small web

Small Web (or smallweb) is a term used in a 1999 article, a hosting service, two consulting services, a May 2020 article, a Aug 2020 blog post that describes a subset of IndieWeb principles, a HackerNews summary of Gemini, a curation of indie websites, most recently a Kagi Small Web initiative, and has variants smol web (smolweb) and smol net (smolnet).

Events

Small Web September is an annual month-long event organized on Dreamwidth that's dedicated to working on small web projects. The event was first launched in 2024.

Articles

From 1999 to 2021, articles have defined & described "small web" to mean different things, and most recently recognized the ambiguity of the phrase.

2026-03-28 Kevin Boone: The “small web” is bigger than you might think
2024-05-20 Why Smolweb is good for the Internet
2024-05-14 The Small Web and Science
As far as I can tell, this 2020 essay by Parimal Satyal seems to be the origin of “the small web” as a particular term.
2021-07-03: Small Web
I’m quite interested in concepts of the “Small Web” and adjacent topics, but it is definitely true that “small web” itself is a vague term that different people use to talk about different kinds of projects.
2021-03 The small web is beautiful
I believe that small websites are compelling aesthetically, but are also important to help us resist selling our souls to large tech companies. In this essay I present a vision for the “small web” as well as the small software and architectures that power it.
2020-09-30: Notes on the small web
Where by small web I mean all the things people are doing to claw back the 'net from corporations: …
The small web doesn't have lofty principles. Nor does it reinvent the wheel. The small web simply aims to put the fun back into making websites, and pride into the old title of webmaster.
HTML is still good. CSS is still good. Even a little Javascript to spice up the page can't hurt now and then, in moderation.
2020-08-07: What is the Small Web?
- redefinition by "Small Technology Foundation" (formerly ind.ie), and single page site https://small-web.org/ that links to this blog post
- Hackernews Discussion
  - fluffy's response distinguishing "IndieWeb"
2020-05-25: Rediscovering the Small Web, written by Parimal Satyal, is a post extolling the virtues of handmade HTML web pages
This essay is my attempt to show you what the small and independent web can look like, why it’s different from the the sites that dominate web traffic today, why it's worth exploring and how easy it is for anyone to be a part of it.
- See also: HN suggestions for sites that fit Parimal Satyal's definition of Small Web
1999-09-09: Science Magazine: It's a Small Web After All

Other Snippets

2020-08-30 section of a Gemini proxy Readme: What is the Small Web?
The Small Web are those pages on the WWW that are typically characterised:
- simple and document/content centric, using simple headings, bullets, links and tables only
- accessible to different web clients, but do not need a monster browser such as Chrome to view them
- do not require client side javascript
- do not require tracking, cookies, forms or authentication to be viewed
- can be accessed using standard HTTP GET requests
- could be rendered as text/gemini without significant loss of information
- apart from the huge commercial mega sites, a significant portion of the web

Directories

There is at least one directory called "smallweb" of independent websites:

https://smallweb.cc/ — since 2024-11-19 (possibly earlier)
- “a carefully curated collection of neat indie websites that get less attention than they deserve” via https://social.lol/@flamed/114307464923668908

Abandoned

2025:

There was a "Small Web" blog and accompanying profile (@thesmallweb):

https://smallweb.thecozy.cat/about/ (they blocked Internet Archive) "Welcome to the Small Web Movement" blog
This is a subdomain of thecozy.cat specifically for resources relating to the Small Web (AKA Indie Web or the Personal Web).
(Emphasis added).
- and accompanying Mastodon account: https://indieweb.social/@thesmallweb/ since 2025-03-14
...

Variants

smol web

smol web (or smolweb) gained some use in 2022.

2022-12-31 what is the smol web?
2023-10-09 smolweb.org: First post
- Note: Guidelines for a smolweb

smol net

Apparently the phrase "smol net" (or smolnet or smol internet) has been in some use since at least 2020:

2020-12-27 created: SmolNet wiki: What is the smol net?
2021-04-27 Poor Man's Web: The Small Web. “Smol Internet” or even “The Dork Web”.
2021-12-18 created: Collection of Smol Internet (Gopher, Gemini, etc) Links

Criticism of Aug 2020 repurposing

Nirvana fallacy

The 2020 August repurposing (What is the Small Web? above) of "small web" and subsequent rhetoric describes what the "small web" aspires to be in comparison to a narrowly-framed view of what the IndieWeb actually already is today in practice, and thus is an example of the Nirvana fallacy.

Digital greenwashing

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269071:

Appropriate all the good values and ideas from https://indieweb.org/, re-heat it add some feel-good word salad and we have this "Small Web".
Yes, by all means let's get back to a more decentralized and distributed web. But providing a service where you are still hosting your site on someone else's servers and on someone else's domain and calling for values is just digital green-washing.

Emphasis added.

Narcissism of Small Differences

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences

Desire to be left alone

https://web.archive.org/web/20201030120703/https://twitter.com/aral/status/1322147830769852416
Just fucking leave us alone and let us get on with building what we’re building. You don’t have to use it. You don’t have to like it. And you sure as hell don’t have to approve it. Just do what you do and leave us alone, for fuck’s sake. And ffs, stop asking me about #indieweb

Criticism of this page

Expletive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201030121011/https://twitter.com/aral/status/1322147826755919875
Because we’ve been vilified and attacked by them off and on for the last 7 years. Because we’re not afraid to say fuck Google and fuck surveillance capitalism and no, we can’t all just get along.
https://indieweb.org/small_web <– fuck off
PS. This is Small Web: …

"centrist academic pedants who get paid by the system" and "aggressively gatekeep" https://web.archive.org/web/20201030133725/https://twitter.com/aral/status/1322150412703641601
… I hadn’t seen that page. Makes my blood boil. Fucking centrist academic pedants who get paid by the system, have zero interest in fundamentally changing it, and who will aggressively gatekeep lest anyone else try to. …