Let's Join the IndieWeb Together

I have joined the IndieWeb and you should too. By embracing some core principles, I’ve joined an online community who is banding together to create an alternative to the current corporate controlled web.

What’s in it for me?

Ownership — get out of the silo 🌾🌽

In return, I am able to post some content on my own website, that I control and own, and have a short summary of my content automatically get posted to all the social media platforms I wish to engage with, without any extra effort on my part!

Another benefit is being part of this movement against the centralisation of the internet as mentioned before, one which avoids all my writings being stuck in a “silo” where they’re difficult to export and I don’t have full control & agency over. There’s a certain liberating and empowering quality to this, taking back what is yours and staking a claim which says “these thoughts are mine” and “I own them”.

Share — do it on your terms

Social media networks are ever changing, and I hope that they’re going to change into a more decentralised form. But even if they’re not, I’m going to keep my thoughts on my website first and then distribute them elsewhere.

This idea, called syndication, is part of an IndieWeb philosophy called POSSE: “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. This is a concept that I think shows some of the fundamental ideas behind the IndieWeb. Owning your own little corner of the internet, calling it yours (by owning a domain name), and having that be the canonical source for everything you make. This is a way to claim your own online identity. It’s already important to blog, as doing so can help you learn and become a better person, a better writer, and a more connected individual in an online web of many. But POSSE takes that so much further — helps you connect with people no matter what social media network they’re using, or even without if they’d go directly to the source or use an RSS reader.

What else? 🤔

There are other aspects to the IndieWeb too, such as “back-feeding” which is a term that describes retrieving comments from these other social media networks and showing them on your website, and also other cool things you can choose to opt into, such as the IndieWeb ring, or blog rolls which are ways for people to find other blogs which have more interesting content to read.

Sounds good, let’s get started 🚀

If you’re interested in taking a stand and being a part of a growing community that supports a free and open web, I invite you to become a part of the IndieWeb too. If you already have a website, check if there’s a way to integrate IndieWeb standards into your blog. If you don’t, there are some easier ways to get started, and some more involved ways like setting up Hugo , or Jekyll too on something like GitHub Pages, Netlify or similar.

If this sounds great to you and you’re wondering how to join? Let’s start today.