Nostalgia for the mess

You know what I like about modern web standards? They kindle warm fuzzy nostalgia inside me.

It feels like jQuery times again. You simply link a file and use the component I am delighted to see components like <snow-fall> by Zach Leatherman. Just plug it into your site and it works. My 20 year old me would have been so proud.

No build process required. Back to the slightly crazy, anarchistic, slightly sloppy web of my ... for want of a better word ... youth.

Returning to a beginner-friendly web feels right. As a web community, we should strive to return to this state of mind: Static html documents as the norm, not the exception. It’s not automatically „professional“ to have a cryptic build process, a powerful framework and a high-end database for a website.

Of course these Tools can help you maintaining your website.

But we are looking back at the lessons learned in 2024 and 2025. And maybe „just use Wordpress“ wasn’t a sustainable idea. Or keeping all your public persona on social networks controlled by billionaires wasn’t a good idea. Even big data stores maintained by the state only work if you trust that in the perpetual control of “good people” over the institutions.

So going back to basics feels right at the moment. Teach yourself and others how to do the Web the standards way. Advocate for web standards. Lower the barrier to entry for the so-called indie web as much as possible. Don’t take pride in your fancy technology stacks. The real goal is to enable you non-technical friends to build a website all by themselves and run them on affordable hardware.

Yes. Of course the Indy web is the place where amateurs make messy websites. But actually: a bit of the right mess ist just what the doctor prescribed.