How I built this site

I’ve been building my own site for 12 years now. From painful custom-coded Wordpress themes, to bland no-code Site Builders, to convoluted AI-shipped GitHub Pages. The stack below feels like the the most enough yet. I own it, the domain, the site, the app code - and while I can edit them, it’s got all that i need and no more. It’s simple, largely autonomous, and I can fix it. It liberates; internet publishing is like the computer, is like the bicycle.

porkbun

Link: https://porkbun.com

What? My domain registrar and DNS. The people who gave me, and point others to my address on the internet.

Why? Been with these guys for a few years now, and just renewed. Seem the least evil/most indie of the class.

clodd-cms

Link: https://github.com/jimmitchell/clodd-cms

What? An open-source, basic indieweb-ready content management system and website.

Why? I was soo tired of the ostensibly simple static site generators, and craved a kind of debloated Wordpress experience with baked in Markdown, Webmentions, IndieAuth, Micropub, and MicroFormats2.

NearlyFreeSpeech.net

Link: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net

What? A shared web host with pay-what-you-use pricing. My tiny php blog can run a year for what the cheapest VPS’s charge per month.

Why? Since I only use mobile internet, I needed an always-online device to host the cms for on-the-go publishing. My needs were so tiny (PHP, Cron, SSL/TLS, Custom Domain) -