If you follow this blog using your web browser, you probably realize blog’s theme and some other stuff are changed. My blog is now compatible with IndieWeb via these changes. You probably saw the “IndieWeb” links in the footer before, those links will forward you to another member of IndieWeb randomly.

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”. IndieWeb is a community of individual personal websites, connected by simple standards, based on the principles of owning your domain, using it as your primary identity, to publish on your own site (optionally syndicate elsewhere), and own your data.

IndieWeb tries to help people make their domain their primary online identity. This can help us to have our own identity no matter what services we use and no matter the services we use last or not. Our domains are our passports to IndieWeb.

IndieWeb has its principles to build a community of individuals who don’t want to be owned by corporate web. This community tries to have its own freedom and independence.

These principles are

• Own your data.
• Use & publish visible data for humans first, machines second.
• Make what you need.
• Use what you make.
• Document your stuff.
• Open source (liberate actually) your stuff.
• UX and design is more important than protocols, formats, data models, schema etc.
• Modularity.
• Longevity.
• Plurality.
• Have fun.

All those are explained on indieweb.org/principles.

Own your data

own your data is an IndieWeb principle with two key parts: 1) your data lives primarily on your own domain, and 2) you maintain usable access to it over time.

First, using your own domain gives you control over where people find and interact with you online. When you migrate to a new hosting provider or CMS, if your site stays on the same domain, everyone will still find you, regardless of whether they follow your site in a reader, land directly on your permalinks from other sites or search engines, or even type your domain directly into a browser.

Second, they say that change is the only constant, and web sites are no exception. Whether you stick with a host or CMS for a year, a decade, or a century, you’re likely to change something eventually. When you do, you’ll need usable access to all of your existing data. This includes export and import, data formats and standards, tools, protocols, permissions, rate limits, and more.

Use what you make

Whatever you build you should actively use. If you aren’t depending on it, why should anybody else? We call that selfdogfooding. Personal use helps focus your efforts on building the indieweb around your needs and consistently solving immediate real world problems. AKA eat your own dogfood. selfdogfooding is also a form of “proof of work” to help focus on productive interactions.

Document your stuff

You’ve made a place to speak your mind, use it to document your processes, ideas, designs and code. Help others benefit from your journey, including your future self!

Liberate your stuff

You don’t have to, of course, but if you like the existence of the indie web, making your code [libre] means other people can get on the indie web quicker and easier.

Modularity

Build platform agnostic platforms. The more your code is modular and composed of pieces you can swap out, the less dependent you are on a particular device, UI, templating language, API, backend language, storage model, database, platform. Modularity increases the chance that at least some of it can and will be re-used, improved, which you can then reincorporate. AKA building-blocks. AKA “small pieces loosely joined”.

Longevity

Build for the long web. If human society is able to preserve ancient papyrus, Victorian photographs and dinosaur bones, we should be able to build web technology that doesn’t require us to destroy everything we’ve done every few years in the name of progress.

Plurality

With IndieWebCamp we’ve specifically chosen to encourage and embrace a diversity of approaches & implementations. This background makes the IndieWeb stronger and more resilient than any one (often monoculture) approach.

Have fun

When the web took off in the 90’s people began designing personal sites with tools such as GeoCities. These spaces had Java applets, garish green background and seventeen animated GIFs. It may have been ugly and badly coded but it was fun. Keep the web weird and interesting.