A website is not a profile page

Your own website can be:

• a workshop
• a notebook
• a gallery
• a playground
• a small tool
• a home base

Not every page needs to scale. Some pages just need to be yours.

The boring web is not a technical problem

The usual pattern:

• choose a template
• fill the template
• add social links
• forget the page

The result is often correct, but dead.

The problem is not HTML. The problem is lack of intent.

The commercial web optimizes for capture

Platforms are useful, but their incentives are not yours:

• subscription for everything
• accounts before access
• ads before content
• feeds before archives
• lock-in before ownership
• companies change user behaviour

Useful tool. Bad home.

IndieWeb: own your place

Core idea:

• own your domain
• publish on your own site first
• keep your content portable
• connect outward from there

Your website becomes the source. Platforms become distribution.

Example: the simple blog

Bear Blog is a clean baseline:

• writing first
• no trackers
• no JavaScript by default
• very low ceremony
• enough structure to publish regularly

Good for thoughts, notes, logs, essays, and small updates.

Example: the artist page

Valwi.Art as a simple static artist page:

• show the work directly
• no login
• no algorithm
• no ads around the art
• no marketplace noise

The page does one job: make the work visible.

Example: the weird experiment

wieerwill.github.io as a visual experiment:

• 80s / 90s synthwave mood
• Kung Fury energy
• deliberately playful UI
• “click around and find out”

Not every page needs to be useful. Some pages teach you taste.

Example: the tiny web game

• built with Bevy
• compiled to WebAssembly
• runs in the browser
• small enough to understand
• fun enough to justify its existence

A website can also be a toy.

Asteroid.rs

Example: the multi-purpose project

wieerwill.dev is the long-running workshop:

• articles
• photos
• talks
• memes
• projects
• experiments

Since 2015: PHP, React, Angular, Vue, Nuxt, Astro, JavaScript, Python, Bash.

The website is also a history of learning.

Example: scientific blog

eisermann.one

• Project Presentation
• Publications
• Recommended Tools

Project Presentation

Publications

Recommended Tools

More ideas for personal websites

Small pages worth building:

• now page: what are you doing now?
• uses page: what tools do you actually use?
• bookshelf / watchlog / playlist archive
• photo walk map
• tiny calculators for your hobbies
• event notes and talk archive
• garden page for half-finished thoughts
• personal webring page

Start with one page. Let it grow sideways.

How to start without overthinking

Pick the smallest path that keeps you moving:

1. hosted platform if you only want to write
2. static site if you want control without servers
3. VPS if you want the full workshop
4. home server if the infrastructure is part of the fun

Choose by maintenance appetite, not by ideology.

Hosted does not mean evil

Useful when:

• you want to publish today
• you do not want server maintenance
• the constraints are acceptable
• export is possible

Watch out for ads, tracking, lock-in, and paywalls.

Self-hosting buys freedom

Options:

• Raspberry Pi at home
• rented VPS
• Uberspace-style managed shell hosting
• static hosting with a custom domain

Tradeoff: more control means more updates, backups, logs, and failure modes

The solar website is clean constraint

Low-Tech Magazine runs a solar-powered website that can go offline when energy is low.

That sounds inconvenient.

That is the point.

The infrastructure becomes part of the editorial statement.

General rules that age well

• start smaller than your ego wants
• publish before redesigning
• keep one stack long enough to learn it
• make boring backups
• write down deployment steps
• visitors do not care about your framework

Maintenance is a feature.

Bot traffic changes the threat model

A public website is not only visited by humans:

• crawlers index it
• scrapers copy it
• spam bots test forms
• AI agents increasingly read pages like users

Do not panic. Just design forms, logs, rate limits, and honeypots accordingly.

Small safety checklist

Before publishing:

• no secrets in Git
• no private metadata in images
• no admin panels without protection
• contact forms need spam handling
• backups must be restorable
• legal pages depend on what you publish

Fun is better when it does not leak credentials.

Takeaways

• The open web still has room for strange, useful, personal things.
• Platforms are distribution. Your domain can be home.
• Small constraints often create better pages than big frameworks.
• Self-hosting is freedom plus maintenance.
• Build one page now. Improve it when it hurts.

More?!

• IndieWeb principles: https://indieweb.org/principles
• Bear Blog: https://bearblog.dev
• Low-Tech Magazine: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com
• Uberspace: https://uberspace.de/de
• wieerwill.dev: https://wieerwill.dev
• eisermann.one: https://eisermann.one

Bring your own weird corner of the web online!

END OF BRIEFING

MAIL:
robert.jeutter@wieerwill.dev

MASTODON:
https://chaos.social/@wieerwill

LINKEDIN:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wieerwill

WEB:
https://wieerwill.dev