The Web Archipelago

Hello and welcome to the third issue of >: FROM THE SUPERHIGHWAY! In previous issues, we’ve talked about ways to consume content on the indie web. While that’s all well and good, for this issue, I wanted to focus on how you can participate in the indie web - which means we’ve got a ton of links and recommendations that are dedicated to giving you the tools to create a presence for yourself online outside the bounds of social media.

On top of that, we’re going to cap it all off with an interview with the artist behind the exploratory interactive art piece i-land that’s been taking Neocities by storm. Without further ado, let’s begin!

>: reviving the “neighborhood” metaphor, and marigold.town

In most versions of Windows before 2000, the network browser feature - now known as “My Network Places” — was titled “Network Neighborhood”. While the old title might seem kind of quaint and corny to some, it was reflective of a time when the Internet promised to bring people together rather than cleave them apart. The “neighborhood” metaphor that was often used during the days of Web 1.0 implied a more intimate relationship between places and communities on the Web, and it carried with it a sense of digital social responsibility that’s hard to find in the modern day.

But — as you could probably guess if you’re a long-time reader — there’s a group of people across the web who want to embrace the neighborhood metaphor again. Led by previous interviewee Alexandra, Marigold Town is a web-host that arranges its constituent websites into a semi-literal neighborhood, complete with a city hall, museum, and cinema. Links to sites on the host have designated physical locations on the page, organized into “city blocks” that are divided into four “lots” each. In particular, I got a kick out of the town’s “bakery” — which, in addition to being cute, actually contains a wealth of links to actual recipes for the corresponding digital pastries. I encourage you to wander the town’s streets yourself to find something that suits your fancy — and if you’re looking for a web host with a more intimate vibe than Neocities, consider applying for residency yourself.

>: the wide world of one-way twitters

Due to a certain event earlier this month, it seems like the Twitter exodus has really begun in earnest — some folks have chosen to quit social media generally (a good idea!) — but others have flocked to alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky.

To be clear: if you got something valuable out of the Twitter model and want to move to a platform that is more-or-less the same, more power to you. With that said, the silver lining of these kinds of high-profile platforms collapsing is that the fallout can expose you to potential alternatives you weren’t previously aware of — and if the primary way you engaged with Twitter was as a short-form comedy / and or venting machine, there’s one alternative in particular that I’d like to show you: the status widget.

The status widget — the most popular of which being status.cafe* and thoughts.page - is a way to replicate the Twitter posting experience for your own website. Simply sign up, copy the widget onto your homepage, and then you can fire off as many short-form takes, jokes, or thoughts as you please. On top of that, you’re still just as able to share them with others and catalog them for posterity — and you won’t have to worry about anybody trying to get you to use Grok.

(* just fyi - status.cafe is more popular, but it has a mildly lengthy waiting list - in contrast, thoughts.page signups are instant, at least of time of writing!)

>: this month’s reading: “for the love of god, make your own website”

Of course, the previous two recommendations are premised upon you having a personal website in the first place. I know many readers have heretofore only been visitors to the indie web, rather than residents — and if that’s where you’d like to stay, that’s totally fine. However, if having a digital presence matters to you, whether it be for creative, emotional, or professional reasons, the time to create your own space on the web is right now.

And you don’t have to take it from me. Instead, take it from Gita Jackson, co-owner of independent games media site Aftermath, which recently celebrated its first anniversary. She recently wrote an article which aims to make a compelling case for making a personal website in the modern age. In the article, she touches on a lot of the issues that we’ve discussed in the newsletter thus far, but the personal anecdotes she adds as someone who was actually present for Web 1.0.’s heyday would perhaps be more convincing to you than the hazy childhood memories that a Zoomer like myself could provide.

If Gita (or I) end up successfully convincing you, this helpful guide by former interviewee Melonking can get you started with building one the old-fashioned way. However, if you’re still too intimidated to start something from scratch, there’s still the old-reliables like Squarespace and Weebly — and depending on your level of technical expertise, there might be intermediate-level options that would work wonders for you. The benefit of still having a relatively small audience is that I can directly help you! If you have questions about how to get started or what options would work best for you, feel free to shoot me an email.

>: this month’s feature: an interview with i-land (and its dedicated intern)

Since starting the newsletter, I’ve developed more sophisticated methods to find sites that I want to include in future issues — but sometimes there’s still no substitute for hopping onto Neocities and sorting by random. It was through this method that I discovered i-land: an interactive choose-your-own-adventure experience almost entirely composed of hand-drawn artwork.

Interacting with i-land is simple: you just click on things you want to expect, and click on places you want to go. It’s not the method of interacting with i-land that’s the attraction — it’s the scale. i-land is depicted as a literal island of considerable size, brought to life by dreamlike illustrations of illustrious landscapes and interiors. The only “game” element in i-land is a running tally of which interactive elements you’ve seen. At time of writing, there’s at least 250 elements — an enormous number of which have bespoke illustrations to accompany them.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to sort by random to find i-land — I stumbled upon it again through one of my mutuals and discovered it had over a hundred thousand hits. I simply had to know more about the person behind this, and resident intern cat very graciously took some time out of her day to answer my questions.

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?: How long have you been an artist? Do you have a professional background, or have you primarily been a hobbyist?

cat: used to doodle on my notebooks but more recently took up practicing drawing more intensely since last December. I used to take photos, and drew a bunch of old portraits I took of my friends for christmas gifts, then continued drawing every day as my main hobby for the past year. 

?: What was the impetus for you starting i-land? Are there particular choose-your-own adventure games or experiences that inspired you?

cat: I had mostly limitless access to the internet very early on and felt the web was magical. I could visit my favorite comic book’s website and read strips on a webpage. i had several neopets. spoke to strangers in chatrooms and forums. found dollmakers and the dolls palace. Eventually I lost links and logins to old trojan horsed computers, focused on school, and progressively stopped using the web recreationally. I created social profiles on hi5 and then facebook and then instagram, and email addresses with my first and last name. 

Sometime in 2023 I looked up dollz and dollmakers again and stumbled upon the indie web and neocities and decided to sign up.  I took the city part of neocities to heart and wanted to build my own new city in its ecosystem. One of the first websites I saw in neocities was vega collective. I found their pages mesmerizing. The size and singularity of their project made me appreciate and realize that some people thought to combine pixels and code in a way that made me feel 9 years old again. That feeling is the reason I decided to make my website. It felt like that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus explains the Construct to Neo. It’s my blank space and if I feel like I want to throw rocks at the ocean I have found a way to draw it and build it and display it and enjoy throwing some rocks around for a couple of minutes. 

I like games but never really find enough focus to follow the story consistently, I mostly just wander around the screens - my best memory of Zelda BOTW is spending three hours slowly climbing a snowy mountain. I did play a lot of adventure games growing up, mostly text-parser point and click games from Sierra like King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals, Space Quest, Gold Rush, but also the sims, theme hospital, roller coaster tycoon. I practice drawing and perspective using game screens as references and included a lot of visual and copy references to these sierra games throughout the i-land, like the post office from Goldrush, the Fisherman’s Shack from King’s Quest IV, or the Monolith Burger from Space Quest III.  

?: One of the things I find most impressive about i-land is your commitment to making it a living project — I’ve been making sure to keep an eye on the changelogs. Do you have some kind of grand plan for i-land’s future, or are you just developing things as you go?

cat: There are no big plans other than to keep growing the universe however I can imagine it to. I didn’t start with an island map, or even knew I wanted to do an island, or a map, or a game, so the geography reflects the absence of an initial plan for it.  The i-land development happens as a real-time performance - i upload drafts and make code changes directly in the pages so they spend a few hours broken as I am trying to get things working as I imagined them to. There’s lots of pages with finished backgrounds and scripts, and lots with unfinished ones - if you visit in a couple of weeks, that location might look or sound completely different. The user can hit right or left keys to see the background image development - you can see each drawing progression plus a few perspective changes too. There are also some narrative details that change as time goes by. 

One of the objectives of the website is to serve as a public canvas of my learning progression in web and game development and in drawing, in product and in user experience. My goal is to inspire people to create their own version of the i-land by showing how world building can be done simplistically and incrementally, and also to inspire myself by practicing owning and growing and developing a product. The code on neocities is open source but I plan on creating more documentation to complement the changelog and to serve as source or inspiration for templates for other peoples similar projects. 

?: It seems like i-land’s growth since the April 2023 launch has been quite rapid, all things considered — how have people been engaging with it? Are there any interesting anecdotes from users / players that you’d like to share?

cat: I created my neocities account in 2023 but only started creating the actual website in april of 2024 so it has been growing quite fast - the i-land started with 4 interior house screens, and after 7 months has more than 100 live screens plus a few more in development. I had lots of talks with friends about if and how should there be user interaction. I go back and forth on whether the i-land should be a social place. I did add a screen with a “plot for sale” sign some months ago, and also a mail form and have been receiving some very kind messages about the i-land and pumba. Recently pumba received a sweet message detailing a request that a resting place be created for the island explorers, and I was happy to fulfil my social experiment for that screen, and create a new area fully inspired by that user’s experience. I’m hoping to create more similar experiences and find my own creative way of engaging people and inspiring them to action.

?: What do you think the next ten years have in store for the web?

I hope that more people find a will to decentralize their self expression needs from the limits of the existing social media platforms. I’m curious to see what “the next app” will be.

endnotes and further reading!

• I could easily have a Melonland link in every issue, but I’d really like to spotlight the entire Melonland wiki. If you’re new to the indie web space, there literally isn’t a better place to start learning.
• As always, if you want to submit cool finds for a future issue, send them to [email protected]!