Tilman

At the moment there are two initiatives running in the world of weblogs and blogging: Blaugust and 100 Days to Offload. They differ in the details. The first is about a month of posting, the other about a hundred posts in a year. But the aim is the same: to get people writing on their personal weblogs more. Quality is explicitly not the point. Neither is spell-checking, nor depth of thought. It is more important to just write.

Are we really looking for more people chatting away online? Without a clear aim or an eye for quality?

I think we are, yes — but that answer only works because the initiatives look for something different here. Nobody is claiming a hundred hasty posts beat one careful essay. What they are after is not quality, but to get more people to use their freedom to run their own website. Turning consumers into creators matters more today than ever, when the web seems taken over by commercial interests (and AI slop). And every writer has to practise, and write a lot of rubbish, before they get the chance to write something worthwhile.

The web is a vast place and has room for everybody. If nobody comes to visit and read what was written, no problem — by then the writing has already done its work.

I just published a long essay on a question that nagged me for years. I always felt that more creatives should run their own self-hosted websites — but I was never sure I was right. So instead of arguing for it, I examined every option as objectively as I could, with its real advantages and pitfalls, so readers can reach their own informed conclusions!

Read here: tilman.me/garden/How+can+creative+practitioners+publish+on+the+web+today%3F^*

I just put together a »web feed roll« — a hand-picked list of blogs I actually read, each with a short intro and their latest posts pulled via RSS/Atom.

Web feeds are a quiet, open way to follow people online — no ads, no engagement bait, just posts showing up when they're published. If you've never tried a feed reader, this is meant as a gentle on-ramp — a glimpse of some worthwhile blogging. If you like it, you might build your own subscription list with something like NetNewsWire or blogsareback.com.

The web feed roll is just one static HTML file. When you click on "Update feeds" a PHP script refreshes the content from the actual feeds.

This was my work day result at IndieWebCamp Nuremberg 2026 — built in a short day among a room full of people doing the similar things for their own corners of the web. That's the IndieWeb spirit in a nutshell.

→ tilman.me/feedroll^*

I spent the weekend at IndieWebCamp Nuremberg, the fifth edition in this city — two days at the tollwerkstatt as part of Nürnberg Digital Festival, in good company with a bunch of IndieWeb folks.

The highlight of Day 1 was René's session, “Make the web great again.” It gloriously derailed into everyone trying to out-do each other with the silliest, most gleefully useless links the web has to offer. I hope there is a blog post soon, but for a starter: esd-systeme.de^*. A reminder that the indie web isn't only specs and Webmentions — it's also delight.

Day 2 was Create Day and I built a Web Feed Roll for this site. It deserves its own post, so more on that very soon.

Everything is documented in detail on the IndieWeb Wiki: indieweb.org/2026/Nuremberg^*

I love Daniel Eatock’s website! The way he publishes his art and ideas for decades on this beautifully simple website is a tremendous accomplishment. And very inspiring. That is why I wrote a page on my digital garden about it. Already part three of a series on inspiring websites.