The other weekend, I attended IndieWebCamp Brighton and had a wonderful time! I've been working from home for four years, and most of my friends have left London, so events like this excite me to see internet buddies! Like Jeremy said, I, too, feel like it was my RSS feed coming to life!

Notes from the event were masterfully collected in IndieWeb's wiki, but here are my write-up and thoughts on the sessions I attended. It was incredibly hard to pick which sessions to attend, as all the topics were interesting.

Day one - Unconference

Energy Efficiency

I started to follow this topic a few years ago when the carbon calculator came out. It impacted how I added certain things to my website, which also positively impacted its performance. In 2022, at FFConf, I saw a talk by Natalia about a greener web that mentioned how streams are a source of pollution. Frankly, it had never occurred to me and has been bothering me a lot. It was one of the decisions that led me to delete my Spotify account and made me think about what other waste I was making.

As captured in the notes, one of my comments was about how many automated processes are running in the background of running our personal websites. I could generate the HTML pages of my website locally and manually upload the files to my hosting. Instead, I have it on GitHub, which gets my commits and then triggers a build on Netlify and, later, a deployment. For all this cool tech to work, there are servers, energy consumption, data stored, etc.

On the other hand, I promote the idea that your personal website should be a place where you experiment and learn. In the grand scheme of things, my personal website does not impact the environment, the same way that deleting my Spotify account hasn't improved the world, but it makes part of me give up taking space on the web.

I've wondered in the past if I could create some videos or even stream, but not only do I have privacy concerns, but I also know I would feel guilty if I didn't feel as sustainable as I could be.

I really enjoyed the session, but I have a hang-up on feeling like I am doing too much digital waste instead of rightfully blaming the billionaires and their stupid private jets.

Site death

I love how I just carried on choosing slightly less happy themes. I loved that this topic was suggested, especially since I recently dealt with my dad's digital life.

My mind was in two places during this session: how would I build a dead man's switch on my personal website, and what do I even want to happen if I suddenly die.

I still don't have an answer. My tech content will undoubtedly be useless, and my personal notes will only prove that I existed and had thoughts and opinions.

Do I want a banner at the top explaining that I died? Maybe I should renew my domains for ten more years? Should I print my personal posts? I am still trying to figure out what I want.

I keep thinking about the 80L plastic box at my mum's house with my dad's belongings that we picked that we wanted to keep. I wonder what he would have picked.

It also made me realise that because of digital cameras, only a few photos of me were printed from the age of 11 or 12 until my wedding. If I suddenly died, I don't think anyone would know about my teenage years. I wondered what my daughter would like to have from me. It is a digital dark age. Before worrying about my website, I should worry about my backups and create physical copies. See? More waste.

Hosting

I attended this session because I was keen to help if anyone had questions. I am trying to remember where I said this before, but deciding where to host your website in 2024 is awful. The search results are full of ads. Someone who wants their personal website to exist will struggle with this. No wonder websites like Squarespace have an extensive consumer base since they solve build and hosting. But their pricing is ridiculous.

I made a note that I would like to create a blog post where I try out and list free hosting services for anyone to host their HTML pages. Hopefully, this would help someone.

NFC

I really enjoyed this session with Terrence! I've seen people sharing cool experiments like having your oyster card on your nails, but I never thought about how it works. I suggested having an NFC tag on my cat and pointing to her website. As soon as I got home, I planned to put the NFC sticker on her AirTag case. And I did it! Except her AirTag is also an NFC, so they clashed when I scanned it with my phone. I will get back to this—there must be a way of having a tiny one glued to her collar at a distance from the Airtag.

But the question was: how would you apply this to the IndieWeb? We thought of the dead man's switch! Maybe an API/smart URL on the other side of the NFC tag that, when run, would update the website so that it knows I am still alive? Maybe an NFC tag that opens a URL that tells your website to deploy a type of webmention (like a check-in). That would be fun!

I noticed that my library books have NFC tags! I can't stop seeing them everywhere I go now!

Personal Website Pain Points

Maggie initially suggested this topic, and I suggested another topic loosely titled "tech debt" on your personal website. I proposed merging the topics into one session to make it easier to organise the unconference, and it worked out well.

Maggie was curious to know people's pain points on their websites because they are working on building a digital garden tool (which sounds incredible).

I shared how I have so many regrets about decisions I made on this website: URLs, asset locations, organisation, very old code that still hasn't been refactored, etc.

It was amusing to realise that the way I organise my blog posts' URLs, which I regret, is how many people wanted to do on their websites.

I've recently made better mental efforts to avoid allowing tech debt to paralyse me and make me feel like my blog codebase has to be perfect.

Day two - Hands-on

My day started by sitting down with Paul and trying out IndieKit. I've been dreaming of creating my micropub endpoint, but lack of time and confidence has stalled me. We got it working! It turns out that having sat down together to try to run it allowed us to spot some bugs and gave Paul a different perspective on how another person could use their tool. I loved it! Now, I need to work on my plug-in to ensure the templates are created for my specific needs. After that, I will be unstoppable!

This took a chunk of the morning, so I needed an achievable task after it. I decided to add a privacy page to my blog. A while back, through my analytics, I saw someone having thoughts and opinions on my analytics usage and the way it was worded made it sound like I used trackers of the invasive kind. It was time to add a page that clarified my analytics usage.

The day was wrapped up with impressive demos from everyone.

Thank you so much, Paul and Mark, for organising it! I had a fantastic time and hope it will become a frequent event.

More people wrote about their day, and you should check it out!

• IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024 by Mark
• Indie webbing by Jeremy
• What I created at IndieWebCamp by Tantek
• Plugging into the IndieWeb by Jon
• IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024 by Murray

This is clearly the result of living in a capitalist society. In recent years, people have felt the pressure to monetise their hobbies, so there’s a constant state of hustle. We all need money to exist in our society.

In the online communities and circles where I try to hang out, there is a slight pressure to “create content”. It is expected to bring you exposure and credibility within the community and job opportunities. Of course, this happens. It’s a big reason why I’ve even had the opportunities I’ve had so far. I created something, and people saw it and wanted to know more about it. It’s excellent, and it feels like a reward!

Now, it pains me when this reaches the concept of a personal website. People often say, “I have no content to put on a personal website”, and 1) that is not true, and 2) it should not be the goal.

The goal of a personal website is to be reachable. I have a simple landing page with information on how to contact me.

You don’t have to be a content creator to have a website.

Dang, I want us to start putting our personal website URLs in our lanyards when we go to conferences instead of social media handles! What is the difference between a personal website that doesn’t have “content” and a social media account where there aren’t many posts anyway? The only thing in common is being reachable.

Just put your name and email, and it’s good to go! That’s content! Maybe one day, expand with a link to LinkedIn or, even better, add a CV in HTML. It doesn’t matter!

Give yourself permission to exist and be seen regardless of whether you have a blog, side projects or “content” - whatever it means.

I am at IndieWebCamp Brighton and I am testing IndieKit! Ignore this post.

Growing up, I wasn’t close to my extended family. My parents weren’t close to them or were not on speaking terms, so, as a child, I followed their pattern. It probably explains why it took until recently for me to experience grieving while online.

I just flew back from Portugal, having spent the first anniversary of my father’s death with my mum and sister. I don’t know if I am lying to myself but I feel that I’ve accepted some things that panned out at the time.

I started this draft in August 2023, just before I started to struggle a lot mentally, and I really want to talk about what happened online after my dad passed away.

I grew up in a small town, and my dad was popular. He was born and lived in the area all his life and was heavily involved in the community. So, his death was a shock to everyone. The news had already spread by the time I landed in Portugal the following morning. The funeral agency that handled his passing immediately shared it via printed posters on all the local businesses and their own Facebook page. This is what usually happens over there.

I think that because he was catholic, it meant that his vigil would generally be the day immediately after his passing and then a funeral. However, due to the reasons why he passed, my dad’s body was not suitable to be seen by anyone. This isn’t normal there, so people immediately became curious and shamelessly intrigued and inquisitive. His body was cremated, and we didn’t do the traditional vigil. We had a vigil and funeral on the same day, two days after his passing.

After landing and travelling to see my mum, I opened my phone. I decided to share on my Facebook account (which I never use) where and when the vigil and funeral would be if anyone wished to attend. I decided to share a link to the funeral home’s website with the latest information. But as I opened Facebook, I could already see it everywhere. My body felt a shiver as I saw the original post of the funeral home already with dozens of comments, dozens more shares and reactions.

Most comments were sending condolences and expressing their shock at the news. But of course, the nosy people are also online. Comments like “Why can’t we see his body?”, “What did he die of?” gave me a glimpse of what families of crime victims feel like when people speculate online. I couldn’t stop scrolling. I would click on their profile to see if they were Facebook friends with my dad. I wanted to understand their rationale for thinking it was appropriate to ask such things. I remember one comment that said something along the lines of “Oh, I don’t recognise him”, and then someone else replied, “It’s [my mum’s name]’s husband.” while tagging my mum. I wanted to scream. I wanted to teach them manners. But I just froze.

That evening, I was tasked with deleting his social media accounts. His phone was still vibrating from all the group chats he was in and from getting calls. It was strange. I know this isn’t a unique experience, but like I said, I have never dealt with it before.

I entered his Facebook account, downloaded his photos and attempted to delete the account. I don’t remember the details now, but it was extremely difficult to delete his Instagram account. I think I did it right. I haven’t had the guts to check yet. It was a long day, and I went to sleep.

The following day, during his vigil, I went outside the chapel to greet a friend. I had someone come up to me, all cheerful, asking me, unknowing that I was his daughter, who exactly was he. “My father”, I said with an awkward, pleasant tone.

“Oh. He was young,” she replied.

“I know.”

I could hear the whispers of people gossiping over the alleged state of his body. They said the “funeral home” was shocked and had never seen anything like it. I was sore, but I couldn’t make a scene.

The evening after the funeral, I checked his phone. I shouldn’t, but I read the unread messages. He was in a group chat, and I saw someone breaking the news to the whole group. Their reactions, shock, confusion, them wondering about us, them organising a funeral bouquet. Then, a random question about something else (I don’t remember what), and the reply was, “What should we do about his number here? His daughters might be getting all these messages”. They didn’t know what to do. I suppose none of them wanted to remove him from the group, but it was haunting at the time. Someone brought back his last message to the group. There were messages about what they would bring to the funeral, when to meet up, etc.

Then, after the funeral, someone asked about a dinner and drinks they had arranged before this all happened and what the plans were. I had reached the bottom of the group chat. Life carried on for everyone (as it should). I removed him from the group and hoped it allowed them to talk freely and carry on.

While everyone was asleep, I went back to Facebook to check the latest tattle. Then I shared on my own profile a handful of tributes shared on Facebook by the communities he was involved in and employers.

I was angry because he deserved more respect and dignity in this death. And while I am thankful to the hundreds who attended and paid their respects, I am seething over the ones who wanted to be entertained.

While life seemed to have stopped for us, it didn’t for everyone else. Soon after, another tragedy struck someone in the town, and now they were in the spotlight instead. I pushed back my feelings and focused on supporting my mum.

Two weeks later, I needed to find something, so I remembered that I had shared it on my Facebook profile, and since I so rarely post, I would be super quick to find it. It was. But by scrolling through my own profile, I also saw that his employer removed their tribute post.

I guess it didn’t match the aesthetic.

I recently built a page where a positioned sticky element would appear when another element wasn't visible anymore. For this, I used the intersection observer.

Later on, it was noticed that on an iPhone using Safari, it was as if this sticky item would start blinking, appearing and disappearing at certain scroll positions.

I had no idea why, but eventually, I found a comment buried on a GitHub thread that fixed my issue. I replaced position: sticky with position: fixed, and it got fixed! Why? I don't know. But now I know, I guess.

The project I was working on wasn't using React or any other JavaScript framework. Still, sometimes, the framework used is a red herring. It's best not to dismiss search results based on their title and just have a look.