I Love The Web
What’s going on, Internet? I love the web. I love it so much I built myself a little corner of it, and I’ve been tending to it ever since.
That probably sounds obvious coming from someone who runs a personal website, but it’s worth saying out loud. The web is genuinely one of my favourite things about being alive right now, and I want to tell you why.
When I was growing up online, the web felt vast. Genuinely, wildly vast. People were writing emails to strangers, hanging out on IRC or in forums, building websites for the sheer joy of it, filling bookmark folders with hundreds of places they actually wanted to visit. Every corner you turned there was someone who’d built a little homepage dedicated to their favourite band, or a page full of game cheats, or a fansite with photos, wallpapers, and winamp skins. There was something electric about discovering a new site someone had made for no reason other than because they could.
The thing that made it special wasn’t the design. Plenty of it was terrible, and we loved it, it was the people. The old web was a community, or rather, hundreds of little communities, all connected by hyperlinks. You could follow a link from your friend’s page to a page they liked, then follow a link from that page, and spend an entire afternoon just wandering. Nobody told you where to go. You clicked around and found stuff.
We linked to each other freely. Blogrolls were thriving (and have made a comeback since). Webrings existed to connect people with shared interests. If you found a site you liked, you’d link to it, not because it was good for your SEO, but because that’s just what you did. That’s how the web worked. That’s how we found each other.
What I miss most isn’t the animated GIFs or the tiled backgrounds - it’s the feeling of a web made by people, for people, without any particular goal beyond sharing something. Your website means everything to you and nothing to me, and that was completely fine. Beautiful, even.
The web changed. It got more commercial, more platform-shaped, more algorithmic. The places where everyone ended up were designed to keep you there, not send you somewhere else. Linking out became bad for business. Blogrolls disappeared. The search results filled up with garbage. But here’s the thing: the personal web didn’t die. It just went quiet for a while.
It’s coming back. Right now there are thousands of people building their own websites, writing without monetisation pressure, joining webrings, posting their interests without caring whether the algorithm approves. Communities like the 32-Bit Cafe and platforms like Neocities exist specifically to support this. People are launching digital gardens, writing personal blogs, sharing what they love — because they love it. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.
The personal web is not dictated by an algorithm or designed to sell you something. When someone makes a website just because they want to share something, you can feel the difference immediately.
Owning your own corner of the web matters. Not because something bad will necessarily happen if you don’t. But because there’s something genuinely good about having a space that’s yours, that you control, that reflects who you are, that doesn’t disappear when a platform gets bought out or decides your audience now belongs to them. Your content, your permalinks, your interesting sidebar widget. Yours.
You don’t need to be technical. You don’t need to monetise it or grow an audience or post on a schedule. You just need something to say or show off, and the desire to say it somewhere that belongs to you.
If you want to get started, here’s where I’d point you. HTML for People is a free online book by Blake Watson that teaches HTML from scratch. No prior experience needed, and it includes a bonus CSS chapter too. MDN Web Docs is the reference you’ll keep coming back to as you get more comfortable. Jackie’s guide to making a website zine is a 28-page zine that makes the whole thing feel approachable.
For hosting: Neocities is the obvious first stop. Free (with a paid option), community-driven, and carries the spirit of the old web. Sadgrl’s beginner’s guide will get you started. Page Cord, Pika, or Bear Blog exist if you just want to write without any fuss. omg.lol gives you a domain, a profile, a blog, a now page. Delightful little internet services.
For community: 32-Bit Cafe is full of friendly people building personal sites. IndieWeb has a wiki, events, and a welcoming community working on the infrastructure of the independent web — I also wrote a beginner’s guide to IndieWeb if you want a personal walkthrough.
The web is still fun. It’s still weird. It’s still full of people making things for the love of it. Come join us.
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