You don't need a computer science degree. You need curiosity and willingness to try.

The core principle: own your domain, own your content, own your identity.

The single best first move. PorkBun has first-year costs as low as a couple dollars. Choose something personal — your name, a phrase, whatever feels right. This is yours.

Email bonus: PorkBun offers effortless email forwarding. Set up name@yourdomain.xyz and forward to your existing inbox. More professional, no new email account.

IndieWeb wiki: A Domain of One's Own

All give you RSS feeds and data export. You're not locked in.

You'll learn Markdown — plain text with simple formatting:

# Heading
 
Paragraph with **bold** and *italic*.
 
- List item
- Another item

NeoCities (free) — build from scratch, beginner-friendly tutorials, supportive community.

HTML is a skeleton: angle brackets telling the browser what's a heading, paragraph, or link. CSS is styling — colors, fonts, layout. That's it.

<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>A paragraph with <strong>bold</strong> and <em>italic</em>.</p>

Learning resources:

• HTML for People
• Sadgrl.online Guides
• Dragonfly Cave HTML Guide

Tools like Eleventy take Markdown files and generate a full website. You write content, the tool handles page generation, navigation, and RSS feeds.

• Start with a template (e.g. 11ty IndieWeb Blog Starter)
• Customize as you learn
• Fast, secure, cheap to host — no database, no server, just files

Your site is the hub. Everything else is a spoke.

• Post to your site first (POSSE)
• Syndicate to Mastodon, status.lol, twtxt, etc.
• If any platform disappears, your content doesn't go with it

Multiple homes are good: mirror to NeoCities, post to tilde.town, sync to twtxt. The site remains the canonical source.

1. Buy a domain from PorkBun
2. Start with Pika.page or omg.lol — write your first post
3. Write an /about page — who you are, what you care about
4. Add slash pages as you grow
5. Find others via directories and webrings
6. Try 100 Days to Offload

The technology serves the writing, not the other way around.

This isn't all-or-nothing. Keep your social media. Start an IndieWeb site alongside it. POSSE means your site is canonical while you share everywhere your readers are.

• IndieWeb Index

• IndieWeb Principles
• Community — Mastodon, Webmentions, RSS
• Blogging Platforms
• Directories & Blogrolls
• Hosting & Domains
• Return to wiki home