengineer|2 years ago|reply
JS on the other hand is for me where the fun interaction comes from, where the little details can shine through, where visualizations can be made interactive so the user can play around and really start to understand what's going on.
But yeah, I guess in the golden age of React and Angular, I also understand why people hade JS bloated websites.
Here's mine, there is multiple scavenger hunts, games and challenges hidden on the website and/or in the code:
https://cookie.engineer
[+] [-] jofla_net|2 years ago|reply
While back someone posted a web1.0 randomizer, everything still worked, granted its static but, its like those old 90s pages are the new time capsules.
www.jofla.net
[+] [-] madeofpalk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bovermyer|2 years ago|reply
My site is one of those that modern folks call "virtual gardens" sometimes. Love to have new visitors, and I'm allergic to SEO for my personal stuff, haha.
https://benovermyer.com is my site.
[+] [-] nvy|2 years ago|reply
You should know that your headshot photo doesn't scale down correctly on Firefox/Pixel 7. Currently it overflows the right side of the page causing horizontal scrolling.
Probably not what you were going for.
[+] [-] ta8645|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manuelmoreale|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sysadm1n|2 years ago|reply
So much of the web are these copycat 'zines' which are jam-packed with all sorts of bells and whistles and have a sidebar packed with ADs and the content is laced with affiliate links so they can 'monetize' their web presence.
I enjoy other people's little 'corner of the web' which isn't housed in a walled garden social media platform, like the bulk of content these days.
[0] https://designlab.com/blog/examples-brutalism-in-web-design/
[+] [-] rednafi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pard68|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julianeon|2 years ago|reply
Case in point: SvelteJS. It's absolutely great for a homebrew website. It's also maintained by the NYTimes, which I subscribe to and like myself, but which also has a large chunk of its business in the SEO optimized website category (see: Wirecutter).
It does it in a classy way which doesn't feel so much like ads are being stuffed down your throat - but that business is SEO optimized down to its bones.
Just skimming the front page of Wirecutter now, a NYTimes owned property, shows articles like "The Best Sunscreens for Your Face", "The best beard trimmers we tested side by side surrounded by their attachments", "The Best Women’s Razors (for Every Body)" - these are all so textbook and by the SEO playbook they could be taught in a course.
[+] [-] zerojames|2 years ago|reply
During the calls we come together to chat about websites: what you are building, what you want to build, and how you can build it! If you are interested in the web, I (and the rest of community!) would love to see you!
P.S. My site is https://jamesg.blog -- what's your domain name?
[+] [-] mbork_pl|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://crimsonelevendelightpetrichor.net/
[1] https://gitlab.com/mbork_mbork_pl/org-clive
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|2 years ago|reply
It matches my user name: https://matheusmoreira.com
> what you are building
Just a static site where I write stuff I think about. My idea is to write a new page every time I get the feeling I've written the same HN comment multiple times. Currently working on posts about ads and copyright which are topics I've commented on many times.
> what you want to build
I want to improve the website design. Haven't managed to create a header that doesn't look ugly yet.
> how you can build it
Some time ago I made a comment here on HN recommending pugjs for static sites and writing HTML by hand:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37019175
Not long afterwards I realized it has been unmaintained for years. So I forked it and took over maintenance. Deleted the parts I didn't need. Now it's a new variant of the language and it's powering my own site.
https://github.com/matheusmoreira/pugneum
https://github.com/matheusmoreira/matheusmoreira.github.io
[+] [-] leviathant|2 years ago|reply
About two years ago, I decided to rebuild the site (partially to get some hands-on experience building a PWA) and have basically been doing a gut-job of the frontend. I removed tracking pixels, frameworks and other javascript cruft, and brought focus to the RSS feed again. I spent time building a library of website 'cover art' too, which I cycle in periodically - typically when I post a new update to the blog. There's a lot more cleaning to do, but I'm happy to be actively iterating on the ol' website again.
Oh, and my 'personal site' is https://www.bitrotten.com
I'm based in Philadelphia, but I've got a lot going on IRL compared to when I launched this site 24 years ago, and I don't think I could do a regular meetup. But keep on fighting the good fight!
[+] [-] fjfaase|2 years ago|reply
I am happy with my design, which has not changed in the past twenty years, but I am open for suggestions about improvements.
[+] [-] pabloem|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rambambram|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pard68|2 years ago|reply
Here's mine, https://drollery.org (I have not put much effort into the mobile version, it's a bit wonky since a recent styling update, best enjoyed on desktop). This is mostly in exercise in "why not?"
[+] [-] spondyl|2 years ago|reply
The little live player widget in the top right is my pride and joy :')
https://github.com/marcus-crane/utf9k for the source and https://github.com/marcus-crane/gunslinger for the cludgy backend that powers the live player
[+] [-] catgirlinspace|2 years ago|reply
also have seen you around a lot in the indieweb chat!!
[+] [-] hypertexthero|2 years ago|reply
I’m at https://hypertexthero.com
One suggestion I have is to consider using https://meet.jit.si/ instead of Zoom for meetings. GitHub link: https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/
[+] [-] qubyte|2 years ago|reply
https://qubyte.codes/
[+] [-] bojanvidanovic|2 years ago|reply
BTW my website is https://bojanvidanovic.com
[+] [-] manuelmoreale|2 years ago|reply
> what's your domain name?
Lives at https://manuelmoreale.com
[+] [-] okaleniuk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maurits|2 years ago|reply
Its in dire need of new back-nend.
[+] [-] simonw|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hatsix|2 years ago|reply
it's nothing special, but I love the domain and paths
[+] [-] yabbs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] uneekname|2 years ago|reply
If you nerd out about implementing protocols, there are some IndieWebers that will go out of their way to help you develop or test new ideas. We'd stay up into the night getting our servers to talk to each other in some never-seen-before way. Good times!
[+] [-] mnky9800n|2 years ago|reply
This is my site: https://mnky9800n.github.io/
I'm especially happy with https://mnky9800n.github.io/booklist/
Which uses a Google spreadsheet as the database for new books I read. Make it easy to update.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago|reply
For myself, back in the ‘90s, I was really into spending a bunch of time, hand-crafting Web sites, but these days, I just use rather lightly-modified WordPress sites.
Anyone remember the famous SatireWire Cubist Web Site story[0]?
[0] https://www.satirewire.com/cubists-launch-unnavigable-web-si...
[+] [-] austin-cheney|2 years ago|reply
https://prettydiff.com
[+] [-] jslpc|2 years ago|reply
I only have 6 posts over 4 years, mostly due to me thinking my ideas aren't "original" enough to warrant lengthy write-ups, but I know that's not exactly true.
Anyway, here's mine:
https://jakesulpice.com/
[+] [-] rcarr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codazoda|2 years ago|reply
I just went down a rabbit hole looking at the RSVP specs, h-cards (which I remember from way back but thought was dead), and comments. And, I need to go deeper!
[+] [-] ninefoxgambit|2 years ago|reply
I design and build a variety of open source themes for Jekyll and Hugo at https://github.com/zerostaticthemes and I also offer some premium themes at https://www.zerostatic.io.
[+] [-] davidcollantes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulf-77723|2 years ago|reply
I had a personal blog back in the days, started out with selfhtml and went from there. Somewhere on the journey WordPress came out and I transitioned to it. About 2 years ago I started a personal blog about rowing, since I bought a rowing machine. The blog is written in German, yet often people autotranslate it with Google to match their language, since rowing seems to be a worldwide niche topic. You may find it here: https://harder-better-faster-stronger.de
[+] [-] ngcc_hk|2 years ago|reply
I will check out the London Meetup this wed. Brighton one links to this Wordpress “challenge” https://60minute.site/ and something about etherpad https://etherpad.org/
Finally find this obvious link https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started
[+] [-] yuhmahp|2 years ago|reply
The rest of my site is close to hand made: https://huy.today/
[+] [-] renegat0x0|2 years ago|reply
https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive/blob/main/an...
[+] [-] frankcaron|2 years ago|reply
Well down the road of this journey myself:
https://www.frankcaron.com/blog.html
Working on killing a lot of JS, albeit my 10 year old Bootstrap theme still has a bunch that's not really necessary.
[+] [-] js98|2 years ago|reply
Will sign up for one of the events, for now feel free to already look at https://Jakobs.dev