I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

The author shares their journey into the IndieWeb, a movement discovered through blog tags and Mastodon, quickly realizing it's a vibrant community with concrete ideas and protocols. Their positive experience led to this article, aiming to demystify the IndieWeb for others and contribute to a healthier web.

• IndieWeb's Core: Defined as a "people-focused alternative to the corporate web," it champions three pillars: "Your content is yours," "You are better connected," and "You are in control," emphasizing personal domain ownership and avoiding "walled gardens."
• The Silo Problem: The movement views centralized, corporate platforms (silos) as detrimental, citing historical site deaths (GeoCities, MySpace, Google+) and content loss as evidence. The solution isn't to abandon social media, but to ensure the canonical copy of content resides on one's own domain.
• Guiding Principles: The IndieWeb operates on 11 principles, including "Own your data," "Use and publish visible data," "Make what you need," "UX before protocols," and "Longevity," fostering a resilient and fun web experience.
• Technical Foundations: The IndieWeb leverages existing and new standards:
  • Your Domain: The essential starting point for online identity.
  • microformats2: Markup (h-card, h-entry, h-feed) for making HTML machine-readable, turning "your website into your API."
  • rel-me: A simple link attribute for distributed identity verification, used by services like Mastodon for verification.
  • Webmention: A W3C Recommendation for inter-site conversations (comments, likes), replacing older systems like Pingback, and extendable with Vouch (anti-spam) and Salmention (thread propagation).
  • IndieAuth: An OAuth 2.0 standard allowing login to services using one's personal URL.
  • Micropub: A W3C Recommendation for publishing content from any client to one's own site.
  • WebSub: A W3C Recommendation for real-time feed updates, reducing server load.
  • Microsub: A draft standard for decoupled social reading applications.
• Publishing Strategies: Key approaches include POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) as the recommended method, PESOS (Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate to your Own Site) as an inferior alternative, and Backfeed, which brings interactions from syndicated content back to the original post via Webmentions (e.g., using Bridgy).
• Fediverse & RSS Relations: IndieWeb distinguishes itself from the Fediverse (which federates servers) by federating websites. Bridgy Fed acts as a bridge. While RSS/Atom are acknowledged, IndieWeb prefers h-feed (HTML as feed) but advises offering RSS for wider compatibility.
• Getting Started: A step-by-step guide from securing a domain and hosting to adding microformats, validating, and joining the community.
• Author's Implementation: The author successfully implemented Webmention, h-entry/h-card, and rel="me." They consciously omitted Micropub/IndieAuth (due to git workflow), WebSub (no real-time need), and h-feed (template conflicts), opting for traditional RSS instead. Key philosophical takeaways included the durability of plain HTML, permanent URLs, gradual commitment, and extreme longevity planning.

In essence, the IndieWeb offers a comprehensive, human-centric framework for regaining control over digital presence, advocating for a decentralized, robust, and personally meaningful online experience rooted in open standards and community collaboration.