9 ms·

Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day

258 points by cdrnsf 3mo ago

sim04ful 3mo ago
The cost doesn't really matter as much as the payment methods, especially at that price point. Payment methods are inherently discriminatory.
variety8675 3mo ago
It is nice to see a site preaching this that isn't hosted by Cloudflare or GitHub Pages
- konsalexee 3mo ago
  Or even Vercel/Netlify
- Cider9986 3mo ago
  I appreciate Cloudflare for keeping all the piracy sites running, though.
- odie5533 3mo ago
  Github Pages is free hosting with domains and ssl, no bills, and has good longevity and prospects. I don't want to worry or think about a static site, and big players like Github and Cloudflare seem to fit that best.
- codazoda 3mo ago
  What’s your preference? I also “preach” GitHub pages a lot but I’ve also written about hosting on a Raspberry Pi in my bedroom. https://joeldare.com/private-analytics-and-my-raspberry-pi-400 https://joeldare.com/private-analytics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Literally anything that isn't big tech. Small tech is fine. Self hosting is fine. VPSes are fine. Don't use "clouds" - they're big tech, and overpriced. Make sure it's something you pay for, so that you are the customer, instead of the product.
tamimio 3mo ago
Well this is great, even going further and hosting the site itself and serve it instead of webhosts, but, now we have domains issue, a domain registrar hijacking your domain, which is your life work, email, etc., so there’s a need to have a free tld that’s uncontrollable by any entity, .onion isn’t practical obviously.
- wizzwizz4 3mo ago
  There's no such thing as a TLD that's uncontrollable by any entity. How would you imagine such a thing working? Whatever you imagine: how does it stand up to me editing the hosts file, or the browser's source code?
  - charcircuit 3mo ago
    >There's no such thing as a TLD that's uncontrollable by any entity. Think .crypto but without the ability to upgrade the smart contract to censor domains. The registry is spread out across a whole decentralized network of computers of which has another decentralized network of computers that proxy requests exists. >how does it stand up to me editing the hosts file, or the browser's source code? No one can force you to resolve domains YOU don't want to. You can of course blow up your computer and then you definitely can't resolve the domain. What people mean is that the user is free to still resolve it if they want.
    - deathanatos 3mo ago
      > The registry is spread out across a whole decentralized network of computers of which has another decentralized network of computers that proxy requests exists. Ultimately, someone has to be in control of who is or is not part of that decentralized network that is the registry. (Or, alternatively phrased, how are you preventing me from saying "I'm part of the .crypto registry, totes.") Aside from that, the root nameservers is still an entity that is controlled (by ICANN, specifically).
      - charcircuit 3mo ago
superkuh 3mo ago
It's good advice, but one need not even include the "upload it to a web server" these days now that home connections are so fast. Install some static webserver on your desktop computer (nginx, caddy, whatever), forward the port 80 at your router to it's lanip:80, and just save .html and files to the web directory using your normal desktop interface. It doesn't matter if you shut off the computer sometimes. Uptime doesn't matter. Optionally file transfer (rsync, etc) this local copy to a VPS or something like the author suggests. Indieweb receiving of webmention only requires the ability to log HTTP POSTs to some url endpoint. Or you can use one of third party services servers to receive that interact with your website via with 3rd party javascript applications you include on your webpage. Sending webmention can be done with cURL, even HTML forms, or again, 3rd party JS includes.
- Jabrov 3mo ago
  You need a static IP address for this to work is the downside, and depending on where you live and who your provider it it can be difficult and/or expensive.
  - erikw 3mo ago
    You can programmatically update DNS whenever your dynamic IP changes. One issue though is that some residential ISPs prohibit webhosting in their terms.
  - tancop 3mo ago
    you can go ipv6 only, any good isp will give you a static /56 for free. practically none of your users have ipv4 only devices when every major os has been dual stack by default for like 15 years. if your isp cant give you one its time to switch as soon as you can.
    - wolvoleo 3mo ago
      Ehh my ISP at home is still ipv4 only. The amount of ipv6 capable connections only just passed 50% worldwide a few months ago. I don't think ipv6 only is feasible yet unless your audience is exclusively in Asia where ipv6 uptake is much higher due to them running out of ipv4 years ago
busymom0 3mo ago
I self host my site [1] on an old Mac mini in a Swift backend and sqlite database. Only thing I rely upon someone for is Cloudflare tunnels for free. I could replace that with port forwarding but so far, this way is pretty good. [1] https://limereader.com/ https://limereader.com/
- tamimio 3mo ago
  > Cloudflare tunnels for free. I could replace that with port forwarding You could replace it with something better, like pangolin, either their cloud or even self host it too, and that way you can tunnel to other stuff like if you have a media server where you can watch your movies from anywhere in the world.
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    Yeah I find it a bit funny when people self host to get away from cloud and then use Cloudflare tunnels.
    - tamimio 3mo ago
      CF tunnels will ban your account if you used it to watch a movie due to DMCA/copyrights.
      - weightedreply 3mo ago
        Is this really true? "A friend of mine" has been running a Jellyfin server behind Cloudflare tunnels for years and hasn't had any issue.
        wolvoleo 3mo ago
        I would guess they only take action when they get a DMCA complaint and that wouldn't happen if you only share privately with friends.
        3mo ago
jdjdjdjdjd 3mo ago
Kind of funny that this is like some strange new concept... Having a web server and putting your stuff on it.
- bayindirh 3mo ago
  Considering many people doesn't know what a file is, keeping the spirit alive is important, I think.
  - al_borland 3mo ago
    The lack of basic computer knowledge I’ve seen from developers is terrifying.
    - cogman10 3mo ago
      It's almost inspiring how far someone can get without understanding really basic stuff about how an operating system operates.
      - assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
        > inspiring You spelled "frightening" wrong.
        Levitz 3mo ago
        It's a complex feeling, really. I've got a friend, I'll call him Bob, mostly because Bob is nowhere near his real name and I'm about to say some not very flattering things about him. He is my friend and not my job colleague or anything, so there's certain objectivity to this, in fact I appreciate Bob and I wish nothing but the best for him. Bob has been programming for a bit more than a decade. He is, barring the people I know from other countries, the best paid programmer I know, and I know well over a dozen. Bob has no interest whatsoever in any programming language that is not what he has been using his whole career, nor does he have any interest or curiosity in dipping his toes in other related fields, web development, tinkering with arduinos, home servers... Nothing. Bob has not built a computer, ever, doesn't know how to do it, nor what each part in that object does, beyond the hard drive because he did plug an extra one once or twice. More anecdotally I played some Factorio and Satisfactory with Bob, now I know these are not excellent representations, but I expected a degree of order, planning and foresight, I was very much surprised when facing the reality of none of that being present, and I very much did not expect to see the same thing the few times I've looked at his code, but I did see that same thing. I promise you Bob doesn't make up for all of this in social skills. Now, is Bob a good engineer? I really, really don't think so. Is he a curious person? A bit, not much, I get the feel he just ended in CS with no particular interest for it, but I'll say it again: He is the best paid programmer I know. Is that frightening? Well yeah, in a way. It's also endearing in a "Well damn if this guy can do it then surely I can too" sort of way. Money is not everything of course, but it's as good of a proxy as any.
bartlebone 3mo ago
This article is a great example for anyone in their 50’s who is worried about not having relevant skills anymore. Although calling it hardcore makes it sound like porn. Too bad they had to add that term for something painfully not hardcore.
ivanjermakov 3mo ago
> run 100% independently > For just $0.01/day, you can run a static website at NearlyFreeSpeech.net I respect the spotlight on hosting your own websites, but it's not much different from the usual Vercel/Netlify/GitHub/Cloudflare static hosting. What if I want a database, feedback form, social media previews, good SEO? Article says nothing about it. Perhaps that's what makes a website "indie"?
- IanCal 3mo ago
  You have access to php and a database there.
- 3eb7988a1663 3mo ago
  I get your point, but I still remember that guy who got a $100k Netlify bill for his free plan.
- xigoi 3mo ago
  NFS supports dynamic websites (giving you access to a full Linux system with many programming languages), though you’ll have to pay more.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  If NFS isn't much difference from Vercel we should see 50% of people using Vercel and 50% using NFS, but we don't, they're all on Vercel - why?
_def 3mo ago
now the real fun part is how to self-host it on a machine accessible on the net without services like cloudflare or tailscale tunnels.
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  It used to be as simple as getting a fixed IP but these days that is indeed a lot harder to get.
- tadasv 3mo ago
  Fixed IP would be a way to go. Some people pick dynamic dns server so they can periodically update if their IP changes. But IMO it's just too complicated. I don't think there's a good way to go around ISP restrictions, especially in USA. I host my site on my own home server, but I do have a proxy ec2 server to tunnel public traffic via wireguard back to my home server. This keeps things a bit more protected and my router/home network not directly exposed. I'm also not locked into AWS, I just use them for convenience, but could get any other cheap proxy to run wireguard. No dependency on tailscale either, it's just nicer interface to wireguard. Wireguard config is like 5 lines btw.
  - lorenzowood 3mo ago
    +1 I use Oracle Cloud rather than AWS as their "always free" tier is plenty to run a reverse proxy. As you say, could be anywhere.
- raytopia 3mo ago
  You can do it over TOR.
RustySwarf 3mo ago
I arrived at a pretty similar system starting from similar goals. https://rustyswarf.com https://rustyswarf.com, which runs on a very simple framework called Travail. In practice, I found cloudflare necessary to deter bots/crawlers. It is indeed fairly cheap, but you're still dependent upon three entities you don't really control: the DNS, the host, and Cloudflare.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  You don't need to deter bots and crawlers. Cloudflare wants you to think you do.
pagoto 3mo ago
Recently, I had to make a website for an event, so domain was needed, but what's cool with that is that the domain provider (Infomaniak, with which I am not affiliated btw), also provided 10 MB of storage which is large enough for a lot of things. So for something like 5€ per year (still more than 1c per day...), you can get the domain and the website, which is not too bad
qudat 3mo ago
Very cool! I run a set of ssh-based services over at https://pico.sh https://pico.sh and love seeing all the indie web content on HN! Sftp is still very useful even in 2026
raytopia 3mo ago
Nearlyfreespeech is a great service though not a 100% independent as your still relying on them. I think the closest you can get to 100% independent without running your own internet infrastructure is either port forwarding from your home (if allowed) or hosting a website through TOR which isn't too hard. You just have to download the browser and edit a config file (torrc) with the port you want on the network. Not ideal of course though because anyone who wants to visit your website will need the tor browser and explaining to people that your website is on the "dark web" is a little hard to do. I am a little surprised that doing so isn't more popular on in the indie web scene though as you do it on hardware you own, from your home, and the tor network protects people from knowing your servers ip address if that's something you care about. You could even go to your domain provider and have one of your domains redirect to your .onion address so people don't need to memorize it. There also used to be the beaker browser which let you create and host your own website directly from the browser but that project got shut down. Hopefully something similar will show up at some point. Maybe a website creating plugin for tor would be enough to make it more popular.
- loloquwowndueo 3mo ago
  > port forwarding from your home Not 100% independent then. You still depend on your isp.
  - wpm 3mo ago
    Indeed. I also depend on my power company, the entire global supply chain to provide me with computers to purchase, copper mines for the networking cables I use, oil fields all over the globe for the plastic, etc etc etc.
    - QuantumNomad_ 3mo ago
      Something, something, if you want to make an apple pie from scratch you first have to invent the universe.
      - 3mo ago
assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
I don't get it. I've been doing this for over 20 years exactly the same way. I even ran a business. The server I rent is $2/month. I read nothing new in anything in that article. I don't get it.
- codazoda 3mo ago
  I see a lot of young software engineers who don’t realize how much you can do on your own and how simple it is.
- dev_tty01 3mo ago
  You are clearly not the target audience. Perhaps you can recognize that other more recent internet frequenters might appreciate the knowledge.
  - assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
    To me this "knowledge" seems to be a crutch. Real knowledge would show how to do it on their own as thousands of us have done for decades and still do today.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      One step at a time, we don't force people to build their own CPU out of transistors.
      - assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
        That is a really bad, far too fine grained example.
analog8374 3mo ago
[flagged]
nosrepa 3mo ago
I opened this up thinking the same thing using NFS, and lo and behold that's what the author used.
ungreased0675 3mo ago
Azure has a free tier that is fairly generous.
- bblb 3mo ago
  Also the Always Free Oracle Cloud tier is pretty generous. You can spin up a VM or two with it.
codazoda 3mo ago
I created Neat CSS for some Hardcore IndieWeb users (though I’ve never used that name before now). https://neat.joeldare.com https://neat.joeldare.com You’ll also find a free email course where I walk you through how I create a site using it. Link on that page.
est 3mo ago
Self-plug here. I built a comment js plugin which hosts all data inside a git repo. https://github.com/est/req4cmt https://github.com/est/req4cmt (as long as your git service accept http) It runs a Cloudflare Worker for free. The data backup/migration is basically git clone & push There's another twitter-replacement, also based on git. https://github.com/est/gitweets https://github.com/est/gitweets Demo https://f.est.im/ https://f.est.im/ it supports comments via git notes :D $0.01/day ? They are all completely free thanks to Cloudflare Workers / Github Pages.
bryanhogan 3mo ago
I'm building an Astro starter template that also makes it easy to start your own website / blog: https://github.com/BryanHogan/astro-starter-template https://github.com/BryanHogan/astro-starter-template Astro is a framework that uses no JavaScript by default. I also use just HTML and CSS, so no bloated additional frameworks or styling libraries. All blog content is written as Markdown or .mdx files, so it's easy to write and move to any other tool if you wish to do so. You can host it for free using any major provider since it's just a static website (e.g., GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, etc.). Making it similar to my own website which is on: https://bryanhogan.com/ https://bryanhogan.com/ (Repo: https://github.com/BryanHogan/bryanhogan https://github.com/BryanHogan/bryanhogan )
SilentM68 3mo ago
Kind of similar to "tiiny.host" minus the custom domain and with a few file restrictions for the free tier but very similar.
JSR_FDED 3mo ago
OK, if the reason to do this is to learn how HTML and web serving work, splurge and get a VPS. You’ll learn so much more.
jrm4 3mo ago
Old guy here, wild that people don't know this. Like, I have fiber and a static IP. Never much thought about hosting a website from my house because it didn't seem all that special. Maybe I should?
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Note that most ISPs don't allow it on residential plans, but also won't stop you unless you actually create some kind of problem (no ISP actively polices it). If you're rich you can pay more for a business plan (at your home) which would explicitly allow it. It's fine to host something for friends on a residential ISP. They don't care. If you want to make it a public website it's more uncertain. Still don't worry though, because they won't just ban you from the internet. Worst you'd get is a phone call telling you to stop it.
Brajeshwar 3mo ago
Personal, but I’d rather learn and own a process. 1. Learn how you can get HTML generated from a human-readable and writer-friendly format, say, Markdown (plain-text). This can be Pandoc, a macOS/Win wrapper desktop UI over Pandoc, and many other tools that do this. 2. Learn the process (and the tools) to upload, or sync to a service that hosts the HTML (CSS+JS). 3. Learn the simple steps of owning of a domain, and updating the DNS to point to the right services, such as Github Pages, CloudFlare Pages, etc. As you are not dependent on a particular tool/service/platform/company, you can walk out and host your files (the website content) elsewhere. The post-processing of the raw (Markdown) articles/posts to HTML can be then automated with Static Site Generator if someone is willing to learn a little more on top of the above steps. Of course, it is a fun and good thing to know HTML but that should be optional to the target of “Run your own website 100% independently.” With Github and Cloudfalre, you can hve it for $0 monthly. If they go kaput or stops free, someone will come up - walk out and walk in elsewhere.
- xigoi 3mo ago
  From the article: > When your posts are individual HTML files (not Markdown files or database entries), they can finally be seen as the individual web pages that they truly are. And that means that you can really lean into making all of your posts unique! They don’t all have to be cookie-cutter paper-doll clones of one another; that’s just a bi-product of modern web publishing tools and the cultural influence that they have on our concept of a “blog”. You can now go ahead and make every blog post as special and individual as you’d like. Each post can have its own personality, baked right into its HTML. Individual style, individual appearance, even individual layout. Literally everything is possible with this approach.
- krapp 3mo ago
  I have to push against this slightly. HTML is human-readable and writer friendly. Humans - not even all of them CS students - were reading HTML,JS and CSS on websites and writing it all by hand in text editors for years before the "proper tooling" came along. It really isn't that difficult, especially if you're just dealing with simple websites, doubly so if you're on HN, you probably work with more complex languages on a regular basis. If you really want to "learn and own a process" and be "100% independent" you should at least be able to understand and work with web languages natively. Static site generators are nice (I use Nikola) and tools make things easier but but it's still dependency on third party tools if you don't understand or can't otherwise work with the output.
salamo 3mo ago
I come at it from a slightly different angle. I write technical blog posts with visualizations and live demos. That usually means embedding a bit of custom javascript in the page for the demo. Or shipping custom wasm to enable extreme semantic model compression. I do this by pushing content from my machine to github pages which is wired up to my subdomain. If github pages stops being a good, free option for this, I will find another. Not sure I would call this "hardcore" really.
5701652400 3mo ago
you still need domain and static IP with this setup. and volumetric DDoS protection, ASN IP blocklists, and CDN — is not even mentioned here. just use Cloudflare. get all this for free (except domain).
Illniyar 3mo ago
This is a pretty weird article/movement. The greatest hurdle is almost definitely a domain name, which if you want to own the content you have to get. Which even the cheapest would cost you around 6$ a year. (I'm ignoring the "tk" tld, which is kind of a honeypot) And you can host for a static site for free in a million places. CDNs free tiers are enough for individuals. I don't get the preoccupation with hosting your own server, what matters is that you own your own identifier (in this case a domain name) whatever it points is vastly less important.
- cowboy_henk 3mo ago
  6USD per year adds about 0.016USD per day. Definitely more, still pretty cheap.
- hvb2 3mo ago
  > I don't get the preoccupation with hosting your own server The field of software engineering is dominated by the smart people that do something not because they have to but out of curiosity. I've hired a bunch of people and I was always looking for curiosity and drive most of all. A degree doesn't help you if you don't care.
  - latexr 3mo ago
    > The field of software engineering is dominated by the smart people that do something not because they have to but out of curiosity. Emphasis mine. We wish. I think the state of tech pretty conclusively demonstrates those people aren’t the ones who dominate. Money and power hungry tech bros do, which is why everything is shit and exploitative.
    - hvb2 3mo ago
      The tech bros are the ones that control the companies, not the field of software engineering.
      - latexr 3mo ago
nathias 3mo ago
I'm just paying for the domain...
2b3a51 3mo ago
Just a call out for sdf.org. Perhaps useful for those training developers mentioned in some posts here who need the TIL experience with unix based systems. Free shell account on a netbsd unix, and I recollect that a small one-off donation provides access to Web space and other enhancements. Choose the login name wisely as that becomes the subdomain for the Web space.
5701652400 3mo ago
this would work if we had free DNS. solving DNS to be trully decentralized and free is something for years I wish I had more time to work on and build key properties: 1. everyone can be a registar. your localhost too 2. blockchain proof of ownership and discovery (certs, not proof-of-work, fast and cheap ledger) 3. everyone can be a CA (self-signed certs pinned in blockchain) 4. no fixation on static IPs (inspired by Cloudflare Tunnels, Tailscale). IPs are ephemeral. 5. blockchain/P2P discovery of domains but it is all fantasy without real browsers support (Chrome, Safari). 99.999% of traffic is locked there, and both controlled by monopolies Google / Apple. and you cannot even build your own browser (Apple App Store will not allow it). Maybe alternative stores and some proxies / translation layer from normal web to this web would help.
- bunbun69 3mo ago
  You can’t build your own engine outside of the EU, but you can still build on top of the existing Safari engine. What you’re describing is technically possible. However, why would a company build something just for a handful of people?
  - 5701652400 3mo ago
    exactly.
  - 5701652400 3mo ago
    if it was up to corporate monopolies (MSFT, Google, Apple) they would shut down whole web and remove other browsers from OS they control, and be gatekeepers of entire internet unless govenrment threaten them break them up or block them.. oh wait.
  - 5701652400 3mo ago
    so the only way to make this happen is independent SWEs build their own browser. AND significant portion of users will start use it exclusively AND it survives and crashes competition from OS controlled browsers (Chrome/Safari) AND OS does not block/remove them from OS controlled app stores (which they can and regularly do, just look at "Hey" or "Brave"). you got to go full own hardware stack. now only China can reallistically pull this off. China has own hardward stack. (actually entirety of all hardware stacks. it is all build there). China has own playstores or higly regulated versions of Apple/Google play stores. China has mini-apps ecosystem which is more resilient to App Store whims. and pretty much China is only place that can reallistically negotiate and push back to Google/Apple. nobody else can stand a chance. so free web is only possible in China pretty much. and future of free web is there.
mattlondon 3mo ago
Personally I have used GitHub pages and cloudflare pages for hosting static sites and have been very happy with them considering the zero cost involved. I don't think there is much difference between paying nearlyfreespeech (which I have done in the past) Vs using GitHub or cloudflare - you are still reliant on a third party for actual hosting. I don't really see any value in self-hosting myself - apart from nerdy satisfaction etc, I don't see the need. The important part in my mind is the fact that I am manually controlling the assets - the HTML the images etc. Simple files on disk. The git integration with GitHub and cloudflare though is obviously a huge boon though as now I have an off-site backup, and publishing is even more seamless than the old FTP/sftp days - just push to master from within vscode where you are editing the files anyway and it'll be live in 30 seconds (as well as backed up).
- pards 3mo ago
  Same, but with GitLab pages.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  When you pay for something, you stop being the product and become the customer instead. That's a big deal.
  - bluedragon1221 3mo ago
    I've never understood this mentality. Why can't they still sell your data after you pay them? Porque no los dos?
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      So never bother with anything, am I right? Anything could be bad. Why eat the burger instead of the cyanide pill when there could be cyanide in the burger?
      - denkmoon 3mo ago
        and almost every paid service too. Paid or unpaid is not a useful characteristic for determining if something will sell my data.
tasoeur 3mo ago
I’ve been using xmit.co for my static websites and it works fantastic (also free but I donate to the author yearly).
chrisjj 3mo ago
> The methodology No. That's the method.
npilk 3mo ago
I appreciate the sentiment but can't quite tell who the author is targeting. Is it people who don't even know what HTML is, or those who are technical enough to have considered tradeoffs between web hosting options? For complete beginners, I made https://weejur.com https://weejur.com , which is designed to make it easy for even a complete beginner to paste in HTML and get it hosted on GitHub Pages for free. (And is also hosted itself on GitHub for free!)
feelamee 3mo ago
oh yeah, how my opinion changing: - in schools I used HTML+CSS to make my own site during homework - after that I understand that no one truly create sites this way. You need JS, framework, database, etc, etc - now I returned back - I really need only my text editor and HTML+CSS Holy, I love this simplicity
reesexu 3mo ago
[flagged]
glasffordd 3mo ago
[dead]
znpy 3mo ago
Weird to see the author spending 0.01 on their website and $99+tax on the text editor.

258 points by cdrnsf 3mo ago

The cost doesn't really matter as much as the payment methods, especially at that price point. Payment methods are inherently discriminatory.

variety8675 3mo ago

It is nice to see a site preaching this that isn't hosted by Cloudflare or GitHub Pages

konsalexee 3mo ago
Or even Vercel/Netlify
Cider9986 3mo ago
I appreciate Cloudflare for keeping all the piracy sites running, though.
odie5533 3mo ago
Github Pages is free hosting with domains and ssl, no bills, and has good longevity and prospects. I don't want to worry or think about a static site, and big players like Github and Cloudflare seem to fit that best.
codazoda 3mo ago
What’s your preference? I also “preach” GitHub pages a lot but I’ve also written about hosting on a Raspberry Pi in my bedroom. https://joeldare.com/private-analytics-and-my-raspberry-pi-400 https://joeldare.com/private-analytics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Literally anything that isn't big tech. Small tech is fine. Self hosting is fine. VPSes are fine. Don't use "clouds" - they're big tech, and overpriced. Make sure it's something you pay for, so that you are the customer, instead of the product.

tamimio 3mo ago

Well this is great, even going further and hosting the site itself and serve it instead of webhosts, but, now we have domains issue, a domain registrar hijacking your domain, which is your life work, email, etc., so there’s a need to have a free tld that’s uncontrollable by any entity, .onion isn’t practical obviously.

wizzwizz4 3mo ago
There's no such thing as a TLD that's uncontrollable by any entity. How would you imagine such a thing working? Whatever you imagine: how does it stand up to me editing the hosts file, or the browser's source code?
- charcircuit 3mo ago
  >There's no such thing as a TLD that's uncontrollable by any entity. Think .crypto but without the ability to upgrade the smart contract to censor domains. The registry is spread out across a whole decentralized network of computers of which has another decentralized network of computers that proxy requests exists. >how does it stand up to me editing the hosts file, or the browser's source code? No one can force you to resolve domains YOU don't want to. You can of course blow up your computer and then you definitely can't resolve the domain. What people mean is that the user is free to still resolve it if they want.
  - deathanatos 3mo ago
    > The registry is spread out across a whole decentralized network of computers of which has another decentralized network of computers that proxy requests exists. Ultimately, someone has to be in control of who is or is not part of that decentralized network that is the registry. (Or, alternatively phrased, how are you preventing me from saying "I'm part of the .crypto registry, totes.") Aside from that, the root nameservers is still an entity that is controlled (by ICANN, specifically).
    - charcircuit 3mo ago

superkuh 3mo ago

It's good advice, but one need not even include the "upload it to a web server" these days now that home connections are so fast. Install some static webserver on your desktop computer (nginx, caddy, whatever), forward the port 80 at your router to it's lanip:80, and just save .html and files to the web directory using your normal desktop interface. It doesn't matter if you shut off the computer sometimes. Uptime doesn't matter. Optionally file transfer (rsync, etc) this local copy to a VPS or something like the author suggests. Indieweb receiving of webmention only requires the ability to log HTTP POSTs to some url endpoint. Or you can use one of third party services servers to receive that interact with your website via with 3rd party javascript applications you include on your webpage. Sending webmention can be done with cURL, even HTML forms, or again, 3rd party JS includes.

Jabrov 3mo ago
You need a static IP address for this to work is the downside, and depending on where you live and who your provider it it can be difficult and/or expensive.
- erikw 3mo ago
  You can programmatically update DNS whenever your dynamic IP changes. One issue though is that some residential ISPs prohibit webhosting in their terms.
- tancop 3mo ago
  you can go ipv6 only, any good isp will give you a static /56 for free. practically none of your users have ipv4 only devices when every major os has been dual stack by default for like 15 years. if your isp cant give you one its time to switch as soon as you can.
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    Ehh my ISP at home is still ipv4 only. The amount of ipv6 capable connections only just passed 50% worldwide a few months ago. I don't think ipv6 only is feasible yet unless your audience is exclusively in Asia where ipv6 uptake is much higher due to them running out of ipv4 years ago

busymom0 3mo ago

I self host my site [1] on an old Mac mini in a Swift backend and sqlite database. Only thing I rely upon someone for is Cloudflare tunnels for free. I could replace that with port forwarding but so far, this way is pretty good. [1] https://limereader.com/ https://limereader.com/

tamimio 3mo ago
> Cloudflare tunnels for free. I could replace that with port forwarding You could replace it with something better, like pangolin, either their cloud or even self host it too, and that way you can tunnel to other stuff like if you have a media server where you can watch your movies from anywhere in the world.
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  Yeah I find it a bit funny when people self host to get away from cloud and then use Cloudflare tunnels.
  - tamimio 3mo ago
    CF tunnels will ban your account if you used it to watch a movie due to DMCA/copyrights.
    - weightedreply 3mo ago
      Is this really true? "A friend of mine" has been running a Jellyfin server behind Cloudflare tunnels for years and hasn't had any issue.
      - wolvoleo 3mo ago
        I would guess they only take action when they get a DMCA complaint and that wouldn't happen if you only share privately with friends.
        3mo ago

jdjdjdjdjd 3mo ago

Kind of funny that this is like some strange new concept... Having a web server and putting your stuff on it.

bayindirh 3mo ago
Considering many people doesn't know what a file is, keeping the spirit alive is important, I think.
- al_borland 3mo ago
  The lack of basic computer knowledge I’ve seen from developers is terrifying.
  - cogman10 3mo ago
    It's almost inspiring how far someone can get without understanding really basic stuff about how an operating system operates.
    - assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
      > inspiring You spelled "frightening" wrong.
      - Levitz 3mo ago
        It's a complex feeling, really. I've got a friend, I'll call him Bob, mostly because Bob is nowhere near his real name and I'm about to say some not very flattering things about him. He is my friend and not my job colleague or anything, so there's certain objectivity to this, in fact I appreciate Bob and I wish nothing but the best for him. Bob has been programming for a bit more than a decade. He is, barring the people I know from other countries, the best paid programmer I know, and I know well over a dozen. Bob has no interest whatsoever in any programming language that is not what he has been using his whole career, nor does he have any interest or curiosity in dipping his toes in other related fields, web development, tinkering with arduinos, home servers... Nothing. Bob has not built a computer, ever, doesn't know how to do it, nor what each part in that object does, beyond the hard drive because he did plug an extra one once or twice. More anecdotally I played some Factorio and Satisfactory with Bob, now I know these are not excellent representations, but I expected a degree of order, planning and foresight, I was very much surprised when facing the reality of none of that being present, and I very much did not expect to see the same thing the few times I've looked at his code, but I did see that same thing. I promise you Bob doesn't make up for all of this in social skills. Now, is Bob a good engineer? I really, really don't think so. Is he a curious person? A bit, not much, I get the feel he just ended in CS with no particular interest for it, but I'll say it again: He is the best paid programmer I know. Is that frightening? Well yeah, in a way. It's also endearing in a "Well damn if this guy can do it then surely I can too" sort of way. Money is not everything of course, but it's as good of a proxy as any.

bartlebone 3mo ago

This article is a great example for anyone in their 50’s who is worried about not having relevant skills anymore. Although calling it hardcore makes it sound like porn. Too bad they had to add that term for something painfully not hardcore.

ivanjermakov 3mo ago

> run 100% independently > For just $0.01/day, you can run a static website at NearlyFreeSpeech.net I respect the spotlight on hosting your own websites, but it's not much different from the usual Vercel/Netlify/GitHub/Cloudflare static hosting. What if I want a database, feedback form, social media previews, good SEO? Article says nothing about it. Perhaps that's what makes a website "indie"?

IanCal 3mo ago
You have access to php and a database there.
3eb7988a1663 3mo ago
I get your point, but I still remember that guy who got a $100k Netlify bill for his free plan.
xigoi 3mo ago
NFS supports dynamic websites (giving you access to a full Linux system with many programming languages), though you’ll have to pay more.
inigyou 3mo ago
If NFS isn't much difference from Vercel we should see 50% of people using Vercel and 50% using NFS, but we don't, they're all on Vercel - why?

_def 3mo ago

now the real fun part is how to self-host it on a machine accessible on the net without services like cloudflare or tailscale tunnels.

wolvoleo 3mo ago
It used to be as simple as getting a fixed IP but these days that is indeed a lot harder to get.
tadasv 3mo ago
Fixed IP would be a way to go. Some people pick dynamic dns server so they can periodically update if their IP changes. But IMO it's just too complicated. I don't think there's a good way to go around ISP restrictions, especially in USA. I host my site on my own home server, but I do have a proxy ec2 server to tunnel public traffic via wireguard back to my home server. This keeps things a bit more protected and my router/home network not directly exposed. I'm also not locked into AWS, I just use them for convenience, but could get any other cheap proxy to run wireguard. No dependency on tailscale either, it's just nicer interface to wireguard. Wireguard config is like 5 lines btw.
- lorenzowood 3mo ago
  +1 I use Oracle Cloud rather than AWS as their "always free" tier is plenty to run a reverse proxy. As you say, could be anywhere.
raytopia 3mo ago
You can do it over TOR.

RustySwarf 3mo ago

I arrived at a pretty similar system starting from similar goals. https://rustyswarf.com https://rustyswarf.com, which runs on a very simple framework called Travail. In practice, I found cloudflare necessary to deter bots/crawlers. It is indeed fairly cheap, but you're still dependent upon three entities you don't really control: the DNS, the host, and Cloudflare.

inigyou 3mo ago
You don't need to deter bots and crawlers. Cloudflare wants you to think you do.

pagoto 3mo ago

Recently, I had to make a website for an event, so domain was needed, but what's cool with that is that the domain provider (Infomaniak, with which I am not affiliated btw), also provided 10 MB of storage which is large enough for a lot of things. So for something like 5€ per year (still more than 1c per day...), you can get the domain and the website, which is not too bad

qudat 3mo ago

Very cool! I run a set of ssh-based services over at https://pico.sh https://pico.sh and love seeing all the indie web content on HN! Sftp is still very useful even in 2026

raytopia 3mo ago

Nearlyfreespeech is a great service though not a 100% independent as your still relying on them. I think the closest you can get to 100% independent without running your own internet infrastructure is either port forwarding from your home (if allowed) or hosting a website through TOR which isn't too hard. You just have to download the browser and edit a config file (torrc) with the port you want on the network. Not ideal of course though because anyone who wants to visit your website will need the tor browser and explaining to people that your website is on the "dark web" is a little hard to do. I am a little surprised that doing so isn't more popular on in the indie web scene though as you do it on hardware you own, from your home, and the tor network protects people from knowing your servers ip address if that's something you care about. You could even go to your domain provider and have one of your domains redirect to your .onion address so people don't need to memorize it. There also used to be the beaker browser which let you create and host your own website directly from the browser but that project got shut down. Hopefully something similar will show up at some point. Maybe a website creating plugin for tor would be enough to make it more popular.

loloquwowndueo 3mo ago
> port forwarding from your home Not 100% independent then. You still depend on your isp.
- wpm 3mo ago
  Indeed. I also depend on my power company, the entire global supply chain to provide me with computers to purchase, copper mines for the networking cables I use, oil fields all over the globe for the plastic, etc etc etc.
  - QuantumNomad_ 3mo ago
    Something, something, if you want to make an apple pie from scratch you first have to invent the universe.
    - 3mo ago

assimpleaspossi 3mo ago

I don't get it. I've been doing this for over 20 years exactly the same way. I even ran a business. The server I rent is $2/month. I read nothing new in anything in that article. I don't get it.

codazoda 3mo ago
I see a lot of young software engineers who don’t realize how much you can do on your own and how simple it is.
dev_tty01 3mo ago
You are clearly not the target audience. Perhaps you can recognize that other more recent internet frequenters might appreciate the knowledge.
- assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
  To me this "knowledge" seems to be a crutch. Real knowledge would show how to do it on their own as thousands of us have done for decades and still do today.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    One step at a time, we don't force people to build their own CPU out of transistors.
    - assimpleaspossi 3mo ago
      That is a really bad, far too fine grained example.

analog8374 3mo ago

[flagged]

nosrepa 3mo ago

I opened this up thinking the same thing using NFS, and lo and behold that's what the author used.

ungreased0675 3mo ago

Azure has a free tier that is fairly generous.

bblb 3mo ago
Also the Always Free Oracle Cloud tier is pretty generous. You can spin up a VM or two with it.

codazoda 3mo ago

I created Neat CSS for some Hardcore IndieWeb users (though I’ve never used that name before now). https://neat.joeldare.com https://neat.joeldare.com You’ll also find a free email course where I walk you through how I create a site using it. Link on that page.

est 3mo ago

Self-plug here. I built a comment js plugin which hosts all data inside a git repo. https://github.com/est/req4cmt https://github.com/est/req4cmt (as long as your git service accept http) It runs a Cloudflare Worker for free. The data backup/migration is basically git clone & push There's another twitter-replacement, also based on git. https://github.com/est/gitweets https://github.com/est/gitweets Demo https://f.est.im/ https://f.est.im/ it supports comments via git notes :D $0.01/day ? They are all completely free thanks to Cloudflare Workers / Github Pages.

bryanhogan 3mo ago

I'm building an Astro starter template that also makes it easy to start your own website / blog: https://github.com/BryanHogan/astro-starter-template https://github.com/BryanHogan/astro-starter-template Astro is a framework that uses no JavaScript by default. I also use just HTML and CSS, so no bloated additional frameworks or styling libraries. All blog content is written as Markdown or .mdx files, so it's easy to write and move to any other tool if you wish to do so. You can host it for free using any major provider since it's just a static website (e.g., GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, etc.). Making it similar to my own website which is on: https://bryanhogan.com/ https://bryanhogan.com/ (Repo: https://github.com/BryanHogan/bryanhogan https://github.com/BryanHogan/bryanhogan )

SilentM68 3mo ago

Kind of similar to "tiiny.host" minus the custom domain and with a few file restrictions for the free tier but very similar.

JSR_FDED 3mo ago

OK, if the reason to do this is to learn how HTML and web serving work, splurge and get a VPS. You’ll learn so much more.

jrm4 3mo ago

Old guy here, wild that people don't know this. Like, I have fiber and a static IP. Never much thought about hosting a website from my house because it didn't seem all that special. Maybe I should?

inigyou 3mo ago
Note that most ISPs don't allow it on residential plans, but also won't stop you unless you actually create some kind of problem (no ISP actively polices it). If you're rich you can pay more for a business plan (at your home) which would explicitly allow it. It's fine to host something for friends on a residential ISP. They don't care. If you want to make it a public website it's more uncertain. Still don't worry though, because they won't just ban you from the internet. Worst you'd get is a phone call telling you to stop it.

Brajeshwar 3mo ago

Personal, but I’d rather learn and own a process. 1. Learn how you can get HTML generated from a human-readable and writer-friendly format, say, Markdown (plain-text). This can be Pandoc, a macOS/Win wrapper desktop UI over Pandoc, and many other tools that do this. 2. Learn the process (and the tools) to upload, or sync to a service that hosts the HTML (CSS+JS). 3. Learn the simple steps of owning of a domain, and updating the DNS to point to the right services, such as Github Pages, CloudFlare Pages, etc. As you are not dependent on a particular tool/service/platform/company, you can walk out and host your files (the website content) elsewhere. The post-processing of the raw (Markdown) articles/posts to HTML can be then automated with Static Site Generator if someone is willing to learn a little more on top of the above steps. Of course, it is a fun and good thing to know HTML but that should be optional to the target of “Run your own website 100% independently.” With Github and Cloudfalre, you can hve it for $0 monthly. If they go kaput or stops free, someone will come up - walk out and walk in elsewhere.

xigoi 3mo ago
From the article: > When your posts are individual HTML files (not Markdown files or database entries), they can finally be seen as the individual web pages that they truly are. And that means that you can really lean into making all of your posts unique! They don’t all have to be cookie-cutter paper-doll clones of one another; that’s just a bi-product of modern web publishing tools and the cultural influence that they have on our concept of a “blog”. You can now go ahead and make every blog post as special and individual as you’d like. Each post can have its own personality, baked right into its HTML. Individual style, individual appearance, even individual layout. Literally everything is possible with this approach.
krapp 3mo ago
I have to push against this slightly. HTML is human-readable and writer friendly. Humans - not even all of them CS students - were reading HTML,JS and CSS on websites and writing it all by hand in text editors for years before the "proper tooling" came along. It really isn't that difficult, especially if you're just dealing with simple websites, doubly so if you're on HN, you probably work with more complex languages on a regular basis. If you really want to "learn and own a process" and be "100% independent" you should at least be able to understand and work with web languages natively. Static site generators are nice (I use Nikola) and tools make things easier but but it's still dependency on third party tools if you don't understand or can't otherwise work with the output.

salamo 3mo ago

I come at it from a slightly different angle. I write technical blog posts with visualizations and live demos. That usually means embedding a bit of custom javascript in the page for the demo. Or shipping custom wasm to enable extreme semantic model compression. I do this by pushing content from my machine to github pages which is wired up to my subdomain. If github pages stops being a good, free option for this, I will find another. Not sure I would call this "hardcore" really.

5701652400 3mo ago

you still need domain and static IP with this setup. and volumetric DDoS protection, ASN IP blocklists, and CDN — is not even mentioned here. just use Cloudflare. get all this for free (except domain).

Illniyar 3mo ago

This is a pretty weird article/movement. The greatest hurdle is almost definitely a domain name, which if you want to own the content you have to get. Which even the cheapest would cost you around 6$ a year. (I'm ignoring the "tk" tld, which is kind of a honeypot) And you can host for a static site for free in a million places. CDNs free tiers are enough for individuals. I don't get the preoccupation with hosting your own server, what matters is that you own your own identifier (in this case a domain name) whatever it points is vastly less important.

cowboy_henk 3mo ago
6USD per year adds about 0.016USD per day. Definitely more, still pretty cheap.
hvb2 3mo ago
> I don't get the preoccupation with hosting your own server The field of software engineering is dominated by the smart people that do something not because they have to but out of curiosity. I've hired a bunch of people and I was always looking for curiosity and drive most of all. A degree doesn't help you if you don't care.
- latexr 3mo ago
  > The field of software engineering is dominated by the smart people that do something not because they have to but out of curiosity. Emphasis mine. We wish. I think the state of tech pretty conclusively demonstrates those people aren’t the ones who dominate. Money and power hungry tech bros do, which is why everything is shit and exploitative.
  - hvb2 3mo ago
    The tech bros are the ones that control the companies, not the field of software engineering.
    - latexr 3mo ago

nathias 3mo ago

I'm just paying for the domain...

2b3a51 3mo ago

Just a call out for sdf.org. Perhaps useful for those training developers mentioned in some posts here who need the TIL experience with unix based systems. Free shell account on a netbsd unix, and I recollect that a small one-off donation provides access to Web space and other enhancements. Choose the login name wisely as that becomes the subdomain for the Web space.

5701652400 3mo ago

this would work if we had free DNS. solving DNS to be trully decentralized and free is something for years I wish I had more time to work on and build key properties: 1. everyone can be a registar. your localhost too 2. blockchain proof of ownership and discovery (certs, not proof-of-work, fast and cheap ledger) 3. everyone can be a CA (self-signed certs pinned in blockchain) 4. no fixation on static IPs (inspired by Cloudflare Tunnels, Tailscale). IPs are ephemeral. 5. blockchain/P2P discovery of domains but it is all fantasy without real browsers support (Chrome, Safari). 99.999% of traffic is locked there, and both controlled by monopolies Google / Apple. and you cannot even build your own browser (Apple App Store will not allow it). Maybe alternative stores and some proxies / translation layer from normal web to this web would help.

bunbun69 3mo ago
You can’t build your own engine outside of the EU, but you can still build on top of the existing Safari engine. What you’re describing is technically possible. However, why would a company build something just for a handful of people?
- 5701652400 3mo ago
  exactly.
- 5701652400 3mo ago
  if it was up to corporate monopolies (MSFT, Google, Apple) they would shut down whole web and remove other browsers from OS they control, and be gatekeepers of entire internet unless govenrment threaten them break them up or block them.. oh wait.
- 5701652400 3mo ago
  so the only way to make this happen is independent SWEs build their own browser. AND significant portion of users will start use it exclusively AND it survives and crashes competition from OS controlled browsers (Chrome/Safari) AND OS does not block/remove them from OS controlled app stores (which they can and regularly do, just look at "Hey" or "Brave"). you got to go full own hardware stack. now only China can reallistically pull this off. China has own hardward stack. (actually entirety of all hardware stacks. it is all build there). China has own playstores or higly regulated versions of Apple/Google play stores. China has mini-apps ecosystem which is more resilient to App Store whims. and pretty much China is only place that can reallistically negotiate and push back to Google/Apple. nobody else can stand a chance. so free web is only possible in China pretty much. and future of free web is there.

mattlondon 3mo ago

Personally I have used GitHub pages and cloudflare pages for hosting static sites and have been very happy with them considering the zero cost involved. I don't think there is much difference between paying nearlyfreespeech (which I have done in the past) Vs using GitHub or cloudflare - you are still reliant on a third party for actual hosting. I don't really see any value in self-hosting myself - apart from nerdy satisfaction etc, I don't see the need. The important part in my mind is the fact that I am manually controlling the assets - the HTML the images etc. Simple files on disk. The git integration with GitHub and cloudflare though is obviously a huge boon though as now I have an off-site backup, and publishing is even more seamless than the old FTP/sftp days - just push to master from within vscode where you are editing the files anyway and it'll be live in 30 seconds (as well as backed up).

pards 3mo ago
Same, but with GitLab pages.
inigyou 3mo ago
When you pay for something, you stop being the product and become the customer instead. That's a big deal.
- bluedragon1221 3mo ago
  I've never understood this mentality. Why can't they still sell your data after you pay them? Porque no los dos?
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    So never bother with anything, am I right? Anything could be bad. Why eat the burger instead of the cyanide pill when there could be cyanide in the burger?
    - denkmoon 3mo ago
      and almost every paid service too. Paid or unpaid is not a useful characteristic for determining if something will sell my data.

tasoeur 3mo ago

I’ve been using xmit.co for my static websites and it works fantastic (also free but I donate to the author yearly).

chrisjj 3mo ago

> The methodology No. That's the method.

npilk 3mo ago

I appreciate the sentiment but can't quite tell who the author is targeting. Is it people who don't even know what HTML is, or those who are technical enough to have considered tradeoffs between web hosting options? For complete beginners, I made https://weejur.com https://weejur.com , which is designed to make it easy for even a complete beginner to paste in HTML and get it hosted on GitHub Pages for free. (And is also hosted itself on GitHub for free!)

feelamee 3mo ago

oh yeah, how my opinion changing: - in schools I used HTML+CSS to make my own site during homework - after that I understand that no one truly create sites this way. You need JS, framework, database, etc, etc - now I returned back - I really need only my text editor and HTML+CSS Holy, I love this simplicity

reesexu 3mo ago

[flagged]

glasffordd 3mo ago

[dead]

znpy 3mo ago

Weird to see the author spending 0.01 on their website and $99+tax on the text editor.