so for example if Neocities received a copyright takedown related to your site, they will just ignore it, whereas most other hosts will delete your site because they are worried about getting kicked off the infrastructure which they don't own.

Surely that's only really applicable for fraudulent copyright notices, because the local jurisdiction could still physically close down their data center or charge them with a crime if they wanted to.

How is it easier to express yourself on barebones social media platforms where customization is practically nonexistant and content is greatly limited?

It's certainly easier these days I'd say to find and join communities, put information about yourself out in the open through a bio, and get discovered through that on social media, more than it is on the indie web where discoverability and community is very limited and expressing yourself takes a lot of work.

Customization and freedom of content, form and style is one thing, but we can't deny that modern social media allows people to build their own "brand" with their identity a lot more: pride flags in profile pictures, viral posts, discoverability, and so on.

For example, if I had an Instagram account, it would take me only ten minutes to set it up, put my identity in my bio or in the profile picture, upload aesthetic selfies of myself with relevant hashtags, and make some short posts outlining my thoughts, ideas, hobbies and opinions. In comparison, you'd need an entire "about me" page or a blog with pictures and information on your website to express yourself like that, which is hard to create and not even front and center for people who visit you.

What bothers me more is people like to show it out in the open and don't care how it can be uncomfortable/disturbing to others. If you dare to express any discomfort or disgust then you're automatically attacked and accused of "kinkshaming".

I mean, I don't see a difference there to generic "the gays should keep their disgusting actions in private" homophobia. I feel pretty uncomfortable with that idea here in the forums.

Of course people shouldn't go right out in public and perform explicit acts where people can openly see it unless it's an event in a location specifically for that (e.g. Folsom Street Fair), but that's very very rarely what people do and it's also frowned upon in the kink community itself. I just get the feeling you don't mean just that, but also people wearing collars, mentioning kink or D/s dynamics in general social media, or making it a part of their public identity.

Kink is a personal thing and closely connected to one's identity and relationships. It's not exclusively sexual, it doesn't have to be sexual at all actually, it's a deep emotional bond shared between people and it's no different from any other kind of love. Treating it like some sick perversion that should be kept at home is really offensive actually.

I mean, that's generally how web hosting works, right? Not everyone can or are bothered to self-host. This isn't a criticism of Neocities, it's just standard practice.

But Neocities does not rent you a server to administrate yourself. They just allow you to put your documents on their computer.

I'm curious, what server farm are you renting from, how much does it cost, and what's your experience doing so? I've been looking into possible ways to self-host some of my own stuff.

I rent from Netcup and it's really cheap, only a couple bucks per month.

If you don't mind me asking, what services do you use to self-host? Do you mean self-host as in literally hosting it yourself from your house/other place, or do you go through another web-hosting service with more freedom?

I ask because I have always assumed there were risks to hosting a website from your own IP address. Are there measures I could take to host in this way while also keeping my network secure?

I rent a server in a server farm, but one of my girlfriends also has a physical server in her room that hosts our gaming servers.

It's not just a "hoster with more freedom" than Neocities though, since I rent a physical machine to install web server utilities on. Neocities does not actually rent you a server or host anything, you just upload text files to their website and they let it run on their own servers. It is under their control, on their machines, with their rules and infrastructure. It's someone else's computer, not your own web server.

The server I rent is my own machine that runs my web server, not someone else's computer.

Screw Cringe Culture. If fetish porn and repetitive unfunny memes are considered acceptable, why can't fun video edit music videos be? There's nothing I consider more "cringeworthy" than the cringers themselves.

I agree with the overall sentiment, but why throw kink in the pile of things to attack? If it's consensual, there's no reason to shame people for being happy with their partners. I think that's rather problematic.

Aaanyway, I think this thread derailed pretty hard. At least I can say now that I know what AMV stands for! I never knew.

I self-host and have my own domain and can only really speak positively about that. It gives you control over what goes on, and the content hosting is on your terms: when neocities inevitably disappears or sells out, you are safe.

Keep in mind that domain prices vary heftily, so make sure to find a good deal. For my .de domains I pay only about €5 a year, while libre.town eats up almost €45. Other domains can cost that much in a month.

I think the option with writing straight HTML has merit though and doesn't deserve its reputation. If you use an external style sheet, all it really entails is writing your entry with a bunch of simple tags around it, if you want in a template you can make yourself in ten minutes.

Then just add the link to the blog index and there you go. It's not really a hassle.

craft

Is there a free site hosting place that doesnt need https so i can make a second site thats compatible with it?

If you hosted your own site you could just not enforce HTTPS.

Pine

Hey, welcome to the forums!

I also self-host my websites simply because I don't want to be dependent on any one 'service' such as Neocities, and it allows me my own workflow. I actually read your write-up on webrings before you came here, and I immediately thought "Yeah, those exist again!". We just need a bunch more specific rings as the indie web grows, but we're getting there I feel.

I have a theory that spammers just don't actually crawl the web for emails anymore; they don't expect people to be posting un-obscured emails on personal sites anymore; or if they do, its just not worth their time to find them.

I just think it's easier for them to just use one of the giant leaked databases like the recent Twitter leak, or to write spam to various addresses on known domains (for example "webmaster@libre.town" gets plenty of spam even though it does not even exist). More than just trying out e-mails that appear online; because by all means they might just be anyone, especially tech-savvy folk who are already hosting their own website, or journalists, fake e-mails, things falsely parsed as e-mails... The list goes on. The prime targets are the elderly, children, and those not well versed in the internet, and they won't have their emails anywhere.

tomato