looks like some folks with dimden (of the advertising network navlink fame) have launched an alternative to neocities: nekoweb!
i’m excited to see continued growth in this part of the independent web as we need additional hosts for folks to branch out on. in my view, it’s very easy to become dependent upon neocities’ social features in order to discover new sites (from personal experience!), and having a diverse range of hosts available is exciting.
of course, this comes with some apprehension, as we have no clue when hosts might go down, get too big too quickly, or have some other disruption that might affect their ability to host.
I think this is healthy for the independent web. A few years ago I was worried that everything was being concentrated at Neocities. It’s especially good to have more than one host if you are going to build a second website so as not to put all your eggs in one basket.
I have mixed feelings when a service is supported by donationware. That does not seem very stable, but it’s better than advertising supported because we know that does not work.
Yes I am worried about Neocities (esp since I just migrated there), but I know they are open source, and hopefully more communities like Nekoweb will open up. I’d love to open one up myself but don’t have the energy. But yes it’s important to find these communities!
It’s always good to have your code backed up multiple places in event that something will shut down or break suddenly!
I don’t have anything remarkable to necessarily add other than what’s already been said-- the more hosts the better! The only way to prevent against hosts going down is to regularly back up your site.
Hopefully this is fine for me to piggyback off of this thread and also share: ✩˚₊‧ 𝑙𝑒𝑥𝑖'𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 ‧₊˚✩ : )
totally agree with y’all about the more hosts the better! i remember back on the “old web,” you had a ton of domains offering hosting and being a hostee. having that diversity of domain names, cultures, and friend groups made the web feel so much more connected and ubiquitous!
i hope this inspires more people to offer hosting. as well as teaching folks to not put all of their hosting eggs in one basket, lest something happen to the host.
> Nekoweb is a free static website hosting service, created in 2024 by a group of coders, programmers and artists, passionate for the old web and personal websites.
> Join us on our discord to chat with the community and the developers!
Gating discussion of the open web in a proprietary service is an interesting decision. Shows that we’re still far too reliant on closed protocols for even smaller nontrivial tasks like making a message board.
Haha I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed the irony. It really devalues the whole thing. The next phase in online consumer culture will certainly be the commodification of the old web: reduced to a performative aesthetic, divorced from its original substance.
How exciting! I’m curious to see where it goes as well. I was browsing through the sites and it looks like they’ve got quite a few people trying out new stuff, and a few who are also from Neocities. Like others have said, choice is good.
I was going to make a sarky comment about the discord here, but I thought better of it. I do think it’s less than ideal. As a wise person once tweeted, having to join a discord server to get information about something is like having to join a polycule to use the library. Do you actually need to chat to the devs? Neocities just had an email address for inquiries, afaik.
That said, the sneery comment about the commodification of the old web is totally off base. Commodification comes from the top down, not the bottom up. Like everyone else, I say the more services the better, especially if they’re run by an amateur collective.
Yeah, while I don’t like that so many communities hide away information in Discord, I do understand why it’s nice to use from the maintainer’s perspective. There are a lot of people with existing Discord accounts, plus the platform lets you create a space within a few clicks, which is a significantly lower time investment than any of the alternatives. You’re right about commodification. If it happens, it will be tech giants selling you the old web aesthetic, not a bunch of indieweb webmasters.
I do think it might be worth it for the devs to put more on the website though; I’m tempted to ask myself about features/what you ‘get’ by joining the discord and commenting on this. I do want to try it out eventually… but I just don’t like the common thing where knowledge of features gets tied to making an account :(
Oh! That’s really useful, I’m glad they have something to explain what you get with the free account. I still think something like this should be on the homepage, but at least now we know
i have a single page site hosted on the free tier of nekoweb, so i can answer some questions about it! are you looking for specific comparisons with neocities or more general impressions? i can probably give you a more relevant answer if you’re comfortable sharing why you’re thinking about leaving neocities and what you like/dislike about it.
