Blogroll

A blogroll is an old word for an old habit: a list of the places its author reads. This is mine, and it is meant to be read rather than consulted: not a directory you scan for a name, but a sequence you can move through, because the order is roughly the order in which these sites found me. I reached none of them by searching. I followed links, the way you are supposed to, from one person’s site to the next, until the web stopped looking like a stack of applications and started looking again like what it is underneath: people who write things down where someone might find them. Most of what I know about making this site, I learned from the ones below. They run something like a genealogy, beginning with the door I came in through and ending somewhere wider than the web. Follow them out. That is the only thing a list like this is good for.

Manuel Moreale

Manuel’s interviews have been one of the primary tools that brought me into the fold of the personal web/IndieWeb. At the time I first created a blog, I simply could not find any personal websites, least of all interesting ones. Every search that I did brought me to WordPress tutorials and marketing through search engine optimization. I was fortunate enough to find Manuel’s website, which opened me to the world that simply does not receive hits from Google or other search engines. The site also taught me that the way to find other sites is not through searches but through links. Some of his thinking about the web differs from mine, but I respect how opinionated he is. When he thinks something, he remains firm, and that’s something quite remarkable.

James’ Coffee Blog

I first stumbled upon James’ work through 32-Bit Café after also having seen him referenced plenty of times on the IndieWeb Wiki. The warmth and little touches on his site inspired me as I began writing this site, and his website ideas page gave me pointers for little touches that I could add to my own. James also gets a special mention for how warm he has always been with me; I’ve participated in webweaving workshops with him, and have corresponded with him about his RSS feed reader, Artemis. Each time, I have been consistently impressed.

Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers’ site is remarkably wide-ranging, and includes everything from commentary on books to his professional portfolio and various blog posts, largely about the web. The most significant thing that I borrowed from him was the invention of the /now page, which is now a staple across the IndieWeb.

Coyote’s Link Hub

Coyote’s Link Hub is like something from a different age. Rather than generating large amounts of content (and he does write good essays), the more interesting parts of the site are the links he collects. The reason for all of this can be understood well through his compilation, “In Praise of Links”. The whole logic can be described as such: links are the ligaments of the web, and a site is only as good as its connectivity. His argument that the benefit of the link is in providing endless surfability is a strong one, and the insight has been incorporated directly into my website.

Flamed Fury

I forget the actual content, but a thread posted by Flamed Fury to 32-Bit Café was the first exposure I had to the larger, forum-driven discussion areas of this part of the web. The book section of his website directly inspired the early versions of my own. When I began using Hugo, I built the section as a collection of covers, just like his, although I believe the underlying architecture differed. We’ve chatted some in the past, and he’s always been both helpful and supportive.

Maya Land

This might have been the website where I learned that, in the mid-2020s, I could eschew the traditional blog hierarchy entirely. Instead of nesting pages under /posts or categories or however else we tend to do things now, pages can stand alone on their own, no questions asked. Maya has pages like /spaced-repetition, /astrology, and /premodern. These pages don’t pretend to be some abstract overview of what they cover: each takes a position, and each is unique to her. While I haven’t incorporated this exact structure into my own site, yet, it’s a reminder of how the web can function, and how it once did.

Maggie Appleton

While Maggie Appleton did not invent the digital garden, she popularized it and brought it to my attention. Her website is so well-made and beautifully designed that it has been my primary source of information. She also showcases a generalism that I find impressive, thereby dodging the heavily (and exclusively) technical stance held by too many on the IndieWeb.

Ava’s Space

I find Ava’s Space to be one of the more creative spaces on the web. The front page is a beautifully-designed image of a room, with a link to a laptop that requires typing on a faux command terminal to get to further pages. Ava’s blog is where the bulk of her writing takes place, and a reader would be remiss not to take a look.

Xenogothic

Xenogothic is Em Colquhoun’s personal site. I first found her work as I made my way through Mark Fisher’s collected works. Her first book, Egress, did a lot of work to illuminate the figures and ideas that influenced Fisher. Moreover, her long-form blog posts on politics and theory are, while dense, incredibly helpful to those of us looking to see the bigger picture.

Anil Dash

Anil Dash was a name that came up all the time when I began digging around the IndieWeb and the Fediverse. I would be remiss not to include him here. I thought, “Why include someone simply for the impact he made?” And I realized that the very question was wrong: Anil writes good material, all the time. He’s active, his writing comes with range, and his website is beautiful. He thinks the way that someone outside of technological worlds might, that is to say, critically. Yet, at the same time, he is very much a part of it. As I’ve spent time thinking about vocation, his post, “People Love to Work Hard” made me think more closely about what leads to good work. These elements make him especially valuable, and it’s worth spending serious time with his website.

The Marginalian

When I first began to create a website (that is, blog), Maria Popova’s website was the model. These days, I don’t love the structure of it, but the content itself is so good as to be astonishing. Each post begins with a thinker, a text, an anecdote, and then jumps off into the meaning of it, humanistically speaking. Maria has been working at the Marginalian for years and, when she shares her own artwork (especially her ceramics), it is nothing short of stunning. Her writings on cynicism (here and here) have made an especially strong mark on me.