Share ur site manifesto!

[Mono The Bun]

Site Manifestos!

Also known as - Site philosophies, "Why I make my site" pages, "what I like about the web" pages, or just about pages; site manifestos are one of the more unique web revival ideas!

A site manifesto is a page that explains why you made your site! For some people that means listing all the evils of social media, for others it simply means saying they enjoy collecting blinkies, for me it was a chance to share some random philosophies 

A site manifesto can be long or short, it can be images, or words. It can be a poem, or a list or a story. It's simply a way of expressing why you made your site and what you love about web crafting (many people, actually do this on their about page, and that's a totally valid form of manifesto)

They are a great way of inspiring others and encouraging people to get into web crafting! I hope you’ll share your manifesto here; and if you haven't made one yet, give it a try, it can be a great way to find meaning in your site and your web experience!

If you don't have one and you're unsure where to start maybe ask yourself some of these questions:

• Why did I make my site?
• What does the web mean to me?
• What excites me about web revival-style sites and/or web crafting?
• What's my hope for the future of technology?
• If I lived in the perfect digital world what would it look like?
• What scares me about the web and technology?
• What's the ideal web crafting playlist?
• How does participating in the web revival scene (MelonLand, iMood, Status Cafe, Neocities etc) affect your life?
• If your site was a nice soup, what would be its ingredients??
• If your great-grandkids find your site in 100 years, what do you wanna show them about this moment in time?
• What is the World Wide Web?

I like the idea. I don’t have a manifesto page yet but might write one when I get the chance to do so. Generally though my reasons boil down to wanting a little control back from social media, a place to share my work, and ultimately as another creative medium to goof off with and have fun.

[EdgyRabbid]

huh... ive never made a manifesto... i dont even know what that does! Guess i should do some reseach and write mine! 

[LZI-HRT 13.02]

yay found this again!! i didn't have a manifesto before but i saw this post and decided to make one :3
it's not really finished yet but i'll keep updating it when i feel like adding something to it ^w^
also if you choose to explore the site further please put something in my guestbook

[hikatamika]

I made my first one today. One focusing on why my site exists in partial (not complete, but partial,) opposition to Social Media web apps. It's called "An Online Creative's Social Web Dethroning". You can find it in the File Cabinet on my site.

For my next one I'd like to write about:

• Why those who currently feel dependent on the Social Web make the Indie Web a little harder than it needs to be by holding themselves to the technical and visual standards of modern web apps, or even the visual standards of vividly-expressive 90s (or 90's inspired) personal sites.

…I thought of more, but I think they're moreso tutorials than Manifestos now that I think about it.

Edit: 2025-11-14
I made another one! Not the one I wanted to make on why people shouldn't hold their sites to high comparative standard, but one on why my site exists, for me, specifically, and less about the more broad reasons why it (and other Small Web sites) often provide a better user experience than that of Social Media.

It's called A Homepage is a Home, and you can read it here.

[myron]

From my website, partially reformatted:

You know I've never really liked empty pages. I've never really liked empty anything, now that I think about it. Empty rooms because you have no one to share a moment with. Empty beds because you have no one to share warmth with. I've never been a fan of empty pages especially because everyone has something to say. I guess that's what I wanna do with this website. It's not a blog, it's not a website for my art, it's not anything like that. It's a page. A page that I want filled by the time I graduate. Maybe I'll add some cooler effects once i get more comfortable adding eye candy.

I also want to challenge myself. I know that only a handful of people really care about your site if its interesting, but I think that having something to look back on in a couple years is a good thing. Some proof that I was a teenager once.

[KiwiMeowo]

I don't have a Manifesto mainly due to that word feeling bad and radicalized. But instead I guess you can say I have my Opinions.

This is similar to what I thought on Manifestos in personal websites, the word manifesto feels like a word for a grand goal, like bringing back the good ol' days of Geocities, boycott Twitter and the evil corps etc... I don't really have the mind to make an impact on the web, I started this journey mostly because I find it more comfortable to be in my own website instead of social media, which sounds like what the definition of manifesto Melon is talking about.

I don't really feel the need to make a manifesto, I feel like the stuff I have made on my site already explains how I love messing around with HTML and staying in my site. However, I do enjoy reading other people's manifesto, it is nice to learn what their relationship with the web is.

[ABlueRose]

Here's mine!

I've been thinking of updating it, and adding some more thoughts to it. But I haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Mono The Bun]

I keep meaning to make one but I’m admittedly not sure where to begin or what to say exactly.

Maybe I’ll get on that tonight or tomorrow.

[Mono The Bun]

I finally got around to making my manifesto. I call it The Moon Creed lol.

This is draft one of the creed. I might add more when I think of more stuff to add to it.

[94673]

I guess this page on my website qualifies? I haven't updated this particular page in ages but I still stand by it I think.

[brennan]

Taken from my /indieweb page:


1. Good faith code. Good faith writing.

This is the biggest separation from mainstream corporate oligopoly social media platforms. If you're on the IndieWeb, you're not publishing your site with invasive trackers, annoying advertisements, bloated webpages or a11y-hostile design.

Likewise, you aren't writing from a place of bad faith, such as assuming the worst in others or having a general misanthropic view of things. To be a netizen on the IndieWeb, you have to have the belief the Internet can still be good and a tool for empowerment and creativity.

2. A Pro-social Attitude

The web is meant to be social! That's the whole point of being online. To cultivate friendships and a community of other pro-social people who share your interests.

You don't need to syndicate your work or have "likes" on your blog posts, but I do believe there should be some sort of dialogue available, rather than a one-way shouting-into-the-void experience. Your site should have some sort of social element, even if it's as simple as basic contact information.

3. Be Fun. Be Accessible. Be Small.

Your site can have personality and express yourself in ways that sterile, boring, all-look-the-same corporate social media platforms never allow. But it also needs to be accessible to everyone—working with screen readers, following WCAG guidelines, and embracing the POUR principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust).

And your site needs to be small. Performance is fundamental to whether people can actually access your work. Compress images, use lazy loading, embrace progressive enhancement. Your site should function without JavaScript, because JavaScript can fail to load for countless reasons.

[infernal.serval]

this thread lead me to decide i should write a site manifesto to better figure out what i want out of my site as a whole. i went ahead and wrote a short one here and plan to link others on that page as i explore more sites.

i am not as techy of a person as a lot of webmasters on melonland or the indie web as a whole. im not very knowledgeable about computer science, internet history, or philosophy surrounding them. my manifesto is from the perspective of a layman artist and hir relationship with communicating hir art in an online space.

[lakes]

I originally made my site for a reason that I admittedly don't use it for anymore.
I wanted something to list my socials that was pretty at the time because I was trying these different alternative social media and I thought linktree and carrd looked boring.
However as the site grew, I saw it more as a way of moving away from social media as a whole. I don't think all social media usage is inherently bad. But I wasn't using it responsibly. I kept getting addicted, overwhelmed and bored by social media.
My website is mostly designed the way it is because I was really nostalgic for Windows 7 at the time. But I've been told I add my own personal spin on it. However I've been trying to branch out even more with the designs of newer pages. I try to make so having javascript enabled isn't "necessary" for my site even if I still use it.

[Knotnu]

Hello and I shall introduce to you about my site!!! (OOOOooo special loree!!!)
My site came to life because I saw a really cool video about how people like me (teens) used to make really cool websites in the past.
So that video recommend me to do neocities which I quickly signed up and look up a 6 hr tutorial of how to make a website. Which in the past of doing other programming languages and failing it a bunch of times I succeed on making my own site that I can call home or just my comfort spot for now. Then I looked around more in neocities for 3 weeks and I realized people are making better stories than my bookshelf, which is like playing with action figures fight each other, then make a story about the two. So I connected the dots and say to my brain, hey, lets make something special. And it is the site you are about to click bellow.


Here is the site :D https://knotnu.neocities.org
My worldbuilding site :OOO