Softcore First, Hardcore Eventually: A Ladder for the IndieWeb

Yesterday, omg.lol founder (and overall wonderful person) Adam Newbold posted a guide titled "Hardcore IndieWeb", where he went over how anybody can start their own fully independent website for only $0.01 USD per day thanks to the hosting solution NearlyFreeSpeech provides. (The guide doesn't even touch IndieWeb Standards which are commonly pointed to when this topic is brought up, which I personally appreciate it.) I think a lot of people see a tension between making things accessible and non-technical versus having more autonomy and control over what you own digitally, right? Like a spectrum from super-easy no-ownership (corporate social media) to super-technical full-ownership (creating and hosting your entire website by hand). A guide like Adam's tries to bridge this, by making a point that your content should be fully owned by you and fully portable and that it doesn't have to be technically complicated. He places particular emphasis on the point that, while there are platforms…