The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the "corporate web". In this post I talk about Softcore IndieWeb as an alternative to Hardcore IndieWeb. Along the way I go into how and why I use Drupal as a Static Site Generator to get there.
In the beginning, there was the web.
And we didn't know what we had, so we messed it up royally.
Everything that arises, also ends. But the web doesn't have to end there.
Enter the IndieWeb:
The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the "corporate web". A community of independent and personal websites based on the principles of owning your own domain and using it as your primary online identity, publishing on your own site first (optionally elsewhere as well), and owning your content.
One essential aspect of the IndieWeb is that it's conceptual rather than concrete: it's a set of ideas that can be implemented to various degrees with whichever technology or approach you're comfortable with.
One such approach is the Hardcore IndieWeb. As Adam Newbold (of omg.lol fame) puts it, slightly paraphrased:
- Create your site by hand, on your hard drive, using a text editor.
- Preview it in your browser.
- Upload it to a web host tied to a domain you control.
No IDEs, no framworks, no Static Site Generators, no Content Management Systems. If your host vanishes, you can just use another host and upload your website there. You don’t have to worry about critical security vulnerabilities in blogging software or Static Site Generator dependencies or anything like that.
You are in complete control over every aspect of your web content, and you’re reliant upon no one else.
As of 2026 I have worked with the opensource CMS Drupal for 20 years, so I'm pretty comfortable using it to build sites. I'm used to the workflow, I can use it to quickly give shape to new ideas, to prototype applications, and to spin up new projects.
Yet for various reasons, both personal and societal, my flame was al flickered out, and I could hardly bother with the work I'd been doing for so long.
But then I found comfort in slowing down, scaling down, and using Drupal for small things. Smallscale Drupal, if you will.
The last couple of months I've been living the IndieWeb ethos:
- Build the site with Drupal locally on my laptop.
- Customise or hand-write the HTML and CSS that make up the visual theme.
- Export it as a static site.
- Upload it to a webhost [*]
[*] To be precise, I use a version control system (git) to keep track of all the HTML changes, push the files to a central source code repository (GitLab or Codeberg), which in turn takes care of hosting through their built-in "Git Pages" hosting system free of charge (yes, gratis). All this is just a fancy alternative to using an SFTP or SSH client like FileZilla to upload files to your web space manually. Same thing, shiny wrapper. My inner geek is satisfied.
I like this. It suits me. It builds on my earlier experience while still yielding plain HTML and CSS files that I can host anywhere else, later on, should the fancy tickle me.
I prefer it over building everything by hand because I change my mind often, and that would mean having to change many things in many places in many files more often than I care for. I would end up copy/pasting things all over the place, and knowing myself I would end up with an inconsistent mess.
And since Drupal runs on a full-fledged server environment inside my laptop, I can still syndicate a version of my staticly generated content to other online places, a practice the IndieWeb has dubbed POSSE (Publish Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).
The IndieWeb movement favours principles over dogmatic project-centrism, and welcomes a breadth of solutions. All roads lead to Rome.
Hardcore IndieWeb specifically aims to remove all external dependencies (tools, frameworks, hosting platforms) from the web creation process, and produce plain old HTML and CSS to give you ultimate control over your creation.
What I see as Softcore IndieWeb tries to walk the middle way: produce plain old HTML and CSS to retain ultimate control, but use whichever set of technologies you're comfortable with, be it a static site generator, development framework, content management system, or something else.
But when you depend on a specific tools, you open yourself to potential issues down the road: the tools may stop working. You may need to pay license fees. Your laptop may crash and you may have neglected to take timely backups and store them offsite.
You can mitigate all of these risks, but you have to put in the work. It can be a lot of work, but nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
Or go hardcore, learn the crap out of HTML and CSS, build your site brick by brick, and experience true freedom.
Take your time, hurry up.
The choice is yours, don't be late.
More elsewhere: