#personal web

beetles for colliezip

credits

there seems to be a universal sentiment about missing the old internet. geocities. personal sites. blogs that felt like diaries instead of content funnels.

if you really miss it, there are still places doing it. smol.pub is one of them.

what smol.pub is

smol.pub is a tiny publishing space built on the gemini protocol. emphasis on tiny. it is not a social network. it is not trying to be the next anything. it is a place to write small pages and let them exist without being chewed up by algorithms.

posts feel closer to notes pinned to a corkboard than posts competing for attention. you write. someone stumbles across it. maybe they reply. maybe they do not. there is no invisible pressure to perform. no follower count looming over your shoulder.

it is calm in a way the modern web forgot how to be.

ok but what the hell is gemini

gemini is a different protocol. not a website aesthetic. not a theme. an actual different layer of the internet.

no javascript. no ads. no trackers. no autoplay. no infinite scroll. pages load instantly because they are mostly text. links are intentional. navigation is manual. you choose where you go.

think early web values, but not frozen in amber. more like a conscious rejection of what the web turned into. gemini feels like reading again instead of being harvested.

writing on gemini feels different too. slower. more deliberate. like your words are going somewhere instead of being dumped into a feed blender.

who made it and why that matters

smol.pub is made by m15o, who also made status.cafe, nightfall.city, and ichi.city. if you have ever brushed up against the small web, you have already felt his fingerprints on it.

his projects all orbit the same idea. human scale tools. personal expression. systems that do not try to own you.

you can find his page here and honestly it is worth clicking around https://nightfall.city/shore/m15o/

this is not some vc funded nostalgia skin. this is one person steadily building places for people who want something quieter and more sincere.

why i am inviting you

if you are tired of metrics. if you are tired of optimizing your thoughts. if you are tired of feeling like every post needs a punchline or a call to action. if you want to write fragments, logs, half thoughts, strange little entries that do not need to justify themselves.

join smol.pub.

let your corner of the internet be small. let it be slow. let it be yours.

Coding & Coworking: Web Communities, How to Find and Join Them

I'm so happy you guys liked the last one of these! They won't overtake the usual ASMR audio roleplays, but I'd like to try and do at least one of these a month. Indie web and personal websites, I just get so excited about them and love sharing more about them with people. There will be videos that are more coding based, but I really wanted to make one explaining web communities in case anyone was tempted to join any. And this I made this video I've made my own pixel club that's open to join and the process of making it will be in the next one of these videos. ...I forgot to make a list of all the websites I visited as I was recording and had to go back and find them all... I really hope someone likes these videos and finds them fun or educational because I sure spent 12+ just editing the websites credits onto the screen, but having visible credit for what website we're on is important to me, I hope it makes people able to visit these websites more easily. Also I've found so many more cliques and webrings since filming this so if you didn't see any you'd want to join, maybe check on my resources page and see if there is now because I update it constantly. As always let me know if you have any questions about indie web stuff or ideas for future coding and coworking videos.

Timestamps:

0:00:00 Intro

0:08:37 Linking and commenting

0:30:12 Webrings

0:52:46 Cliques

1:00:06 Fanlistings

1:09:02 Misc communities

1:18:03 Pixel clubs

1:19:06 Adoptables

1:24:36 Pixel clubs (cont)

1:43:44 Drawing art for pixel clubs

2:44:42 Coding my toybox page

3:10:09 Collecting pixel club adoptables

Do YOU have a website of some sort? Any sort? Neocities, nekoweb, github? Hand-coded? Wordpress? A carrd? Maybe a fancy-looking rentry? Do you have a custom tumblr theme that you fancied up to be a little website all on its own?

well, if ANY of those apply, or if you're interested in getting them to, I'd like to invite you to the webmaster webring!!

❤️ Monday Memes #11 ❤️

Algorithms, constant ads, pay walls, tracking, and walled gardens are so 2024. Leave behind the big data mining corporations and make your own indie website in 2025! That's what we're doing! ;)

Happy Monday!

MAIN SITE: maliceinwonderland.nekoweb.org

maliceinwonderland.neocities.org

EVANESCENCE WEB GRAPHICS ARCHIVE:

archivescence.nekoweb.org (Neocities mirror TBD)

EVANESCENCE WEBRING:

evanescencering.nekoweb.org (Neocities mirror TBD)

DREAMWIDTH WITH MY UPDATED ONLINE SURVIVAL GUIDES:

malicefairy.dreamwidth.org

EMAIL (18 years or over only please!):

[email protected]

LETTERBOXD:

I've opened my first webring today! If you have a personal website and love Saiki Kusuo no Ψ Nan, this is for you! We have two members so far, so I encourage you to join.

A webring is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure. It uses a widget to connect websites and members of the webring.