Hi folks, I’m so dang tired of the internet as it currently is. The idea of a small web, personal websites, returning to what the internet was intended to be sounds incredibly exciting to me and I’d like to invest in that… but I don’t really know where to start? So much of what I read seems to have a ton of coding jargon. I clicked on Small Web 101 and it was a masterlist of somewhat confusing links.
The most coding I’ve done was on Khan Academy as a teenager or setting up an automatic macro to run the coliseum for me in Flight Rising. I pirate basically everything I watch but I’ve only torrented one or two things and don’t really grasp how that works. I don’t really know anything about my laptop but I have a vague idea that I should switch to Linux and I replaced the screen once.
What’s step one for a wannabe Small Web enthusiast?
If you want to experiment with PHP+Mysql, you can make an account on InfinityFree and do stuff there. Their free tier lets you have a free domain. As for learning content, I recommend looking for something like “making a blog from scratch with php”[1] or some such, try to look for “from scratch” wherever possible, as those will avoid cumbersome frameworks and CLI commands (like
artisan install blah, which you won’t have access with on InfinityFree)You can create and edit files within the browser, from their control panel, but you can also set up a program to automatically connect via FTP, so you can code on your computer and the program magically syncs with the domain’s folder
Even if you don’t want to go out of the way with learning php, it can be useful to let you write markdown, the same type we use for posts here, and translate into plain html.
If you don’t feel like you’ll need programming or a database connection, you can go with a Neocities page and write html yourself. Again, the best way to learn will be by searching for “<how to do thing> from scratch”
Fucking AI shit makes it hard to find stuff that actually teaches step by step. If you see anything that has “Conclusion” near the end, it’s AI slop. Here are 3 that might help you: – https://dcblog.dev/creating-a-blog-from-scratch-with-php – https://ilovephp.jondh.me.uk/en/tutorial/make-your-own-blog/introduction – https://codewithawa.com/posts/how-to-create-a-blog-in-php-and-mysql-database ↩︎
fuck AI!! Thank you for the helpful non-slop links, this seems extremely useful
I would start with some HTML tutorial on the internet and host that on nekoweb or neocities. That way you can concentrate on learing to create a website and deal with the hosting stuff later. May people offer free templates, too. Just surf around on the websites there and see what other people make :) And yes, linux is way better than windows in every way. If you mostly use stuff like your browser or steam, it is not hard to switch, either.
- Get yourself an account on neocities
- Pick a website you like on https://512kb.club/ . Anyone of them, it doesn’t have to be perfect
- open the console to see its html code
- use the inspector to pick elements (the title, a list, a link)
- Read the code, and write it on your neocities site. It’s important that you write it, not just copy-paste it, to really grasp the bits
- Repeat with more and moro complex sites
Honestly, what I do is write stuff up as .md files (text documents, basically) and then publish it via codeberg, which gets auto mirrored to github.io.
https://bobbyllm.codeberg.page/llama-conductor/
https://bobbyllm.github.io/llama-conductor/
It’s pretty low tech but it works. I can sketch out the thumbnail of how to do that if it would help (index files, xml files etc). Really, all you need it notepad++ and a codeberg account (free). Hell, if you feel uncertain, you could even get ChatGPT or Claude to help you out with this? It’s more or less a once off.
If you use windows, I can share my powershell command (.ps1) that will take what you write (in .md format) from your document folder, push it to your codeberg page. You literally just drop in a new document and hit publish it.
Ok, it’s a bit more complex than that to set up, but once it is, it really is just that :)
Get kagi!!!
Then my steps to enjoying computing again:
- Get Linux. Windows is shit and destroys joy.
- Get mullvad VPN
- Use a private DNS that blocks trackers and ads. Next DNS has them or mullvad has free ones to use.
- Dont use any of the bug 4 corpo slop sites
- Use lots of bookmarks, and web rings!!
Also geocities
What sites are the big 4? And do you have a free VPN to recommend - I am hella broke :')
Fb, meta, x, google
Protonvpn is free but a lot dont trust as the owner is a drumpf lover.
Mullvad is 5 dollars a month and well worth.
I still think that you should start with the Python programming language. It’s the modern alternative to the “BASIC” of the 80s.
Install the latest stable version (3.16 according to https://www.python.org/downloads/), struggle a bit with the official tutorial (https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html) or get any introduction book from Anna’s archives, and have fun.
I’m an old fart and I don’t believe there is a need to write complicated stuff to have fun. Try that for a few hours, struggle a bit because it should be entertaining for your brain, and see if you have fun. If not, there are other languages out there, but Python is easy enough to grasp most concepts like variables, loops, playing with data, and writing simple scripts.
Ignorant question incoming… what is Python used for? I’m always down to pick up a new skill but I don’t see the connect between Python and Small Web :')
Its a programming languages, use it to automate stuff, to make apps, or to make websites.
Python is very easy and extremely popular
The real small web is written in HTML without too much scripting (JS). Python can do everything but the whole point is to teach concepts like variables and functions. It’s unrelated to what I would call the small web, but it’s a good knowledge to have.
If you want to stick to the web, learn TypeScript instead.
As for Small Web 101, if you’re talking about https://マリウス.com/the-small-web-101/, it’s a mess of useless links. I would go to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development, and host simple pages on Neocities. It’s the small stuff of the 90s.
Well, prior to learning TypeScript, they might wanna start with simple HTML and CSS. The w3schools website is great to get going in my opinion.
Thank you both!! I have a friend who knows a bit about HTML and CSS so she may be able to get me started there. Python sounds useful. What’s the difference between Python, TypeScript, HTML and CSS?
HTML is the basic language that describes the layout of your webpage, the text, etc.
CSS is for the looks of everything.
JavaScript lets you have interactive things on the website.
TypeScript is JavaScript with extra features for the developers, but it compiles down to JavaScript still.
Python is a scripting language that you can use to create a webserver. You can also do that with JavaScript. There are also ways to make Python run in the browser but it’s still in its infancy tbh.
Edit: Hence, I would suggest to first learn to make some static websites with HTML and CSS and later JavaScript. Those are basics that you will need to know, even if you use other frameworks, i.e., I would not recommend looking into React or Python (Flask) etc. until much later, because they all presume that you already know HTML+CSS+JS. Hit me up if you have any questions or need some assistance.
What do you want to try to do? And what sort of hardware do you have? There are endless possibilities! But that will help narrow down.
I guess my bigger question then is what are my options for things to try to do? C: I’d like to have a personal website, but otherwise I’m not quite sure how to engage
Well, one of the nice things about Linux is that it’s easy to run on older hardware. So I’d recommend first getting an old computer, if you don’t have laying around one already, to be your server.
I’d also recommend checking out Yunohost. It’s a specialized distro based on Debian that makes it very easy to launch and host your own web services. Its app catalog should give you a pretty good idea of the stuff you can do!
