Own Your Web – Issue 11: Welcome to the IndieWeb

buttondown.email

65 points·ecliptik··4 comments

I've been following this newsletter since Matthias launched it - I recommend going through the archive [0] if you're into personal websites and the "IndieWeb". On a similar vein, I also recommend Manuel Moreale's newsletter "People and Blogs" [1]. Props to both for promoting the greener pastures of the internet!

[0]: https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/

[1]: https://peopleandblogs.com/

I love the idea of the Indie web. But the costs seem prohibitive for someone with 1990s skills like me. I have a personal blog site setup on a shared server for $100/year. But running things like mode.js are a no-go unless I upgrade to a VPS or set up my own aws (or other) sever. I wish there was a way to embrace the indie web with low cost static commercial front ends and offload the bandwidth light, compute intensive backend to my home server. Someday I’ll take the deep dive into this stuff. Maybe when I retire.

$100/year sounds like a lot to host a personal blog on a shared server (having "compute intensive backend" doesn't sound typical though to be fair). On some big providers like Hetzner, that would buy into their third tier of service, where for most people the first would be fine.

There are lots of places for VPS cheaper than what you pay now. And if you want to go really cheap then you can always take a gamble on lowendbox.com (and set up backups). Some providers do basic stuff for $10-12/year and there are various flavours of installers for common open source packages like blogging tools.

There's an online meetup for people in PST [1] scheduled for tonight. I didn't RSVP but I hope to be able to attend so I can show my home lab.

[1] https://events.indieweb.org/2024/03/homebrew-website-club-pa...

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