14 ms·
Have a fucking website
- edg5000 7mo agoWell articulated!
- blinkbat 7mo agoAgree but most small biz don't conceive or care about the internet this way
- kulahan 7mo agoWhat makes you say that? It’s rare that a store I’m going to, even local only, doesn’t have a website.
- wahnfrieden 7mo agoIt is not RARE.
- mrhyyyyde 7mo agoIt's very common, almost 1 in 3, to _not_ have a website or online presence (~10mm+ small businesses have no online presence or site) in 2025.
- konart 7mo agoI guess it depends on the type of business on your geography.
- blinkbat 7mo agoI got voted down for this? "Why are you booing me, I'm right"
- protocolture 7mo agoLots of businesses never get beyond a mobile number lmao
- 0_____0 7mo agoIn MX and elsewhere lots of them are just mobile number through Whatsapp specifically. Like they have a phone number but it may be data-only.
- ghayes 7mo agoInstead of focusing on why having a website is better for customers (100% it is), the article is really an attack on... developers at Meta and tech other companies? I love a good profanity laced rant, but the entire article reads unfocused and unpersuasive.
- system2 7mo agoI agree, the reasons were skipped, except for business hours and rates. People really need a reason to spend countless hours on something digital.
- kulahan 7mo agoCountless hours? Get someone to make you a webpage, they can use Wix or Shopify or something like this. It’s never been easier or cheaper. In the grand scheme of running a business, it’s one of the best effort:return ratios you can find.
- system2 7mo agoHe is talking about a website that involves creating and designing individual pages. If each page takes 2-3 hours, including content writing, research, and photographing, you are looking at 15-50 hours for a company site. That's a lot of investment for some people.
- kulahan 7mo agoRight, don't do that. Hire someone for it. It's not that much work in the grand scheme of running a business, and the return on investment is enormous. If you're not built to do this in support of your business, you're really just not built to run a business at all.
- vivid242 7mo agoI disagree. It is not an attack on the developers, but the platforms‘ mechanics.
- 7mo ago
- rdevilla 7mo agoWell fucking said. JavaScript was a fucking scourge upon the web as it convinced everybody that you need to know how to write an "app" to share text and jpegs, which we have been doing with the Document Object Model for literally decades. Websites and HTML/CSS are documents. If you can write a Word document you can write a website. Death to walled gardens which have been the main locus of enshittification of the web. If the CG-NAT problem can be solved one day I look forward to a rebirth of true P2P networking and information sharing with no central authority.
- misswaterfairy 7mo agoI wonder if Microsoft FrontPage was still a thing HTML/CSS websites might be a little more common? Those were the days...
- 1dom 7mo agoI agree. I think modern overlay networks can navigate CG-NAT fine now. Other options include free cloudflare, or just a wireguard tunnel to a free tier VPS. On a similar point, I don't think enough people talk about how most western home internet connections now also have similar bandwidth as entire datacentres had in the 2000's too. We still take for granted how hard basic web technology is for people who don't consider themselves technology people though.
- stackghost 7mo agoRandom pho restaurants (or whatever) are usually literal mom-and-pop shops and asking these people to put up (and maintain!) a website is usually too daunting for them. These are the places that tend to end up with only a facebook page or an insta. It's just too hard for normies to DIY, and local "web dev firms" are usually predatory in their insistence on making decisions that require ongoing maintenance, because recurring revenue. Just try to get your local web design firm to build you a static html-only site and hand you the creds for all the hosting, etc. What random hair salons or coffee shops need is basically github pages with bring-your-own-domain, WYSIWG editing that works on mobile, and zero git. but AFAICT no such service exists.
- crooked-v 7mo agoYou just described Wix and Squarespace.
- stackghost 7mo agoI've admittedly never heard of wix, but I was under the impression squarespace was selling "e-commerce solutions" and stuff.
- hackable_sand 7mo ago"and stuff" damnnnn
- stackghost 7mo agoYou quoted "and stuff" and then wrote "damnnn" as if quoting "and stuff" was somehow significant but I have zero clue what you're insinuating.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- weird-eye-issue 7mo agoReally, it's 2026 and you don't think that there are website builders for small businesses? I'm sorry, but are you kidding me?
- Arainach 7mo agoSomeone wrote and deleted a comment saying > I don't get it. LLMs are supposed to have 100% bridged this gap from "normie" to "DIY website." What's missing? This is an all too common thought process among technologists, so: Where to even start? Well, let's start that every single "AI" company is massively overhyping everything to try to avoid any unfortunate realizations about the emperor's clothes regarding their CapEx and finances. Yes, even your favorite one. The very short version: running a small business like a restaraunt takes all your resources and then 20% more. Long hours, hard work, all your time. You do not have 2 hours to learn about LLMs or to pick which company to pay. From there: * Most people don't know what they want * Most people don't know the words for what they want * Even if you say "I want a website", what do you want it do look like? To say? These people aren't experts in web UX nor should they be. * You have some HTML and images. Where do they go now? Again people literally don't know what they want or need. If you realize you need a "web host", how do you pick a trustworthy one? How do you know if it's a good price? How do you get a domain name? How do you get the files onto the server? * Do you want people to be able to buy things? Now you're taking payment methods and have security concerns. * Your site is live. You want to change something on it. How do you do that? Where are the original files? How do you change them? How do you get the changes on the server? It's not "Hey, write me a website". There are lots of steps that assume a lot of knowledge, and it is easier, faster, and better for people to focus on their expertise and just pay some service for their web shop.
- squirrellous 7mo agoSounds like what we need is Facebook pages, except as a free service from the government or non-profit.
- dumpsterdiver 7mo agoDo you have any justification in mind for the “free service” being funded by tax payers? Why should it be free for the people who need it, and why should tax payers fund it?
- 7mo ago
- vivid242 7mo agoYou‘re absolutely right. (I‘m not an LLM ;-)) And the fact that (I‘m looking at you, LinkedIn!) platforms actively block people from using external links is a good warning sign. Connection with people- this is what I want from the internet, too.
- gogasca 7mo ago[dead]
- asukachikaru 7mo agoOn one hand, I totally agree, as I'm all for indie small web. Haven't used Facebook and Instagram for years. On the other hand, it's not (small) business owners deliberately choose to not have a website, it's customers saying it's too much friction for anything outside of FB or IG. For some people if you are not on IG you do not exist, no matter how nice your website is.
- tayo42 7mo agoI don't think he's saying don't have social media and replace it with a website but also have a basic website in addition to what ever else your doing
- asukachikaru 7mo agoThen it's twice the work. For a mom-and-pop restaurant, putting food on the table (pun intended) probably already cost them 24 hours a day.
- zjp 7mo agoMillennials delenda est. Or maybe Gen X. But definitely millennials. I am stockpiling champagne for when performative profanity goes to the grave with the silent generation against which it is still rebelling 70 years later. I do not want to order the sloppy toppy burger at BURGERSLUT. Just give me a cheeseburger. But yes, you should build a website.
- typon 7mo agoYou will be forced to watch Firefly for eternity. Millenials will rule the internet for a 1000 years (a millenia).
- replooda 7mo ago"Millenniales delendi sunt." Now, write it out a hundred times. If it's not done by sunrise...
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- dickiedyce 7mo agoI daren’t ask “What have Millennials ever done for us?” because I have a suspicion that it would be a surprisingly unfunny answer.
- techterrier 7mo agothey gave us doggo
- qwertytyyuu 7mo agoYou have a what website? A website that does what!?
- capncleaver 7mo agoThe aside about mailing lists is well made: with the exception of SMS, email is the one method of customer contact not mediated by big tech networks (save arguably Gmail) and portable across service providers. In games it’s the best way to keep in touch with players, much better than discord where the dots accumulate and most members ignore most server updates and notifs. Bring back site specific forums, too ;) But most businesses’ customers don’t have enough to talk about for a forum.
- Jeffrin-dev 7mo ago[flagged]
- einr 7mo agoMaybe turn off this dumb bot since it’s against the rules?
- elwebmaster 7mo agoWhat techies are missing is that AI doesn't make it possible for mom and pop shops to create and manage a website but it levels the playing field for enterprenuers. We can't expect plumbers and restaurant owners to spend 12+ hours fighting with AI website builders just to get a cookie cutter-website that is nothing more than a brochure. Nor can they fork thousands of dollars for web design agencies and spend months in mindless meetings. Thanks to AI now there is a way: small mom and pop local website builders can offer a white-gloves solution that scales and drives revenue for the SMBs.
- wolfhumble 7mo agoThey have already been doing that for 10-15 years via page builders and themes in Wordpress. It is easier now, but small players have had relatively decent tools for quite some time.
- kraai 7mo agoExactly this. It was already very easy. Just choose a local hosting company, most of them have free ssl and one click installs for wordpress etc. People are overthinking it.
- brettermeier 7mo agoMost people hired someone for handling WordPress. Rally, most people are overwhelmed with that complexity.
- dazc 7mo agoMost people are indeed. Many of these people will also be able to complete very difficult tasks that you can't.
- brettermeier 7mo agoSure, thats why people hire others... I just wanted to say that even with WordPress it's not easy to build a website.
- Lammy 7mo ago> Set up a website I dislike how this article handwaves its own recommendation away. The steps required to “have a fucking website” are so much more complex than they used to be. Mandatory† TLS is the biggest hurdle, because now there needs to be software running to renew your certs instead of just tossing some plain files up in a directory on an HTTP server that could run for years unattended. Gone are the days when it was easy for a website to outlive its author, and it's our fault! † Yes, the fact that the world's most popular browser puts a big red NOT SECURE!!! warning next to any non-TLS website makes it mandatory regardless of the fact that plain HTTP still technically loads. Scareware works on people or they wouldn't do it.
- throawayonthe 7mo agoi don't see how that's more of a hurdle than running an always-accessible web server -- for the average normie (plus managing dns in the first place etcetc) i think the implication is "just use a web host" and i agree if i was helping someone set up a website i'd either set them up with a WYSIWYG website builder-hoster a la wix (i'd have to google around for a specific one to try though) or if i had faith enough, i'd set them up with a workflow publishing to cloudflare pages; both would handle the domain and ssl for them if they want to take payments then idk lol
- trick-or-treat 7mo agoMost deployment platforms will do this for you for free. You're talking about specifically unmanaged Wordpress hosting I think.
- andreygrehov 7mo ago+1 I can’t even delete my old stuff on HN. I don’t own my comments here. In contrast, I can go ahead and delete any of my Facebook posts or comments from 10 years ago. In a way, HN is more hostile than Facebook.
- vasco 7mo agoI'm sure I've read they support this if you email them. It's a manual action but if you're based in Europe they will have to do it by law.
- unmole 7mo ago> Europe they will have to do it by law. Realistically, they can simply ignore it with no consequences.
- tartoran 7mo agoDo you think that by deleting facebook posts anything gets deleted on Facebook's servers?
- andreygrehov 7mo agoIt likely gets physically deleted after 3-5 years, whereas on HN I can neither delete nor archive a comment or post I made yesterday.
- 7mo ago
- askmike 7mo agoI think most comments miss the point on why many small businesses don't have websites: It's not about it being hard to create and manage a website, it's that the vast majority of customers use social media platforms (as well as platforms like google maps) to find out about shops and F&B. For many businesses having an Instagram page will draw a lot more people than having a random website.
- zhivota 7mo agoSo how do I do that? I can't host it easily on the machine in the office because NAT and dynamic IPs have trained us that this is not really possible (it is, buty you have to know what you're doing). Pay a hosting provider, but who? Do I need to buy an SSL certificate, because we decided we need HTTPS everywhere for some reason? What about if my site gets DDOSed? Do I get charged more? So I can use something free like Github Pages, but now I'm under a different tech overlord, no? I can see why people just say screw it and go back to IG/FB. The web is too complicated now.
- flomo 7mo agoIrrelevant nerd myopia. They mostly just paid someone to do it (until they decided "wordpress guy" was not worth the marketing budget). If anything DYI is easier than ever.
- kraai 7mo agoI think many people here are overthinking it. OP is mostly talking about simple business website not huge platforms to host. Ddos protection is kind of irrelvant for such small projects. But anyhow there are so many local hosting companies (europe) for at least the last 10 years that provide a free ssl cert, one-click options for wordpress etc. It’s really not that complicated.
- vasco 7mo agoSo edgy, is this person older than 14 years old? Who brags about deleting a Facebook account as if it's an accomplishment?
- gigabyte9592 7mo agoSure, right after DNS, hosting, SSL, and convincing Google I exist.
- rich_sasha 7mo agoFor the last bit - nothing wrong with the same Insta account with a link to your webpage. Agreed on the first bit.
- mocheeze 7mo agoI don't understand this. There are super cheap shared-hosting plans the allow you to just do a couple clicks to install WordPress with full control. Then about $13/yr for a .com with no trouble with SSL or Google.
- TurdF3rguson 7mo agoPlenty of free tier options like Cloudflare pages, etc too.
- scosman 7mo agoIs there a way to view IG pages without logging in? I would love to delete the app and setup privacy redirect.
- ptek 7mo agoTry switching to desktop mode
- sofixa 7mo agoIt depends. If there's a share id (?igsh=xxc) in the link usually no, but if you remove it usually yes. Opening more than a few posts/stories will result in a popup to sign in, but at least the core page and introduction should be visible.
- Mordisquitos 7mo agoChange the URL from instagram.com to imginn.com. There are browser extensions which will do it automatically.
- Aldipower 7mo agoDoesn't work..
- ptek 7mo agoWww.neocities.org is waiting. It’s a small fun site to practice with :)
- rich_sasha 7mo agoA few comments point out, and I agree, that setting up, never mind maintaining a webpage, has become a PITA: - server (AWS? 10 optional services to config etc etc, config, updates etc) - domain - SSL cert Are there solid providers who do it all-in-one? I pay one bill, get a domain, SSL certificate, renewed, and a managed, pre-configured Linux box, or even static hosting? Thinking of setting up a webpage for my consulting business and I'd rather not spend weeks fiddling with all this, or (shudder) use Wix.
- pprotas 7mo agoThis has always been the case, not sure why you’d frame it as a recent development. Not that long ago you even had to PAY for an SSL cert. Domains are nothing new. You always needed a server.
- nake89 7mo agoIt hasn't. TLS was not needed until recently. Non-TLS sites used to show up in search results. TLS was not mandatory at all. Also ISPs often provided users with a free webspace. So I could just send 1 html file to my host without much technical knowledge and I had a website that people could visit.
- orthecreedence 7mo agoNearlyFreeSpeech might be what you want. Been using them for over a decade and still love them. They handle domains/DNS, hosting (static and other), mysql hosting, email forwarding, and much more. They also have great content policies, ie they only kick you off if you're breaking the law.
- sofixa 7mo agoProviders like Netlify, Firebase Hosting, CloudFlare are much better value for money for features for maintenance. Static hosting means you don't need to update the server because there isn't one, and there are even free tiers below a certain usage. There's still the usability thing, they're not made for non-techies. There's an assumption you'll use Git, etc. But there's no practical reason why Netlify CMS or similar couldn't handle everything.
- rkagerer 7mo agoIMO it comes down to making your stuff available without it being behind a login-wall, pay-wall, ad-wall etc. The big platforms have made it seductively easy to get started with little effort, but you rob yourself of audience by letting them lock up your content behind it. I hope we see a larger exodus of users who take the author's lead and escape the walled gardens.
- techterrier 7mo agoGood idea, I did just such a thing myself, deleting all my socials and only posting my photos to my own website: https://dombarker.co.uk/ https://dombarker.co.uk/ Was fun to make 'just a website' for a change too.
- tristanMatthias 7mo agoGreat photos! Thanks for sharing!
- techterrier 7mo agono worries, glad you liked them
- Klonoar 7mo agoI run something similar, ish: https://photos.rymc.io/ https://photos.rymc.io/ I still have an account or two elsewhere, but all photos get posted here then linked there with decent open graph previews.
- alfirous 7mo agoSpeaking of open graph, your index doesn't have it when I bookmark using Raindrop.
- Klonoar 7mo agoAs in rymc.io, or the index of photos.rymc.io? I have it earmarked to get around to a generic OG preview for the root of photos.rymc.io, it's just a time issue - been pretty busy lately with racing.
- zuzuleinen 7mo agoYour photos are amazing!
- techterrier 7mo ago
- johnfn 7mo ago> The concept of congregating in walled gardens owned by pedophilic fascist speed freaks Are we really calling everyone we don't like a pedophilic fascist now? I honestly had really hoped that this sort of polarized, low-quality content wouldn't make it onto HN. :(
- speedgoose 7mo agoI thought it was pretty factual.
- rudhdb773b 7mo agoSo which walled garden owner regularly has sex with prepubescent children and is a heavy meth user?
- johnfn 7mo agoIf you think that everyone who works on a website that is a walled garden is a "pedophile fascist", I don't know what to say to you -- I don't think we live in the same reality.
- speedgoose 7mo agoIt’s not what is written?
- johnfn 7mo agoYou should tell me your interpretation of the quote I excerpted then.
- speedgoose 7mo agoIt’s about the common and popular walled garden American social medias owned by people that are close and supporting their current elected government.
- rkachowski 7mo agoSometimes I get inspired to write something publicly, but then the fact that I'm providing another point of data to ChatGPTs training corpus which helps the american Department of War make shit memes about killing people - stifles that impulse pretty quickly.
- dsab 7mo agoI have the same feeling paying for LLMs, it sucks we are financing genocide tools used by guys who are blackmailed with Epstein movies.
- DaSHacka 7mo agoThe same could be said about posting anything publicly though, including our comments.
- Planktonne 7mo agoI do think that's a factor now; Continual scraping to train LLMs means that even having your own website essentially just makes you another 'digital sharecropper'. The arguments about 'owning your own content' no longer have as much force.
- appreciatorBus 7mo agoThe comment you just made will also be scraped and added to LLM training corpora. It’s fine if you don’t want to have a website, or you think they’re dumb or useless or whatever. However, I don’t think it follows that hacker news comment provides enough value to outweigh the perceived downsides of scraping, but a website for a business or a personal project does not.
- Planktonne 7mo agoThat's the point; there's not much practical difference anymore between a comment posted on a site I don't own and content posted on one I do. In both cases, it will be mined by corporations who want to capture all possible traffic.
- alastairr 7mo agoCouldn't agree more. Worth pointing out that sites owned by Meta and Twitter in particular have become much more hostile to signed out users - often impossible to view a business' listing without a signed in account. Walled gardens are going to wall, of course. But I'm not sure how much small business owners realise that a proportion of traffic / interest has much more difficulty in finding them.
- raincole 7mo agoIt's great in principle. However, in the past decade I've never visited even one single restaurant's website. I just check menus and phone numbers on google map. I trust google map photos (not saying they're 100% reliable) much more than a site owned by the restaurant's owner anyway.
- LtWorf 7mo agoIn the past decade I haven't been to the dentist, but I'm not arguing to shut them all down.
- raincole 7mo agoWhen and where exactly did I suggest shut all restaurant websites down?
- pacifika 7mo agoAnd where does Google map get it’s information?
- trick-or-treat 7mo agoA lot of it comes from street view. They literally drive by and take pictures of your store.
- raincole 7mo agoMostly uploaded from users.
- Animats 7mo agoMost businesses do have a web site. Although for too many small businesses, it's generated by Place or Instacart or somebody.
- bbor 7mo agoSet up a website — and while you’re at it, start a mailing list, because email is basically the only means of reaching your contacts that can’t easily be taken away from you. I love the energy but this is incredibly myopic. The vast majority of people on the internet don't want to blog!
- renegat0x0 7mo agoI thought it will be about https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
- Meneth 7mo agoThat is still a very good template for how a simple website should be written.
- cyberrock 7mo agoMaybe we're not going to the same places but "just having a website for rates and hours" is a SAT problem for salons/tattoo parlors. They need to know what you want and also show flattering photos of what they can do (and also comply with the growing mountain of privacy regulations), determine if you have any staff preferences and when staff is available for whatever you're requesting, and compute the available times grid. If you just want a speedcut, that's not necessarily what those shops are optimizing for. Even if they have the tech from an existing SaaS solution or from vibe coding, they still gotta diligently update the source data from staff. You can't blame anyone for giving up, posting their phone number and a few pictures on social media, and just writing reservations down on paper.
- xandrius 7mo agoI really thought the article was about personal websites like in the 90s, not bringing up hair salons as an example. A hair salon needs a presence on Google maps with a bunch of reviews and their rates and that's it. Sure they don't own it but until that works it works.
- jeremyjh 7mo agoTo make it easier for you, this is the third sentence in TFA: > But still, please, if you are a business or an individual artist or creator, have a fucking website.
- mrweasel 7mo agoLocally I have an issue finding builders and electricians, because they don't have websites. They may have a listing in the phone book, but that's just "Bob's bricklaying", doesn't tell me a lot about whether or not Bob is actually a company, but I can call and ask. Sometimes they haven't had a company for years. The preferred methods today seems to be Facebook for your average builder, Instagram if they feel like they do more upscale work. I'm on neither platform, so I have to resort to taking pictures of vans when I'm out and about. I think the problem is that having a website is a bit complicated for a carpenter, but not enough business for a webdesign company to deal with.
- pennaMan 7mo agothe sudden left turn into political bullshit really left a sour taste and it's mostly just the same walled garden rant we've all heard and even made a variant ourselves is this the type of content we have devolved into on here? I'd take endless ai slop over endless random cringe political posturing any day
- stahtops 7mo agoIf you prefer ai slop, let me introduce you to moltbook! Some of the ai agents there were even trained by humans being paid by pedophilic fascist speed freaks, so they tend to be more amenable to that sort of thing than your typical human.
- pennaMan 7mo ago>pedophilic fascist speed freaks the LLMs have a wider vocabulary, argument range and worldview nuance than whatever the dogma of the month or whatever the fuck this is
- avhception 7mo agoWebsite? Ha, with local restaurants here you're in luck if the photos of the menu posted by customers on google maps or FB or where ever aren't too fuzzy to read.
- hahawang 7mo ago1
- bananaflag 7mo agoIn case anyone is wondering, the picture is from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-First-Discovery-Book-Books/dp/0439148243 https://www.amazon.com/Internet-First-Discovery-Book-Books/d...
- oseph 7mo agoThanks, I was actually wondering why that image looked oddly familiar and pretty sure I remember seeing that book way back in my elementary years.
- ifh-hn 7mo agoEasier said than done, and completely ignoring the intricacies of "just have a website". I can write the html, CSS, JavaScript needed for a website, I can spin up a local web server to serve these files, but setting up an internet facing website, no. No clue how to go about it, how to secure it, and how to maintain it. Give me a step by step guide that is simple, and can ensure security and privacy, and I'll have a website. But until then I'll use what's convenient.
- xigoi 7mo agoIf you already have your HTML and CSS, just upload it to https://surge.sh/ https://surge.sh/ or another one of the bajillions of static site hosting services.
- nicbou 7mo agoI have two fucking websites. One I live from. These days, it's pretty demoralising to run a website. Google AI overviews and LLMs have reduced traffic by over 60%, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down. These numbers are typical. At the same time, the cost and difficulty has raised because of misbehaving AI crawlers and bots attacking every moving part. I'm glad I went with static sites and not WordPress. So you need to work harder and harder for a dwindling audience, and the cost of keeping the lights on keeps going up. I used to make websites for businesses, a bit over a decade ago. The job feels just as hard now as it was back then. One notable exception is caddy and automatic SSL.
- Gigachad 7mo agoYes but without your efforts, Google shareholders wouldn’t be able to profit off your content.
- nicbou 7mo agoWell at least they asked nicely
- Aldipower 7mo agoSame here. Even before AI, Google reduced my traffic all the time in favor of showing my competitors content, because they simply have a much larger footprint in the web as they started 5 years earlier. If you think about this twice, it means that the web (refereed to as Google search) is getting much less diversified, because Google acts as a positive funnel for already larger sites.
- dazc 7mo agoDoesn't have to be just larger sites. If someone launched their basic website 5 years before you did it's going to be difficult to outrank them.
- treenode 7mo agoFun rant to read, but this is an entitled view. Not everyone has to have a website, or has to care about democratising the internet. If you don't want to do business with them just because you shun platforms, that's up to you. They may be doing just fine without your patronage.
- itslennysfault 7mo ago> If you don't want to do business with them just because you shun platforms I don't do business with them because I can't access their hours, menu, services, etc... I've had this happen a few times. I'm not avoiding these businesses because I'm a snob. It's because I literally can't access the information. So, I go back to google and find a business that provides the information I need to decide if the business meets my needs before traveling to their location.
- mlrtime 7mo agoYou can't even find a phone #? How about calling and asking? How do you know this place even exists without any information? This is the opposite of old man yelling at clouds, it's young people complaining about the dumbest shit. If the article writer is reading this, I feel the opposite. No, I don't want 1000 different websites. I like to use consolidated feeds. No More Websites!
- LatencyKills 7mo ago> How do you know this place even exists without any information? You want to find an antique book store in another state. How do you find it? You search the web. And what information bubbles to the top of the search results? Answer: businesses with websites. If you are a business owner, you will lose customers without a website, because that is how most people will find you. You might not like it... but that is the reality.
- abustamam 7mo agoIf I'm looking for a physical place I usually just look at Google maps. "Minneapolis antique bookstores." I'll look at pics, see if the vibe is cool, etc. Relying on Google SEO is a recipe for disaster in my experience because there's no guarantee that the bookstore is even in or near Minneapolis. Other people probably browse the web differently though. I honestly would not expect an antique bookstore to have a website, unless they let you buy their books online.
- gethly 7mo agowell said. nothing more to be added here. have a fucking website. especially without dependency on third parties that if blocked it won't load - like fonts, cdns, captchas... and better jet, don't make it SPA if you don't have to. stick to basic html.
- RandomGerm4n 7mo agoI don’t understand why people think it’s so difficult to build a website. If you let go of the idea that every little site has to look ‘modern’ and have thousands of features, it’s really easy. Stallman’s website would be a good example. It’s super minimalist, and there’s nothing stopping a restaurant from building a site like that too. The homepage can simply list the opening hours and special offers, and then have a subpage listing the regular menu. All you need is HTML and a Server. If you don't want to rent one just buy a Raspberry Pi and host it at the restaurant or at home. Even if you don’t know much about technology, you can always ask a computer science student or a friend’s child to do it for a bit of pocket money.
- freetime2 7mo agoOr just host it on squarespace (or something similar).
- dazc 7mo agoI think you underestimate how what you just wrote will fly over the head of most non technical people?
- tommit 7mo agoYeah. "put some HTML on a server" may as well say "split a few atoms" for people who have never done so. No one is saying that it's impossible to learn all that stuff. But it takes time, has a fairly high entry barrier (despite LLMs and all that), and needs to happen _while_ keeping the business afloat.
- AuthAuth 7mo agoHaving a website like stallmans would be worse for a business than having no website
- 1dom 7mo agoI'm all for personal website and these sentiments which regularly come up here around self hosting. This one seems a bit disproportionately confused and angry though. If we're going to have any large aggregation or social media businesses where individuals trade data ownership for convenience, being able to put your opening hours and rates on the the internet without having to figure out how to have a website seems like the optimal use case. I think we should aim for a sensible mid ground where social media provides just the things it provided before around 2011, like updates and communication with people you know and want to interact with already. An "all personal websites" web that OP is calling for is just pushing the exclusion they feel onto the people they're complaining about. We should have websites. We should also use the appropriate tool for the appropriate job, and running your own website isn't the best tool if you just want to get your business rates and opening hours on the web.
- dazc 7mo agoRecently explained to a local service business owner that all she needed to do was get listed on Google maps and start asking customers for reviews. Literally showed her how competing businesses were top of the search results by doing just this. Did she do it? No. People like this are never going to get around to having a website, let alone actually maintain and promote it.
- freetime2 7mo agoI definitely view it as a red flag if a business doesn't have a website in 2026. It doesn't need to be a fancy website, but does at least need a list of products, business hours, work samples, and contact info. If they don't have that, then I view it as an indication that other aspects of their business might also be lacking in professionality or high friction. That being said, if they have a strong presence on Google Maps with plenty of positive reviews, photos, menus, hours, etc., then that's usually good enough for me. At least the info on Google Maps is publicly visible without logging in, and reasonably well organized. But even then, I do often find myself looking for the "Website" link on Google Maps and feeling frustrated when there isn't one. Relying solely on Facebook or Instagram feels a bit to me like having an @aol.com email address back in the day. I haven't built a basic website in years, so I'm a bit out of the loop, but I would probably go with Google Sites if I wanted to set up a simple business page. It's got a WYSIWYG editor, it's free, it has support for custom domains, and presumably it will play nicely with Google SEO.
- abustamam 7mo agoI'm curious what you're looking for on a website that you can't otherwise find on a well organized Google Map page or Instagram profile. For a restaurant, as long as I can see a menu, I'm satisfied. Even if it's a menu on DoorDash or whatever other menu apps there are. Also I look for reviews on both Google and yelp. I know they can be gamed but I look for low reviews as well. Zero low reviews is a red flag imo. For a professional business (dentist, lawyer, etc), I look for reviews and services provided. Sometimes this does necessitate a website, like I don't expect a Google map entry to delineate all services a lawyer provides. But if I'm just looking for a filling or a crown, then I can be fairly confident that every dentist provides that service. If I'm looking for an auto mechanic, I just need to know that they service my car. I don't know much about cars but some places advertise that they work on Japanese cars and some that they work on European. I imagine most of them can work on everything though. I can usually glean this from their Yelp page. I suppose my point is that not every business necessarily needs a website. Some could certainly benefit from one, but not every one.
- xigoi 7mo ago
- microbuilderco 7mo ago[flagged]
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- kkkou3302242754 7mo ago[dead]
- maverick74 7mo agoSo true!!!
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ramon156 7mo agoExcessive swear words are really fucking edgy. It only defuses your argument by saying "Because I said so!" The arguments in the article are good but start by telling you what to do. That doesn't work.
- VoodooJuJu 7mo ago[dead]
- maxothex 7mo ago[dead]
- Fizz43 7mo agoMost people dont have anything interesting to share.
- mft_ 7mo agoThis is kinda why the (fucking) platforms that you hate exist. Small business wants a presence on the internet for reasons. Originally, small business would have to pay $$$ to engage an expert, who will assist them in creating a website, hosting it, keeping it secure, keeping it up to date, figuring out the SEO to make it findable, etc. It's obvious given 3s of thought that this sucks for a non-technical small business owner and can be optimised, so someone creates a platform to enable non-technical small business owners to do most of this without the cost/hassle of dealing with experts and owning the website themselves. This gets you to somewhere like MySpace, Wix, Squarespace, Google Sites, even Blogger, etc. But of course, such offerings aren't stable - they change, fail, or enshittify over time. Facebook also sees an opportunity, and businesses start creating their own Facebook pages. Easy, and maybe even great for a while; except you're even more locked into the platform, only people who use Facebook can engage with you, and then trends move on and Facebook is less popular with your customer base than it once was. You also want more of a visual presence to show off your cupcakes, or whatever. So an Instagram page. TL;DR: there's no perfect solution for non-techies with a business. You either have a fucking website with all of the cost, hassle, and friction that comes with that, or you choose one of platforms that simplifies this but comes with unpredictable downsides over time.
- catchcatchcatch 7mo ago[dead]
- dirkc 7mo agoYes, you should have a website if you have a business or you wish to maintain any public footprint on the internet. But it is both simple and complicated to setup a website these days. For a technical audience there are great tools/options to choose from. You can build a rock solid website serving tons of traffic using 3rd party hosting for cheap. But, there are lots of options and as a geek it's easy to get rabbit-holed in the process. For non-technical users it's similar, many solutions that require minimal technical knowledge. But the technical knowledge is very leaky and most providers border on landlords seeking to extract their rent while holding users hostage. I'm working on something small in a specific niche aimed at non-technical users. I worry a lot that I don't fully understand what keeps people from building their own site?
- honeybadger1 7mo agox is arguable better than twitter ever was and most arguments are just political bias or elon hate. i feel like x is just as far-right and just as far-left as you make it now because the feed is tuned by engagement and followers, people who call it out or refuse to participate are just using emotionally politically charged points that are mostly untruthworthy because they are not objectionable. i find x to be the closest thing to a truly open platform now minus the expensive api costs and some other annoyances with premium etc(there are ways around it). when you consider that they don't ban stuff only in rare cases of it being illegal content, articles are clean and easy and have real reach if you know what you are doing, no particular ideology is governing the platform other than if you just don't like elon and you refuse to participate. it's far better than it was prior and i have been a user of twitter/x since 2013. i really enjoy talking to the many people around the globe on x (mostly japanese which have a very rich X community). that all being said, social media is a contagion for the masses, and i still run 3 sites regardless of having an x account(i deleted instagram,facebook, never used tiktok).
- seedpi 7mo ago[flagged]
- mark-r 7mo agoOne Google feature that I think is killing the internet is actually useful in this case - the AI summary. If your vital information is on a platform that I will never join, I can't see it directly. But Google can, and many times I can find what I need in the summary. Of course it's not perfect, like when I'm trying to find holiday hours.
- temp0826 7mo agoUnnecessary vulgarity makes you look stupid.
- pickleglitch 7mo agoI think you mean, "Unnecessary vulgarity makes you look fucking stupid."
- timedude 7mo agoExcept, this time it is necessary
- temp0826 7mo agoMaybe I'm just surprised by and not accustomed to the amount of anger that has been normalized in many people.
- slantaclaus 7mo ago"pedophilic fascist speed freaks" made me laugh, which made me happy
- lunias 7mo agoEvery day on instagram I see people post pictures of text w/ words that are partially or fully obscured from view; presumably censoring themselves or others for the sake of the algorithm. Make a website, post what you like, be free.
- deadbabe 7mo agoPeople just don’t get it. The old internet isn’t coming back. Yea you could setup a little old school page but you won’t have visitors. So what’s the point? Better to post a blog post on instagram as pictures where you get more reach, instead of a website where no one really cares. If running a little website meant you’d actually get an audience, people would do it. But it doesn’t happen, we can see the traffic stats. And so, there’s just better things to do with your time and life than maintain a website no one goes to. That’s just the reality. I’d argue your better off handwriting a little journal, at least then you get the pleasure of holding a physical object you filled with thoughts.
- t14000 7mo agoRing them up?
- Paulo75 7mo agoThis is the kind of thing that feels obvious but apparently still needs to be said. I've seen businesses run entirely off an Instagram page, and when the algorithm changes or the account gets flagged, they lose everything overnight. No way to reach their customers, no archive of their work, nothing.
- barbazoo 7mo agoI wish this happened much more frequently actually so people would realize it's not a reliable platform to build a business on.
- tho23i4u234987 7mo ago[dead]
- twodave 7mo agoFor some things I get this. Restaurants? Yes. But other things? Landscaping? Electricians? Plumbers? I’d much rather speak on the phone with someone who is going to come on my property and do work. I could care less if they have a website because that’s just marketing for them. I source almost 100% of these types of workers via referral from friends/family.
- dec0dedab0de 7mo agoI want the website so I can look up their phone number and license.
- dazc 7mo agoI used to work in construction in a previous life and always said I could judge how good a tradesman is simply by their appearance. The same goes for their website. If they have pride in their work it will show; if they do just about enough to get paid it will also show.
- twodave 7mo agoInteresting. I'd personally rather them be great at what their job actually is and not waste time on a website. I think the best tradesmen don't need a website because their work (and their happy customers!) speaks for itself.
- BeetleB 7mo ago> Yes. But other things? Landscaping? Electricians? Plumbers? Plumbers and electricians: Maybe not. But lots of other house repairs stuff: Yes. Things I want to see: Geographical coverage area: Some are across town and are not willing to come to my property. Others are. Services rendered: There job title may be very generic, but it often turns out they do only certain types of work. Minimum fees: Some only do jobs that cost, say, $1000 or more. If my work is small, I shouldn't bother calling them. > I’d much rather speak on the phone with someone who is going to come on my property and do work I do so as well, but they rarely pick up the phone. You call them, leave a voicemail, and pray they'll call you back at a time you can pick up. About 50% of them never call back. So every time I need some repairs/work done on the house, I have to get 10 "leads", and call them, leave a voicemail, and a few days later repeat the process because they either didn't call back, or called and said they don't do that type of work. If I can pre-filter those out based on basic stuff on their website, it'd be great.
- class3shock 7mo agoSummary: A rant by and entitled techie complaining about non-techies taking the path of least resistance which slightly inconveniences the author.
- lgl 7mo agoYou may see this as a rant but it's in fact a very valuable recommendation that apparently people no longer take seriously. The path of least resistance is not a good way to do business or provide good service to your customers.
- rchaud 7mo agoThe manifesto of "have a fucking website" or "I'm a fucking webmaster"[0] or "The People's Web"[1] is something that in the modern age, ends up as a commercialized newsletter or as an e-tip jar or blogspam with a thousand Amazon affiliate links. The website as a means of personal expression came about because traditional communications media ignored the niches they cared about. Fan sites and shrines covered TV shows or bands that didn't get coverage in mainstream magazines. Conspiracy sites arose because traditional media eschewed them. Today, every niche is covered somewhere, because the Internet became a business. A GIF site on Geocities was free. Buzzfeed took that idea and became a publicly traded company. [0] https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/ https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/ [1] https://www.anildash.com/2019/12/23/the-peoples-web/ https://www.anildash.com/2019/12/23/the-peoples-web/
- trepaura 7mo agoHe specifically says "if your are a business, an individual artist or creator". They aren't saying everyone, just people who have the potential to benefit from it. Not a blog site, basically they're advocating for personal portfolio sites and contact points. Having 5 social sites you might be contacted through is a pain that often means commission or work requests simply get missed.
- bullen 7mo agoAlso have a HTTP only website.
- dec0dedab0de 7mo agoAnd while we're at it, make sure it works everywhere and is accessible. Luckily this is easy to do, just don't clutter it up with a bunch of nonsense frontend frameworks. The point is to tell people about your business, not show off your design skills. If you have a blind client on a 30 year old computer, they should still be able to use your website to get information about your business.
- carlosjobim 7mo agoIt is simply nuts how much people and businesses underestimate a good website. If you're a small business of any kind, like a single person business, you can have tens of thousands of dollars in sales from just a good website and grow it to hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few years. If you're an already established medium size business, you can boost your sales immensely, and reduce administration and customer support by 80%. Yet, everybody is instead working their asses off to produce social media content and get more likes and followers, even though that doesn't translate well to real sales. Businesses spend thousands to hire "influencers" and keep throwing in casino bets to Meta to "boost" their own posts. But paying for a good website is unthinkable, even in cases where there are guaranteed good returns.
- gammalost 7mo agoDo you suggest small businesses send tattoos and freshly baked bread in the mail? I do not how they benefit from it
- carlosjobim 7mo agoYou should be able to book your tattoo session directly on their website, so that the tattoo artist doesn't have to interrupt his work to answer phone calls from people wanting to schedule.
- emiliazar 6mo ago[dead]
- blacklight 7mo agoAs an engineer and self-hosting and self-coding enthusiast, I would agree with a lot of the points. I have spent most of my life in IT advocating for decentralization and democratization. However, as someone who has had enough experience in the real world to notice how different time and skill constraints lead to different requirements for outsourcing, I think that it sounds elitist. Even an LLM is not sufficient for people who don't even know the difference between backend and frontend or what an API is, and therefore don't stand a chance to craft a proper prompt, let alone properly test the code that the LLM produces. For context, I could also tell Mr. "Having a fucking website" that they're a hypocrite because they run a blog on Wordpress and have a social media account on mastodon.social. Those who really believe in decentralization run their own stuff, or code their own blogging platform like I did. They don't just brag of how morally superior they are just because they deleted their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Of course I would sound elitist. And that's exactly how their stance sounds to the average bakery shop owner.
- kkfx 7mo agoWell, more than just a website, I'd call it a domain name to be used for various personal services, starting with email. A domain name is like your home address in the physical world; not having one is like not being a citizen of civil society. As for the domain, well, one can also have a website to introduce yourself to the world, the usefulness is marginal for the average person, but yeah, you can have one. It can be used as a sort of business card, an interactive CV, or your own little corner to tell the world what you think; it has many uses and each has implications to consider. But the domain is the essential part. It's about having your own mail even if you use GMail (for domains), so that one day you can switch providers without changing anything for your contacts. It's perhaps hosting XMPP or Matrix for yourself to talk to friends, family, and sometimes even total strangers without depending much on other people's services. It's about serving your own web apps to yourself on the go. The website itself matters less in all of this.
- hackemmy 7mo agoThe thing that gets me is how many side projects and indie products only exist on Twitter or a GitHub readme. Like you built something cool but I have to scroll through your tweet history to understand what it does? Even a single page with a clear description, maybe a screenshot, and a link to try it would go so far. I recently launched a Chrome extension and the number of people who told me they almost did not try it because there was not enough info upfront was a wake up call.
- lametti 7mo agoWhat's wrong with a README? It's as close to a website as one can get within a self-contained repository, and is most likely to be kept up to date with any given version of the project. If there is one document available anywhere that describes a project, I would hope it is the README.
- rglover 7mo agoIf people wanted to have a website, they would. The truth of it all is that most people like the walled garden, the sandbox, etc. It's predictable, it's knowable with limited effort, and it creates the desired illusion for a nominal fee. There is no revolution to be had, the people have made (and are continuing to make) their choice. This is technology at scale, for better or worse.
- notlenin 7mo agonot 100% true - I know some friends that would like a website, just they haven't found the means to get one. Even WordPress can be somewhat complicated to setup sometimes.
- catcowcostume 7mo agoAnecdotal only
- mdp 7mo agoPerfect example is my local coffee shop that is 100% on Instagram only. They've done amazingly well on just Instagram with the groups they are targeting. I doubt that a website would have any impact on their business. In fact Instagram gives them something much easier, more visual, and with a built in social feed (no need to setup a mailing list, just use Instagram). "But it's a walled garden..." - Most people don't really care. And also, it's a coffee shop. If Instagram shutdown, they'd be on the next platform in a week and rebuilding the same following. It's annoying to people like me, but don't see it changing anytime soon, and I can't really blame the business.
- dabbz 7mo agoNobody cares until the automated trust and safety bot bans an account for no apparent reason and you can't contact a human for help. Before that happens though, how do you get someone to care? I suppose it's risk management at that point. "What are the odds that I'll get inconvenienced by Instagram before the ROI on establishing on their platform pays out"
- Hoasi 7mo agoPlatforms have always been liabilities. First you trade privacy for convenience, and soon after, you trade ownership for reach, and ultimately you lose both. Have your own website and re-publish on platforms, if you must.
- altairprime 7mo agoAnd start a fucking webring!
- BTAQA 7mo agoThis matches exactly what I see building software for small merchants in the GCC. A coffee shop owner in Riyadh is working 14 hour days. The barrier isn't technical ability or even cost. It's that every solution requires context they don't have and time they don't have. The products that work are the ones where the merchant never has to think about the technology at all. They just see customers coming back.
- _verandaguy 7mo agoMy two cents: I'd love to have a site. I've been involved with web technologies since the early/mid 2000s, when I built my first site in elementary school. I've picked up hobbies since then that lend themselves well to sharing online, but right now, with the amount of LLM-related scraping happening, I have no intention at all of hosting anything I've made by hand, be it code, photos, recipes, etc. These bots make their own ground rules -- "just put up this special robots.txt thing" -- and then ignore them, requiring tools like Anubis to be created, maintained, and kept constantly up to date, and for what? So the plagiarism machine can plagiarise more? Copyright courts have apparently just checked out on this, so I'm not at all confident they'll do anything about this. To be clear: my ego isn't so huge that I want my name plastered everywhere, on everything I've ever touched. I believe strongly in the principle of not getting your shit scraped online and then churned out into something that these LLM companies can (eventually? presumably?) profit off of (or at least turn into investment, in the short-term). These companies have done terrible things to the state of public discourse and I do what I can to avoid feeding the beast.
- monooso 7mo ago> I have no intention at all of hosting anything I've made by hand, be it code, photos, recipes, etc. Do you publish any such items on platforms you don't own (you specifically said you "have no intention of... hosting anything")?
- _verandaguy 7mo agoI haven't in a very long time, over a decade at this point. A few friends and I have a small handful of self-hosted services that we all run on a VPN between our places with stuff like a recipe sharing app, etc., but the number of people with access to that is single digits. In terms of "hosting anything," I still have my own homelab, and my self-hosting will be limited to this sort of stuff for the foreseeable. A cluster of limited-scope apps that helps me and a handful of friends keep in touch after moving out of our hometown, beyond just chatting in Signal groups. I won't be putting up my own public website (or portfolio, or whatever; be it hosted on my own infra or not).
- alexpotato 7mo agoI mentor a couple folks that are either in college or just graduated. They ask how to "get their name out there" in industries or domains where they either don't have a lot of experience or want to grow their career. My first response is always: "Do you use social media? and do your socials point back to a blog or website showing your work?" THEIR response is almost always "social media is toxic!" To which I reply: "Some of social media is toxic. However, there are a LOT of smart folks online and the lifetime value of going from zero to even a single post about what you are into is enormous. This is especially true if what you put out there is niche and also highlights your value to the right people." It's actually kind of sad that the needle against social media/websites has gone so far that the positives are being ignored by the younger generation. Especially so as many people of my generation (Late Gen X/Early Millenials) have stories about how social media helped them get a job, make a great contact or join some group that benefited their life that they wouldn't have been a part of otherwise etc
- yieldcrv 7mo agowhat you really need is a service that tunnels information from instagram and facebook businesses onto their display although you can look at some of them without an account on those services today, and maybe, but maybe not tomorrow so just need to boost the information people have posted, into something else
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 7mo ago"If you're a hair salon, or a tattoo artist, or a restaurant, or whatever, please just have a fucking website where I can go and see your rates and hours." It's true there are some businesses that only publish rates and hours on Facebook But it's probably relatively small number Given the choice between (a) a business that has a listing accessible via yellowpages.com, Google Maps, etc. and (b) one that has a social media account but no listing in any business directory, it stands to reason that there will be more opportunities to choose (a) than (b) There are also other reasons to prefer (a) to (b) besides avoiding Facebook of course
- erelong 7mo agoA takeaway thought: find orgs you use or know of and suggest they get a website if the don't have one or to improve it if they do (could even be a simple web dev biz)
- ProllyInfamous 7mo agoTo further add to this: Government agency websites should host their own content on their own servers (why do so many cities use google drive sharing? my own even uses facebook links). No, I do not think I should have to participate in private companies' walledgardens... for basic citizen services/information. This is as simple as (e.g.) in Chattanooga you cannot find out your trash/recycling schedule without using Google services. It shouldn't be necessary to whitelist private companies for government services.
- Jotalea 7mo agoi have my own personal website which i customized to my own liking (catppuccin theme, walking pet, music player [with animations and iOS-like blur effects], etc.) and even added a tiny blog section, where i usually post, well, anything i'd post on traditional, centralized social media. i made it so, if something is relevant enough (i.e. it is something i'm actually proud of, or is something with enough quality), it is posted on my site first, and just then reposted to other platforms. i even added a rss feed if anyone wanted. and last but not least, i optimized it so it loads within less than 512kb (333kb as of writing this, i might add or remove more stuff in the future that might change the total size), and it is fully functional on devices as old as Android 6 (i don't have anything older to test, sorry about that).
- silexia 7mo agoTwitter has vastly improved the last couple of years, especially with Community Notes.
- susiecambria 7mo agoTotally agree. Websites are a must. But websites are not everything. Everything would include updating the website with hours, menus, etc. And since way too many businesses in my part of the world (rural Virginia, though not sure that matters) can't update their hours, email, menus, etc. on socials, there is no way they can manage a website. Lately, I've been trying to get restaurants, in particular, to share their news in text in addition to the graphic. They can't/won't do that. Why? Not sure and I don't care enough to ask. But I am not following them anymore and telling them why. Not sure they care, which is fine.
- gck1 7mo agoAnd please, find an alternative to discord for your community. It baffles me that everyone has collectively decided it's a great idea to have discussions on a platform which is not indexable, and has no usable search even when you're in it.