Qubyte Codes - IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024
Mark’s write-up of the excellent Indie Web Camp Brighton that he co-organised with Paul.
No more 404
I really, really like the progressive enhancement approach that Remy is taking here with outbound links:
When a real user clicks on a link, it’s swapped out to be redirected through my own endpoint that checks if the URL is still OK, and if so permanently redirects the visitor, otherwise my endpoint checks the Web Archive for the URL and permanently redirects to that instead.
I think I’m going to do the same! I’d have to rewrite the server-side code in PHP, but that shouldn’t be too tricky.
This could a project for the next Indie Web Camp I attend.
Related links
The Internet Is Rotting - The Atlantic
A terrific piece by Jonathan Zittrain on bitrot and online digital preservation:
Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
“Link In Bio” is a slow knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems.
Anil Dash on the war on hyperlinks.
It may be presented as a cost-saving measure, or as a way of reducing the sharing of untrusted links. But it is a strategy, designed to keep people from the open web, the place where they can control how, and whether, someone makes money off of an audience. The web is where we can make sites that don’t abuse data in the ways that Facebook properties do.
Relaunching Pitas.com, a 20-year old blogging community by Andrew Smales — Kickstarter
This is so great! I don’t just mean the Kickstarter project itself, but this write-up of the origins of pitas.com—it’s a fascinating, heartfelt, genuine piece of web history.
The whole point behind Pitas was, and is, being a simple way to blog. You just open the site, type something into the entry box, and click POST.
And now it’s coming back …if this project gets funded.
I guess if the site gets infested by Nazis we’ll probably not do anything about it for 10 years, then make a bunch of wimpy statements, do nothing, maybe finally request free help from the community and still do nothing about it.
Just kidding, their asses will be kicked off immediately.
Follow the links | A Working Library
The ability to follow links down and around and through an idea, landing hours later on some random Wikipedia page about fungi you cannot recall how you discovered, is one of the great modes of the web. It is, I’ll go so far to propose, one of the great modes of human thinking.
Related posts
Indie webbing
Tinkering with my website and getting inspired at Indie Web Camp Brighton.
Blog Questions Challenge
Answers to some questions about blogging.
Feed reading
Serendipity is the best algorithm.
Our web
The web is what we make it.
What the world needs
Write for yourself.