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- See the posts page for the building block of publishing on your own site.
Newsletters Podcasts Videos Oh My
Want videos and weekly digests that cover the state of indie web?
- Subscribe to: This Week in the IndieWeb newsletter
- Listen to: podcasts about the indieweb
- Watch: videos about the IndieWeb, presentations about the IndieWeb
- Read: IndieNews, Books about the IndieWeb
Articles
Articles about the IndieWeb (in reverse chronological order)
- Adding something? Consider blogging it and submitting to IndieNews as well so it makes it into the This Week in the IndieWeb newsletter!
2026
- 2026-08-05 : Re-defining the IndieWeb
- 2026-01-03 : Which Part of the Indie Web Ethos is the Bigger Priority?
- 2026-01-01 : A Website To End All Websites: How to win the war for the soul of the internet and build the Web We Want
2025
- The December 2025 IndieWeb Carnival collected many posts about where you see the IndieWeb in 2030.
2024
- 2024-01-27 : The indieweb is for everyone (archived)
2023
- 2023-09-12 : The internet used to be* fun
I’ve been meaning to write some kind of Important Thinkpiece™ on the glory days of the early internet, but every time I sit down to do it, I find another, better piece that someone else has already written. So for now, here’s a collection of articles that to some degree answer the question “Why have a personal website?” with “Because it’s fun, and the internet used to be fun.”
- 2023-04-26 : Dear Nienke, you should have a website
2022
- 2022-12-26 : What is the IndieWeb?
- 2022-12-03 : The ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions
- 2022-11-29 : The fediverse and the indieweb
- 2022-11-27 : moving to the fediverse and indieweb
- 2022-11-14 indiebookclub version 0.1.0 launched
- 2022-11-12 : IndieWebifying my Website Part 1 - Microformats and Webmentions
- 2022-10-31 : What IndieBlocks Does, and Why
- 2022-07-22 : Indiewebify me! And don't forget my webmentions!
- 2022-06-16 : Indiewebify me! And don't forget my webmentions!
- 2022-06-14 : De-Mystifying IndieWeb on a WordPress Site
- 2022-06-05 : Bridgy stats update
- 2022-05-16 : Indieweb and webmentions for my static site
2021
- 2021-11-16 : I love my website
- 2021-06-05 : Bridgy stats update
- 2021-03-14 : One Year in the IndieWeb
2020
- 2020-08-27 : Autonomy Online: A Case For The IndieWeb (archived)
- 2020-06-27 : Bridgy stats update
2019
- 2019-10-20 : The IndieWeb Movement: Owning Your Data and Being the Change You Want to See in the Web (archived)
- 2019-05-18 : Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? (The New Yorker) (archived)
- 2019-04-17 : Fixing the financial dilemma at the heart of our broken tech industry (archived)
- 2019-04-17 : Why I’m supporting the IndieWeb (and you should too) (archived)
- 2019-04-11 : Nothing Fails Like Success (archived)
- 2019-03-24 : An Alternative to the Corporate Web (archived)
- 2019-01-06 Static Indieweb pt1: Syndicating Content
2018
- 2018-12-14 : Blogging and me (archived)
- 2018-11-25 : Everything Old is New Again: Adventures in the IndieWeb (archived)
- 2018-11-09 For the love of the blog
- 2018-10-15 Joschi Kuphal on Twitter @jkphl:
Although not mentioned by name: The @indiewebcamp Nuremberg 2016 / 2017 made it to one of the most important German newspapers. ;) Will you join us for the 3rd one in town next weekend? (event link) #nuedigital +@nueww
- 2018-08-15 NYTimes: Opinion: A FREE PRESS NEEDS YOU - regarding local / independent news publications, seems similar to needing healthy independent website publishing as well.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to your local papers. Praise them when you think they’ve done a good job and criticize them when you think they could do better. We’re all in this together.
- 2018-07-19 : Webmentions: Enabling Better Communication on the Internet (archived)
- 2018-05-15 : Why We Need the #IndieWeb: A Short History (archived)
- 2018-05-02 : The Indieweb privacy challenge (Webmentions, silo backfeeds, and the GDPR) (archived)
- 2018-05-02 : IndieWeb Overview
- 2018-04-24 : Surveillance Capitalism and IndieWeb (archived)
- 2018-04-20 : An IndieWeb reader: My new home on the internet (archived)
- 2018-03-27 : ¿Qué es la IndieWeb? (archived)
- 2018-03-25 : Content Silos
- 2018-03-22 : About this website
- 2018-03-21 : The Missing Building Blocks of the Web (Medium)
- 2018-03-14 : A Year with the IndieWeb
- 2018-03-12 : Building an IndieWeb Reader
- 2018-02-21 : Indie websites can set you free from the constraints of social media (GoDaddy)
- 2018-02-06 : To PESOS or to POSSE? (archived)
- 2018-01-24 : The IndieWeb outside of Facebook is full of opportunities (GoDaddy)
- 2018-01-16 : Hoja de ruta para danirod.es en 2018: abrazar la web abierta (archived)
- 2018-01-13 : Reclaiming My Bookmarks (archived)
- 2018-01-11 : 1 Million Webmentions (archived)
- 2018-01-02 : Bridgy Stats Update 3 (archived)
2017
- 2017-12-15 : Threaded Replies and Comments with Webmentions in WordPress
- 2017-11-09 : Medium is only an edge server of your POSSE CDN, your own blog is the origin (archived)
- 2017-10-28 : Content, bloat, privacy, archives (archived)
- 2017-10-27 : The Presentation of Self on a Decentralised Web (Ph.D. Thesis) (archived)
- 2017-10-26 : My #IndieWeb Reflections (archived)
- 2017-10-24 : Een eigen huis op het IndieWeb
- 2017-09-24 : Taking back control over my content (archived)
- 2017-09-17 : The "Indie" Fallacy (archived)
- 2017-09-10 : Decentralized Web Pt 3: Join the IndieWeb (archived)
- 2017-08-01 : Humanizing the Web (archived)
- 2017-07-28 : An Introduction to the IndieWeb (archived)
- 2017-07-27 : So long Disqus, hello Webmention (archived)
- 2017-07-16 : Implementing Webmentions (archived)
- 2017-06-30 : Why we should all care about Open Web (archived)
- 2017-06-24 : I’m apparently the king of the microformat rel="me": More important however is the reason why I hold the title! (archived)
- 2017-06-22 : Reflections on Two Years of #Indieweb (archived)
- 2017-06-20 : The Open Web
- 2017-06-17 : IndieWebifying my website: part 1, the why & how (archived)
- 2017-06-13 : The IndieWeb Movement Will Help People Control Their Own Web Presence? (archived)
- 2017-06-09 : Feed reader revolution: it’s time to embrace open & disrupt social media (archived)
- 2017-05-30 : Introducing AltPlatform & our manifesto for the Open Web (archived)
- 2017-05-24 : IndieWebWhaaaat?! A Visual Round-Up.
- 2017-05-05 : Going Indie. Step 2: Reclaiming Content
- 2017-04-05 : Mastodon.Social isn’t as Federated or as Decentralized as the Indie Web (archived)
- 2017-03-19 : Doing my part to fix the internet
- 2017-01-25 : It's more than just the words - an independent restatement of some of the indieweb principles by the co-founder of Perch
- 2017-01-08 : Let’s Make 2017 The Year of the Indie Web
2016
- 2016-11-21 : Decentralisation considered harmful
- 2016-11-20 : Fix the internet by writing good stuff and being nice to people
- 2016-11-03 : IndieWeb: Make your social media posts open first (archived)
- 2016-07-19 : Lessons Learned from IndiewebCamp and WordCamp
- 2016-06-29 : How To Break Open The Web
- 2016-06-28 : <A> (article summary of opening keynote from the inaugural HTML Special held before CSS Day 2016 in Amsterdam)
- 2016-06-22 : Reboot the World
- 2016-06-09 : Building the First Amendment Into the Web and Other Hopes for the Internet’s Future
- 2016-05-21 : IndieWebCamp and #ownyourdata #ownyouridentity
- 2016-05-20 : Owning my words and photos and audio bits
- 2016-05-19 : Owning my words
- 2016-05-12 : Dark Matter and the #IndieWeb (archived)
- 2016-04-23 : Bridging the Gap Between Your Blog and Social Media
- 2016-04-17 : Silos, Webmentions and the Challenge of Owning Your Own Content
- 2016-03-15 : Closed silo challenges to an open web
- 2016-02-18 : Remember WordPress' Pingbacks? The W3C wants us to use them across the whole web
- 2016-02-11 : Embracing the IndieWeb
- 2016-01-31 : Taking part in the IndieWeb: Introducing the principles of IndieWeb and how you can take part through IndieWebCamps and Homebrew Website Clubs
- 2016-01-29 : Micropub and the Quiet IndieWebCamp Revolution
- 2016-01-20 : Anywhere but Medium js;dr
- 2016-01-19 : Should You Quit Blogging? (Own your data)
2015
- 2015-12-21 : Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2015: Indie Ed-Tech (archived)
- 2015-11-11 : Marking up Drupal's blog posts for the IndieWeb
- 2015-10-18 : Har Facebook låst in oss för gott? (Swedish post)
- 2015-10-02 : Slides from indieweb talk are up re: 2015-10-01 "The IndieWeb" presentation given @CodeHarbour (slides, need video/notes).
- 2015-09-18 : Den oberoende sociala webben 2015 (Swedish post)
- 2015-09-18 : Trying to Explain the Indieweb
- 2015-08-16 : Indiewebify yourself
- 2015-08-12 : An Alphabet of IndieWeb Building Blocks: Article to Z
- 2015-08-03 : How IndieWeb Makes Comments (a little) Better
- 2015-07-17 : Why we all need to make the Internet fun again
- 2015-07-14 : IndieWebCamp Brighton 2015
- 2015-07-12 : IndieWebCamp 2015
- 2015-05-11 : Living the Indie Web
- 2015-05-10 : IndieWebCamp in Düsseldorf
- 2015-05-10 : IndieWeb
- 2015-05-09 : Why I write on my own site first
- 2015-04-29 : Reclaim Your Domain (With Known)
- 2015-03-29 : Rise of the IndieWeb (German)
- 2015-01-22 : Indieweb
- 2015-01-16 : We Like IndieWeb Software
2014
- 2014-11-24 : 10 Years
- 2014-11-20 : A New Service Will Help You Wrest Your Online Identity From Google (IndieHosters)
- 2014-10-21 : Indie web building blocks
- 2014-10-18 : Webmention: an introduction for developers
- 2014-10-09 : The Indie Web
- 2014-09-24 : The Indie Web is the new Zines
- 2014-09-17 : Out in the Open: A Blogging Tool That Lets You Actually Own What You Post on Facebook (Known)
- 2014-09-11 : IndieWeb advocates launch Known so bloggers can be social and still control their content
- 2014-09-04 : Indie Web: wees eigenaar van jouw data (Dutch) "Indie Web: Be the owner of your data"
- 2014-09-03 : Don't like Facebook owning and controlling your content? Use tools that support the open Web
- 2014-08-22 : The New Editors of the Internet
- 2014-07-23 : The Indie Web – friend or foe?
- 2014-07-17 : You don't need to develop for the Worst Case Scenario
- 2014-07-07 : Screw Digital Sharecropping. I’m Getting a Posse.
- 2014-07-03 : IndieWeb and Respect Network: Two roads to decentralizing the network
- 2014-07-02 : I am a Citizen of the IndieWeb! :D (archived)
- 2014-06-26 : IndieWeb ho! A brief intro to a little movement with big ideas
- 2014-06-12 : The web idealists have a point: content can't truly blossom in walled gardens
- 2014-06-02 : Indieweb – decentralize the web while centralizing ourselves
- 2014-04-25 : Welcome to the Indie Web Movement
- 2014-03-26 : The Indieweb. or: how I learnt to stop worrying and love the blog
- 2014-03-25 : The IndieWeb, Revolution, and Other Reasons You Should Learn to Code
- 2014-02-14 : Homebrew Website Club Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 3 - Portland Edition
- 2014-01-31 : IndieWeb; Join us! - Independent but together.
- 2014-01-26 : Stopping Writing For Other Web Sites
- 2014-01-16 : Online Homesteading
2013
- 2013-11-04 : The Power to Create
- 2013-12-12 : Kevin Marks on the web that will win from #leweb
- 2013-11-04 : The Power to Create
- 2013-09-26 : The IndieWeb community has it nailed: #selfdogfood
- 2013-09-16 : Webmentions and the REAL Social Web
- 2013-08-29 : The US government is taking your Facebook data. But it doesn't stop there
- 2013-08-21 : Beware of geeks bearing gifts
- 2013-08-21 : Indie Web resources: Silos vs. an open Web
- 2013-08-18 : The Internet: We’re Doing It Wrong
- 2013-08-14 : Meet the Hackers Who Want to Jailbreak the Internet
- 2013-08-13 : Is coding a blogging engine still worth the effort in 2013? and other thoughts about content publishing tools
- 2013-08-09 : Lavabit and Silent Circle shut
- 2013-08-08 : PRISM Break! How This Developer Created His Own Cloud
- 2013-08-08 : JSON-LD is an Unneeded Spec
- 2013-08-06 : On owning your own data
- 2013-08-05 : Implementing "Prism Break"
- 2013-07-31 : Why I Left Medium
- 2013-07-08 : Die Renaissance des Pingbacks (german)
- 2013-06-28 : Indiewebcamp 2013 Roundup
- 2013-06-25 : Are social media silos holding back business results? (archived)
- 2013-06-18 : The Rise of the IndieWeb (german)
- 2013-05-16 : What's next Google? Dropping SMTP support?
- 2013-05-14 : No More Sharecropping!
- 2013-04-19 : The First Federated #Indieweb Comment Thread
- 2013-03-31 : This is what email would have looked like if it were invented in the Web 2.0 era
- 2013-03-28 : An Open Challenge to App.net
- 2013-03-14 : On Silos vs an Open Social Web #indieweb
2012
- 2012-12-21 : Instagram
- 2012-12-18 : Rebuilding the Web We Lost (archived)
- 2012-12-13 : The Web We Lost (archived)
- 2012-10-26 : A critical look at decentralization
- 2012-10-22 : Creating Content on the Indie Web (English, French translation)
- 2012-07-25 : Why I have my own web site
- 2012-07-11 : Movimientos hacia una web independiente (Spanish)
- 2012-03-29 : Chopped up or Cloned: You Choose (English, French translation)
- 2012-01-24 : Put Your Taproot Into the Independent Web
- 2012-01-20 : The Future of Social Networking
2011
- 2011-12-27 : 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012 (archived) "I worry about the independent web..."
- 2011-09-25 : It's the end of the web as we know it (archived)
- 2011-07-30 : Homesteading on the indie web (archived)
- 2011-07-11 : Own Your Identity (archived)
- 2011-07-08 : The Indie Web: Who owns your identity? (archived)
- 2011-05-24 : Sir Tim Berners Lee claims Twitter is for “extreme” opinions (archived)
Lee outlined a future in which all social networks communicate with each other, ending today’s isolation on one platform.
2010
- 2010-10-21 : IDENTITY AND THE INDEPENDENT WEB
- 2010-11-07 : No More Sharecropping!
- 2010-11-09 : We Need a Twitter API Clone Ruby Gem
2009
2007
- 2007-07-23 : Syndication needs to get social
2002
- 2002-11-13 Zeldman on the Independent Web
(Q.) How do you persuade people to fall in love? (A.) You don’t have to. The independent web takes care of itself because it fulfills basic human desires. The desire to connect. The desire to produce. The desire to enjoy content not mediated by corporations that can’t afford to produce anything less than a blockbuster. On the non-commercial web, an audience of 10,000 souls (or even a thousand) is meaningful.
- 2002-03-10 Independents Day: What happened in the past couple of years? / Chronology / SXSW_02:
On Sunday, 10 March 2002, INDEPENDENTS DAY presented three panels at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW)
[Tantek's first SXSW and attendance of these panels was one of his earliest sources of IndieWeb inspiration. He started blogging that August.]
2001
- 2001-05-17 Independents Day Manifesto (launched)
1997
- 1997-02-01 : The Indie Web Manifesto (English) (archived)
- 1997-02-01 : Manifeste du Web indépendant (French) (archived)
Previous to the web
See prehistory for articles about broader concepts in networking, hypermedia etc. that predate the creation and launch of the web.
News Sites
If you came here for examples or discussions about news sites in general, here’s a short list that have been documented on the wiki (see their pages for direct "lite" or plain text links)
See Also
- Press kit
- History
- Timeline
- Posts about the IndieWeb (español)
- Own your data
- Events
- Today's chat logs
- Recent wiki changes
- Tagboards: #indieweb, #indiewebcamp, #indieauth, #ownyourdata
- Google News Search: "indieweb" OR "The Indie Web"
- Posts
- Reading list: organized by subject matter
- Silo quits
- Elsewhere: for IndieWeb and IndieWebCamp related news, communities, content on other sites
- https://www.rauljimenez.info/blog/first-steps-into-the-indieweb
- "Over the last few weeks, while working on OpenTechEvents, I ended up pulling a thread I had only touched lightly before: the IndieWeb.And, honestly, it makes a lot of sense that I got there from a project about open tech events.An idea that is not newThe funny thing is that the IndieWeb is not new at all. The movement started around 2010, but some of its ideas feel even more relevant now than they probably did back then.OpenTechEvents is making me think again about how we publish information on the web, how we connect communities, and how we make things discoverable without depending on a single platform.Some IndieWeb ideas resonate a lot with me: owning your identity, publishing on your own domain, making content more interoperable, and letting websites talk to each other again.I still have a lot to learn, but I have already started taking my first steps.First stepsI added more semantic data to this website using JSON-LD and Microformats2, so my homepage describes me a bit better as a person, not just as a collection of HTML elements. I also updated my links page so it can act as a clearer identity hub, with rel="me" links and better compatibility with IndieLogin.POSSE and owning what I shareOne concept that especially resonates with me is POSSE: publish on your own site, then syndicate elsewhere. In a way, it is similar to what I already do with Buffer: publishing from one place and distributing to different platforms. The important difference is that, with POSSE, my own website becomes the source of truth, and the rest of the platforms become copies or distribution channels. Understanding it properly can get technical quite quickly, but the idea is very attractive to me: use my own domain as the canonical place for my content and activity, and then distribute copies to the platforms where most people already are.That does not mean leaving social platforms entirely. If I want to interact with most people, I still need to be present where most people are. But I do like the idea of finding ways to keep using them while adopting more IndieWeb principles, without adding too much friction.In essence, I like the idea of not being completely tied to platforms that may close, start charging, restrict APIs, or change the rules. I have already seen versions of that story with Meetup.com, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Flickr, and other services.There is another angle that bothers me too: when I write a review to help people looking for geolocated information on Google Maps, or upload a photo of a menu so other people can make better decisions, Google locks those data behind a paid API and I cannot say that I want my contribution to be freely available for anyone to use.That example comes to mind often, but it applies to many other platforms too. We should be the owners of what we share, even if we still participate in other people's platforms.Aaron Parecki as a referenceIf you have never heard of Aaron Parecki, he is one of the people behind IndieWebCamp. He is also a geogeek: he co-founded Geoloqi, a location platform acquired by Esri, where he later worked from 2012 to 2016 according to his LinkedIn experience. Beyond his IndieWeb work, I have learned a lot about OAuth from his courses and material, which I credited in my 2023 Commit Conf talk, OAuth, OpenID Connect and JWT para dummies.If someone wants to understand what joining the IndieWeb can look like in practice, Aaron's website is a living example of what it means to own your content on your own domain.WebmentionsAnd now I have also enabled Webmentions.I think the first time I saw a reference to this concept was while reading something by swyx, probably his post about learning in public. At the time it sounded interesting, but I did not really get my hands dirty enough to understand how it worked.While testing this, I also realized that receiving a Webmention is only a small piece of the IndieWeb. If I want other tools to understand the context properly, my posts need to include useful metadata too. So I started marking articles with Microformats2 values such as h-entry, p-name, dt-published, p-author, u-url, and e-content, so services can extract the title, author, date, canonical URL, and the actual content mentioning another page. I still need to extend this more consistently across the rest of the site, including my digital brain.That means that, at least in theory, if someone writes a post linking to one of my articles, that mention can be discovered and shown here. It feels small, but I like the direction: instead of conversations being trapped only inside social networks, a personal website can receive signals from the rest of the web.I'm not pretending this is a finished migration to the IndieWeb. It is more like opening a door and putting one foot inside.Pending piecesThere is also one important piece I have not solved yet: automating the outgoing Webmentions. For now, when I link to a site that supports Webmentions, I still have to send the notification manually, usually with a small curl command. Not ideal, but good enough for a first experiment.For example, this very article links to my links landing page, links.rauljimenez.info. After publishing it, I can manually send a Webmention like this:curl -i -X POST https://webmention.io/links.rauljimenez.info/webmention \
-H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
--data-urlencode "source=https://www.rauljimenez.info/blog/first-steps-into-the-indieweb" \
--data-urlencode "target=https://links.rauljimenez.info/"
And with that, a mention appears in the footer of links.rauljimenez.info. Right now it feels a bit tedious, but I understand that with other tools, such as Micropub, this kind of flow can become much less manual.I also want to find time to experiment with other pieces of the IndieWeb ecosystem, such as Micropub and Microsub.And, related but different, I also want to finally understand the Fediverse properly. The IndieWeb and the Fediverse are not the same thing, although both are part of a broader movement towards a more decentralized internet and more control over our own data. I see them as sibling ecosystems, with very similar philosophies, but different technologies and approaches. I had never gone deep enough into the Fediverse, but this has definitely woken up that curiosity again, and I like what both represent.Towards a digital twinSince 2023 I have treated this site as my digital brain. Maybe, little by little, it can also become a kind of digital twin of my online presence: a more faithful representation of what I publish, when I write a review, mark something as a favorite, save something, RSVP to an event, or share things across the web.Let's see where this path leads 😅.Update: Micropub is liveWell, this moved faster than expected. Since writing this post, I have already set up Micropub for real, with a private Indiekit server, helped a lot by AI along the way. In this new flow, publishing no longer depends on manual curl commands, although this integration is not connected to Docusaurus yet.The flow now stores notes, bookmarks, likes, and replies in a public GitHub repository, hhkaos/posts.rauljimenez.info. From there, a GitHub Action renders the public feed at posts.rauljimenez.info, showing only the items marked as visible.For now, I am treating this as an explicitly public space: I only plan to publish things I actually want to share in the open, fully aware of what that means. In practice, I do not expect to share anything here that I would not already be publishing in other silos today.And this is no longer just theoretical: I have already sent a real outgoing Webmention to swyx's learn in public post, as a reply. It was verified by webmention.io and is visible there, which felt like a very satisfying first end-to-end test.There are still several pieces pending: receiving Webmentions properly, experimenting with Microsub, and deciding whether this new public feed should appear in the main navigation of this site. But the foundations are now much more real than they were when I started writing this post." @Raúl Jiménez Ortega September 1, 2026
- "Over the last few weeks, while working on OpenTechEvents, I ended up pulling a thread I had only touched lightly before: the IndieWeb.And, honestly, it makes a lot of sense that I got there from a project about open tech events.An idea that is not newThe funny thing is that the IndieWeb is not new at all. The movement started around 2010, but some of its ideas feel even more relevant now than they probably did back then.OpenTechEvents is making me think again about how we publish information on the web, how we connect communities, and how we make things discoverable without depending on a single platform.Some IndieWeb ideas resonate a lot with me: owning your identity, publishing on your own domain, making content more interoperable, and letting websites talk to each other again.I still have a lot to learn, but I have already started taking my first steps.First stepsI added more semantic data to this website using JSON-LD and Microformats2, so my homepage describes me a bit better as a person, not just as a collection of HTML elements. I also updated my links page so it can act as a clearer identity hub, with rel="me" links and better compatibility with IndieLogin.POSSE and owning what I shareOne concept that especially resonates with me is POSSE: publish on your own site, then syndicate elsewhere. In a way, it is similar to what I already do with Buffer: publishing from one place and distributing to different platforms. The important difference is that, with POSSE, my own website becomes the source of truth, and the rest of the platforms become copies or distribution channels. Understanding it properly can get technical quite quickly, but the idea is very attractive to me: use my own domain as the canonical place for my content and activity, and then distribute copies to the platforms where most people already are.That does not mean leaving social platforms entirely. If I want to interact with most people, I still need to be present where most people are. But I do like the idea of finding ways to keep using them while adopting more IndieWeb principles, without adding too much friction.In essence, I like the idea of not being completely tied to platforms that may close, start charging, restrict APIs, or change the rules. I have already seen versions of that story with Meetup.com, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Flickr, and other services.There is another angle that bothers me too: when I write a review to help people looking for geolocated information on Google Maps, or upload a photo of a menu so other people can make better decisions, Google locks those data behind a paid API and I cannot say that I want my contribution to be freely available for anyone to use.That example comes to mind often, but it applies to many other platforms too. We should be the owners of what we share, even if we still participate in other people's platforms.Aaron Parecki as a referenceIf you have never heard of Aaron Parecki, he is one of the people behind IndieWebCamp. He is also a geogeek: he co-founded Geoloqi, a location platform acquired by Esri, where he later worked from 2012 to 2016 according to his LinkedIn experience. Beyond his IndieWeb work, I have learned a lot about OAuth from his courses and material, which I credited in my 2023 Commit Conf talk, OAuth, OpenID Connect and JWT para dummies.If someone wants to understand what joining the IndieWeb can look like in practice, Aaron's website is a living example of what it means to own your content on your own domain.WebmentionsAnd now I have also enabled Webmentions.I think the first time I saw a reference to this concept was while reading something by swyx, probably his post about learning in public. At the time it sounded interesting, but I did not really get my hands dirty enough to understand how it worked.While testing this, I also realized that receiving a Webmention is only a small piece of the IndieWeb. If I want other tools to understand the context properly, my posts need to include useful metadata too. So I started marking articles with Microformats2 values such as h-entry, p-name, dt-published, p-author, u-url, and e-content, so services can extract the title, author, date, canonical URL, and the actual content mentioning another page. I still need to extend this more consistently across the rest of the site, including my digital brain.That means that, at least in theory, if someone writes a post linking to one of my articles, that mention can be discovered and shown here. It feels small, but I like the direction: instead of conversations being trapped only inside social networks, a personal website can receive signals from the rest of the web.I'm not pretending this is a finished migration to the IndieWeb. It is more like opening a door and putting one foot inside.Pending piecesThere is also one important piece I have not solved yet: automating the outgoing Webmentions. For now, when I link to a site that supports Webmentions, I still have to send the notification manually, usually with a small curl command. Not ideal, but good enough for a first experiment.For example, this very article links to my links landing page, links.rauljimenez.info. After publishing it, I can manually send a Webmention like this:curl -i -X POST https://webmention.io/links.rauljimenez.info/webmention \