I’ve been invited to quxnet.net, a private network that looks and works like the forums and message boards of the early web. Its sysop on the about page: “The old internet was for farmers. The new internet is for cattle.”

No feed deciding what I see, just boards, threads and people who chose to be there. It’s thoughtfully made and developed surprisingly far, and I share its values: real people, real connection.

What makes me hesitate is the same thing I keep writing about. I tell people to own their corner of the web instead of renting space on someone else’s platform. quxnet is a much kinder landlord than most, but it’s still a landlord. If it closes, so does everything I’ve written there.

So I’ll give it a fair try. Anything I write there that’s worth keeping, I’ll publish here as well.

The Tiny Awards celebrate “the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”: non-commercial websites by individuals or small groups, nominated and voted on by the public. For me, they have become an important signpost of the web revival. So many creative people are publishing aw...

An initiative by the alternative search engine Kagi, launched in September 2023. It surfaces recent posts from personal, non-commercial websites that the big search rankings tend to bury: kagi.com/smallweb

Also added to the Small Web garden page at tilman.me/garden/Alternative+Web+Movements/Small+Web

I had some digging into the "slow web" movement again: I re-read the Jack Cheng’s original post (2012), his own review post (2022) and found out about the Ben Grosser's Minus social network, where you are allowed only 100 post for life. All linked and more on the updated garden page: tilman.me/garden/Alternative+Web+Movements/Slow+Web

Every now and then you find someone who really owns their corner of the web. AJ Gonzalez (ajgenerated.com) is one: he builds his own universe on his own sites, and itch.io, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok feed into it instead of contain it. His main project, Official Electric...

Added www.blogsareback.com to tilman.me/garden/Alternative+Web+Movements/Weblogs+and+Blogging

Years of students' work in the field of Digital Experience — compressed into 30 seconds.

Interaction design, web design, UX/UI, game design, creative coding and experiments: this is what our Bachelor Design students at the Ohm build!

Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony (2015) is a beautiful, raw piece of art. Five movements, played by a single microchip in a clear CD case — not a recording at all, but a circuit that performs the music live when you switch it on, straight out of a headphone jack in the case ...

I relaunched my homepage! Much more informative and actually a good introduction into what I am up to at the moment: supporting the independent web. Be my guest! tilman.me Feedback is very welcome!

A presentation Hidde de Vries gave at Smashing Conference yesterday. Very interesting points throughout, also very entertaining, even if we only have the slides to look at online so far. He touched many topics I work on and I could especially relate to this chart …

talks.hiddedevries.nl/6qLmAh

I started a new section on this site: A collection of my academic design research: tilman.me/pub Google Scholar, here I come!

Overnight hiking trip. 🗻☀️🏕️

Knot, my little microblogging system, can now crosspost to Bluesky and Mastodon. I admit this is more news for me than for anybody else — but in the long run you can expect more quality content from my side on these platforms!

Another step towards a more solid POSSE strategy: post to my own site first, then syndicate as well as possible to where the audience still lingers. Testing it in real life conditions now. If that holds up, it goes into the Knot repo next week.

Every year tinyawards.net hand out a prize for the best of the small, poetic, handmade web — personal projects, built by one or two people, far away from commercial mainstream. The public nominates, a selection committee picks a shortlist, and then the public votes.

If you want to see what's possible on the web if you have some time, some dev skills and a huge amount of daring creativity, look here!

Eleven sites are on this year's shortlist, and voting is open until September 25th. Go click! tinyawards.net

Jim Mitchell's IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto: eight theses reading the personal site as DIY culture. I hope new perspectives like this can help getting new audiences interested in independent web publishing!

indiewebispunk.net

This is what I packed for the holiday in Milan and Corsica this year. Not that I ever thought I would it read it ALL … Robin Sloan, "The Writer & the Witch" – On top sits the smallest and by far the most beautiful object of the pile: Robin Sloan's short story **The Writ...

At the moment there are two initiatives running in the world of weblogs and blogging: Blaugust and 100 Days to Offload. They differ in the details. The first is about a month of posting, the other about a hundred posts in a year. But the aim is the same: to get people writi...

It’s holiday time! Spend our first day in Milan. There might be more travel photography here in the next days. Or maybe not. Because I’m on holiday!

I just published a long essay on a question that nagged me for years. I always felt that more creatives should run their own self-hosted websites — but I was never sure I was right. So instead of arguing for it, I examined every option as objectively as I could, with its real advantages and pitfalls, so readers can reach their own informed conclusions!

Read here: tilman.me/garden/How+can+creative+practitioners+publish+on+the+web+today%3F

Geoffrey Litt has a great new perspective on how we work with AI-generated code. We're not bound to prompting and moving on. We can have the AI explain what it built — teaching the background, building intuition before showing code, even ending with an interactive quiz so w...

I just put together a »web feed roll« — a hand-picked list of blogs I actually read, each with a short intro and their latest posts pulled via RSS/Atom. Web feeds are a quiet, open way to follow people online — no ads, no engagement bait, just posts showing up when they're p...

I spent the weekend at IndieWebCamp Nuremberg, the fifth edition in this city — two days at the tollwerkstatt as part of Nürnberg Digital Festival, in good company with a bunch of IndieWeb folks.

The highlight of Day 1 was René's session, “Make the web great again.” It gloriously derailed into everyone trying to out-do each other with the silliest, most gleefully useless links the web has to offer. I hope there is a blog post soon, but for a starter: esd-systeme.de. A reminder that the indie web isn't only specs and Webmentions — it's also delight.

Day 2 was Create Day and I built a Web Feed Roll for this site. It deserves its own post, so more on that very soon.

Everything is documented in detail on the IndieWeb Wiki: indieweb.org/2026/Nuremberg

I love Daniel Eatock’s website! The way he publishes his art and ideas for decades on this beautifully simple website is a tremendous accomplishment. And very inspiring. That is why I wrote a page on my digital garden about it. Already part three of a series on inspiring websites.

Another Homebrew Website Club Nuremberg last night — and I'm still delighted that this friendly, diverse group of practitioners meets monthly in my city. Interesting, inspiring, relaxed, and funny, as always.

Once again, thanks to Björn for documenting everything: indieweb.org/events/2026-06-10-hwc-nuremberg

And if you're even remotely curious about joining us: we're hosting a special edition for the Nürnberg Digital Festival! nuernberg.digital/de/events/2026/homebrew-website-club-nuedigital