Neocities, Nekoweb, bringing back the weird personal websites

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Neocities, Nekoweb, bringing back the weird personal websites

4 December 2025

Neocities, kind of born out of the ashes of once popular personal website hosting service Geocities, and Nekoweb, are on a mission to restore weird personal websites.

With over one-point-three-million sites on their servers, Neocities, which was established in 2013, has made a substantial contribution. Nekoweb was founded last year, but has a growing membership.

Their goals are similar however, says Stevie Bonifield, writing for The Verge:

Across both, you’ll see a strange mix of old and new, like anti-AI webrings, a personal website in the style of the ’90s but themed around a Hobonichi Techo planner, or one website that’s an interactive re-creation of Windows 98. Even the demographics of the indie web are evidence of this — the community seems to skew young, largely under 30, so many of the people making these pages probably missed out on the original GeoCities (myself included).

Blogosphere sightings: handwritten content, ceaseless curiosity, and a niche blog

29 November 2025

I started writing about newer blogs and personal websites earlier this year, and then somehow stopped. A busy year at work has been getting in the way of things as ever. Let’s try and get this going again, since there can’t be enough sharing of links within the blogosphere.

Having said my focus was to feature newer websites, I’m opening with one that’s been online since 2015. Ratika Deshpande’s website, Chavanni Class, is inspired by her great grandfather, whom she never met. He died quite sometime before her birth, but he was a teacher whose work, and life, was driven by a seemingly ceaseless curiosity.

Jan Sandstrom has been writing on his “blog style notebook” about life since leaving his job in 2024, to spend more time composing music, writing, creating comics, and painting. Some content is handwritten on paper but is posted with text captions, while posts and newsletters are only published from time to time, on this “quite slow blog”. And why not, what’s the rush anyway?

I don’t know much about the writer behind Iterative Wonders, but the about page tells us they’re “a tech and AI enthusiast, [who’s] brain often feels like a browser with way too many fascinating tabs open.” I’m right there with all the open browser tabs. Only a few posts have been published so far, but there’s still plenty to digest.

And to close, here’s a newer niche style blog. Sam Clemente’s publication, The Digital Renaissance, which explores “the new intersection between technology and liberal arts”, has been online for about a year. Subjects including technology, the social web, and business, are covered. Yes, there are older blogs focused on these topics, but it’s good to see newer outlets coming through.

Esoteric, speciality, niche blogs closing down, not being replaced

22 November 2025

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:

Uni Watch, to me, epitomized a certain mindset from the early web. To wit, that there ought to be a blog (or two or three) dedicated to every esoteric interest under the sun. You want to obsess about sports team uniform designs? Uni Watch was there. For a good long stretch, there seemingly was a blog (or two or three) dedicated to just about everything. That’s starting to wane. New sites aren’t rising to take the place of retiring ones.

Uni Watch, which has been online in one form or another since 1999, announced its closure a few weeks ago. At first it seemed the entire website, including archived content, was to be removed within days, but in a later post, founder Paul Lukas said the site’s future remained unclear. There’s a suggestion Uni Watch might continue publishing, though that is still far from certain.

The survival of niche interest websites and blogs, such as Uni Watch, are, in my opinion, vital for the future of the web, as I wrote the other day.

It is of course unreasonable to think every owner operated website, or those with a small team of writers, that began publishing decades ago, will keep going forever. What’s unfortunate is the format, niche/speciality blogging, seems to increasingly be regarded as passé.

Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?

20 November 2025

When it comes to blogging there are few rules. Write content that is somehow meaningful might be one of them though. I think it’s down to the individual to determine what constitutes meaningful.

In the hey-day, the so-called golden age of blogging, there were plenty of people prepared to offer definitions of meaningful, and how to write accordingly. It was natural. The web was once awash with all sorts of blogs. Likewise people who wanted to show others how to blog “successfully”.

Again, the definition of successful resided with the individual, but it was obvious this involved monetary return for some people. And why not. If you’re going to invest time and energy in creating a resource that is useful to other people, why shouldn’t you earn money, make a living even, from it?

One of these people blogging about blogging was Melbourne based Australian writer and author Darren Rowse, who launched his blogging resource Problogger in 2004. Without going into detail, because you can look it up for yourself, Rowse, as one of the earlier bloggers about blogging, did, and still does presumably, rather well for himself.

Rowse’s writing, and that of his contributors, attracted numerous readers keen to learn what they could about blogging, and the potential to make money from it.

Problogger is what’s called a niche blog. As a blog about blogging, it has a reasonably singular focus. Some people considered this niche principle to be a core tenet of blogging. There was this idea, in the earlier days of blogging, which possibly still persists, that blogs would do better if they had a speciality. Not only were search engines said to be in favour the approach, but the author of a speciality, or niche blog, would generally be considered to be an expert, of some sort, in their field.

A master of one trade, rather than the proverbial jack of all trades.

Regardless, the world was once full of blogs on every topic imaginable. It was a great time to be alive. If you wanted to learn about something in particular, there was a blog for you. Some publications featured quality content, others required a little fact checking, while some were definitely to be taken with a pinch of salt.

But niche blogging was never a format that suited everyone. There are people who did, still do, well, writing about a range, sometimes a wide range, of topics. Kottke is one of the better known blogs that does not have a specific speciality. Here, the publication itself is the speciality. To repeat what I wrote in the first sentence of this article: the rules of blogging are few.

But the facets of blogging covered at Problogger, and numerous other similar websites, usually only applied to blogs of a commercial nature. That’s not to say one or two personal bloggers might have looked at the tips posted there for increasing their audience, or improving their writing though. But in my view, personal bloggers were not, are not, part of Problogger’s target audience.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote about Problogger, let alone visited the website, maybe fifteen plus years, but a recent mention of it by Kev Quick, via ldstephens, caught my eye. But I don’t believe Rowse is being critical, in any way, of personal bloggers because they do not adhere to a niche or speciality publishing format. That’s not what Problogger, or Rowse, is about.

But this started me thinking, and writing another of my long posts.

In an age where social media, and influencers, have usurped blogs and their A-List authors, in the jostle for supremacy, it has to be wondered what role websites like Problogger still have. Only a handful of blogs generate liveable incomes today. Despite the doom and gloom though, the form has not completely died off. A backlash against social media, and a growing IndieWeb/SmallWeb community, has precipitated a revival in personal websites.

This is a largely non-commercial movement. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with personal websites. Many of us started out with them in the early days of the web. But the web was not only intended for personal journals. It was a vehicle for sharing all manner of information. The web could also empower individuals, and partnerships, to not only set up shop online, be that blogs, or quite literally shops, but potentially make a living at the same time.

But with the revival of personal blogs well underway, I think it’s time to bring niche blogs back into the fold. I’m talking about well written, quality, topic focused resources. This is material fast vanishing from the web, leaving ever diminishing options to source useful and accurate information. What are the alternatives? The misinformation morass that is social media? Being served AI generated summaries in response to search engine queries? A web choke full of AI slop?

At the same time, I’m not advocating for a return of niche blogs plastered with adverts, and popup boxes urging visitors to subscribe to say a newsletter, before they’ve even had a chance to blink at what they came to read.

I’m talking about work produced by independent writers, with an interest in their subject matter, who are not backed by large media organisations, or private equity. This is bringing back reliable sources of information, that also recompenses the content writers in some way. Hopefully we’ve learned a few lessons about monetisation since the earlier wave of niche blogging. We know it is possible to generate revenue without compromising the reader experience.

A resurgence in personal blogging is the first step in rebuilding a vibrant, thriving, web, or if you like, blogosphere. Now the focus needs to be on restoring the flow of accessible and trusted information.

IndieWeb is Punk, you have the blog, now here is the t-shirt

25 June 2025

Jamie Thingelstad recently suggested IndieWeb is to the web of today, what punk rock was to music of the 1970’s. IndieWeb is Punk, he said.

In a comment on Thingelstad’s post, Robert Birming said the slogan would look good on a t-shirt.

Not long after, Jim Mitchell unveiled a line — one black, one white — of t-shirts emblazoned with the words IndieWeb is Punk, which are available for purchase.

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the bloggers…

RELATED CONTENT

blogs, design, IndieWeb, SmallWeb

An old school blogger returns, the Oceania Web Atlas launches

10 April 2025

American designer Jason Santa Maria, and co-founder of A Book Apart, a seller of numerous influential design publications, has returned to blogging after an eight year hiatus. You see, we all come back eventually. Once a blogger, always a blogger…

Philipp Lunch is based in Cologne, Germany, and recently launched a blog/personal website, despite it being not finished, and preferring to let it evolve. Yes, that is the trajectory of many a personal website. Australian physicist Cameron Jones’ website comes with the eye-catching name Caffeine and Lasers. He also has a shot at answering the question of the ages: where are all the aliens? Hmm, what do you think? Are they giving us the silent treatment, or are we very, very, lucky to be here?

Caleb Herbert resides in Missouri, in the Unites States. Instead of a smartphone, he keeps a notepad and pen in his pocket. Bet you weren’t expecting to hear that. Portland based American software developer Sage has been online since 2013, and is constantly redesigning their website. Remember those long ago days when we used to redesign our websites like every week?

Why we are still using 88 × 31 buttons? Website buttons (that’s what I’ll call them), particularly those with the dimension of 88 by 31 pixels, used to adorn personal websites during the late 1990’s. They pretty much disappeared during the blogging era, but thanks to Indie Web/Small Web, and the personal website revival, are enjoying a resurgence. 88 by 31 pixels may not seem like much of a canvas to work with, but as the works posted on Button Wall go to show, an economy of size is no inhibitor to creativity.

A week or two ago, Melbourne, Australia, based author and content creator Zachary Kai launched the Oceania Web Atlas, a web directory for bloggers and personal website publishers, based in the Oceania region. If you’re a local, submit your website. Thanks for including mine Zach.

Read Bean Ice Cream for dessert and other blogs

20 March 2025

Dave Winer is on the look out for old-school bloggers who have been writing since circa 2005, and are still going. Anyone who’s been blogging for twenty-plus years is certainly deserving of recognition, but let’s not overlook people are new to the game.

If there were an award for the most memorable blog name, then ReadBeanIceCream might well be the winner. Sylvester Ady is a Malaysian uni student writing about studying, time management, building websites and love. And probably more as time goes on.

The .uk domain threw me at first, but Sean Boyer resides in Canada. Music, politics, software development, and Linux (my favourite OS), are among topics he plans to write about. That’s how we did it in the old days, there was no such thing as niche blogging, it was a case of anything goes.

Aevisia has recently launched the Small Web Movement, a growing resource for people who want to setup their own personal websites in the Indie Web/Small Web spirit. And last, but by no means least, Indieseek.xyz is a web directory curated by Brad Enslen, dedicated to independent, and personal websites. Thanks for including disassociated.