Several months ago, I came across a thought-provoking article titled Rediscovering the Small Web by Mr. Parimal Satyal. In the post, Mr. Stayal contrasted the “small web” of the 1990s and early 2000s with the increasingly optimized web of today. Our own New Leaf Journal does not resemble the “small web” sites that Mr. Satyal examined, and made himself, in its design, but many of the issues that Mr. Satyal addressed struck a chord with me as the editor and acting administrator of a small, not-entirely-optimized, writing website project. After reading his post, I began thinking about artisanal content creation on the web, and, more broadly, humane web design.
Below, I will examine parts of Mr. Satyal’s incisive piece and rope in some other, relevant content from around the web and here at The New Leaf Journal. After traversing the small and big web, I will offer my own thoughts on artisanal content and humane web design.
Content From Around the Web
I will begin this post by linking to, and discussing, a few interesting articles from around the web. My article picks will be centered on my theme of creating artisanal websites. For that reason, I will discuss most of the articles in part only. However, I will note from the outset that each article I reference below is quite interesting and worth reading in full and considering in its own right.
“Rediscovering the Small Web”
By Parimal Satyal. May 25, 2020.
From the top, Mr. Satyal noted that most modern websites are built like commercial products by professional web designers. The purpose of these websites is to draw a large audience, cause the audience to engage in some way, and convert the audience for some purpose or another.
Mr. Satyal contrasted the contemporary trend in website design with “a smaller, less-visible web designed by regular people to simply [] share their interests and hobbies with the world.”
I highly recommend reading Mr. Satyal’s post in its entirety. It is thought-provoking, and I found it enlightening as someone who did not really use the internet in earnest until 2006 – a bit after the halcyon days that he describes. My video game roots go back a bit further than my internet roots. For purposes of this post, I will discuss certain sections of Mr. Satyal’s article that are relevant to the theme that I am thinking about.
Defining “Small Web”
What does Mr. Satyal mean when he talks about the “small web”?
He explains that the internet first became accessible to non-technical users in 1993, when Mosaic, the first easy-to-use graphical web browser, was made publicly available. That, of course, led to the more popular Netscape Navigator and Micorosoft’s Internet Explorer.
Mr. Satyal describes those early days of the internet as “terribly exciting,” while noting that he discovered it when Netscape and Internet Explorer already dominated web browsing. What was so exciting? “It was the first interplanetary communication system where anyone, anywhere in the world, could make a page and share their thoughts or ideas with the world.”
Several free web hosts sprung up to enable users to share their content with the world for the first time. Mr. Satyal notes Geocities, Tripod, Fortunecity, and Freeservers as examples. People availed themselves to these hosting solutions, making “websites about virtually everything: music, philosophy, art projects, ASCII art, candy, and about their lives.” Mr. Satyal describes a “key detail” that characterized the early “small web”: “[M]ost people who made these websites were neither professionals nor companies; they were simply people who wanted to share their interests”
The ethos of the early web made common the term “webmaster.” As Mr. Satyal explains: “The idea was that you created a space on the web of which you were the master.”
Creative Web Design on the Small Web
Another characteristic of the small web, as Mr. Satyal describes it, is personal and creative site design. Compared with today’s commercial web, which uses standard design principles with an emphasis on optimizing content to draw users through search, retain their attention, and convert them, the small web worked quite differently. As Mr. Satyal explains for those interested in making websites in the small web spirit today: “You only need two things: a web host and HTML (and basic CSS or formatting).” He adds that small web websites need not emphasize being user-centric, but instead, may serve as vehicles for the webmaster’s self-expression.
For an example, look no further than Mr. Satyal’s own website.
Make Your Own Small Web Site
Those who like the “small web” aesthetic and want to try their hand at making their own site may consider Neocities. Neocities is a free and open source social platform that allows users to build their own ad-free websites with the old Geocities aesthetic. I have never tried it myself, but it does look interesting.
Modern Site Design and Gatekeepers
Today, most people view the internet through the lens of big tech. Google dominates the search engine market, and when people find content through other means than Google search, they often employ giant social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. As I explained in my post on using RSS as a Facebook alternative, these giant platforms and search engines focus on monetizing users, making the users the products. Mr. Satyal observes the effect on users: “There is so much ‘content’ that is constantly pushed at you as a user that very few of us actually venture out to browse and explore anymore.” Furthermore, because the vaunted “algorithms” employed by big commercial platforms curate content based on your own behavior, the effect, Mr. Satyal concludes, is “the opposite of exploration.”
Because Google and other large platforms serve as “gatekeepers” to the modern, commercialized web, web design today is focused on satisfying the algorithms of these big platforms. This, Mr. Satyal states, has led to a professionalization of web design that did not exist in the internet’s early days. Because commercial websites operate under the same premise and use the same design principles, the result is many websites that look and feel the same; they are “sanitized” and “optimized for efficiency.” Moreover, because “small web” webmasters lack the resources or the will to compete with large commercial projects, Mr. Satyal notes that their websites more often than not stand little chance to be visited by Google- and social media-centric web users.
Finding Content on the Small Web
How did people find content on the small web before Google and social media became ubiquitous? Mr. Satyal observes that there were several ways. First, there were web directories. These web directories often sorted websites by topic, making it easy for users to explore sites about content that interested them. In addition to web directories, many small web sites included links to other websites. In this way, a user reading one site that interests him or her might find a link to another site with interesting content. Finally, there were “webrings,” which allowed users to easily go from one website to another, much like going through articles on a single website.
The Artisanal Small Web
Having gone through some of the main points of Mr. Satyal’s post, I now move to the point that is most relevant to my project here. Below, I reprint the pertinent passage:
If the commercial web is “industrial”, you could say that the small web is “artisanal”. One is not better than the other. They serve different needs and both can co-exist in an open web. It would nevertheless be a shame if we only spent time on the commercial web and never got the opportunity to experience the creativity, passion and quirkiness of the small web.
Much of Mr. Satyal’s purpose is on site design – that is, how a site is built and for what purpose. For purpose of my content, I am less interested in the physical appearance of site, but quite concerned with the idea of an “artisanal” site as opposed to a hyper-optimized commercial site. Hence, my focus will be on the content in an artisanal site and less on the structure and design of the site. However, I will retain Mr. Satyal’s interest in sites that are designed to express the sentiments of their creators as opposed to the idea of treating visitors as products.
“The Microwave Economy” & “After Minimalism”
Both articles Available at David Perell.
See After Minimalism.
By David Perell.
Below, I will very briefly look at aspects of two excellent articles by David Perrell. The first, The Microwave Economy, examines what is lost when we focus on making things more efficient at the expense of all else. Mr. Perell elucidated this concept as follows:
America has become a Microwave Economy. We’ve overwhelmingly used our wealth to make the world cheaper instead of more beautiful, more functional instead of more meaningful. We don’t value what we can’t quantify, so our intuitions are given short shrift. In the name of progress, we belittle the things we know but can’t articulate. The result is an economy that prizes function over form and calls human nature “irrational”— one that over-applies rationality and undervalues the needs of the soul.
An earlier essay by Mr. Perell, After Minimalism, focuses on similar ideas. I highly recommend reading both in full, especially since I will only examine them here insofar as they are directly related to my project.
Losing Meaning in a World Fixated on Efficiency
Pervading both of Mr. Perell’s posts is a sense that something is lost in the contemporary rush toward standardization and homogenization in the name of greater and greater efficiency toward some end or another. Using “microwave meals” as a motif in one post, Mr. Perell writes that while modern conveniences have their uses, “we should be aware of the all-consuming pull of quantification and explicitly state the tradeoffs we engage in the Microwave Economy.”
(Aside, when did TV dinners become “microwave meals”? Did I miss the memo?)
In the microwave economy post, Mr. Perell uses contemporary dictionary definitions as an example – which I found entirely amenable to my sensibilities (something that should come as no surprise to long-time readers). He prefaces the example by stating that one may not realize what is lost in the “microwave economy” until the trade-offs are “too heavy to be broken.” He compares the beautiful and full definition of the word “Solitude” in Webster’s 1930 to the simpler definition found through a quick Google search today. The former distinguished solitude’s many senses whereas the latter associates it solely with loneliness.
In After Minimalism, Mr. Perell discusses modern takes on the minimalist trend, contrasting minimalism undertaken with a purpose to the sort of soulless minimalism that has overtaken the design of building lobbies, coffee shops, and offices across the country. Regarding the latter, he suggested that its antiseptic qualities are unsurprisingly “the aesthetic of our age of depression.” What is the alternative? Mr. Pernell writes: “I imagine an aesthetic that abolishes the homogeneity of contemporary design and injects the world with visions of a better tomorrow.”
The New Leaf Journal as an Artisanal Website
The above content made me think of how The New Leaf Journal itself is a sort of artisanal website project, and this caused me to consider how it fits in today’s increasingly centralized, commercialized internet. Below, in several sections, I will fire off a few musings on the subject.
The New Leaf Journal is Not Quite “Small Web”
The New Leaf Journal is not a pure sort of “small web” website in the mold of the late 90s/early 2000s that Mr. Satyal describes in his terrific essay. In what ways?
For one, I do not know (or care to learn, for that matter) anywhere near enough HTML or CSS to create even a basic webpage. We do use a content management system here at The New Leaf Journal – the ever-common WordPress. Furthermore, we did purchase a professional theme, which I then organized over the course of several months to achieve what I thought was a pleasant structure for users.
Speaking of users, I do work to ensure a good experience for visitors. The content itself expresses our interests and sentiments here at The New Leaf Journal. While I do use the Yoast SEO plugin and possess webmaster tools for Google, Bing, and Yandex, we write content for humans, not for search engines. But the content must first be what we want to write about, since The New Leaf Journal is, ultimately, a hobby. In that sense, while I hope that people who find our content enjoy it, it is unlikely that there is a person out there who will find all of our content relevant.
Regarding site design, Victor and I were initially inspired by the layout of classic magazines. When I was in the midst of actually administering the site, I settled on our current theme for a few reasons. I do not like hyper-modern, commercial sites, but even if it were possible, I think the designs of the Geocities era, charming as they may be, are too busy and not the best way to present writing content. Our theme, BunnyPress, takes a back seat, providing users with a clean interface and an easy-to-use experience, while never putting itself before the content.
Sub-optimal Optimization
One question that we have been confronted with often since launching The New Leaf Journal is – “What is the site about?” Victor addressed the matter well last May, and I address it on behalf of the site as a whole on our new About Page. Users today have come to expect optimized sites, which is unsurprising since those are the sites that are pushed by Google, Facebook, and the other common content portals. We write unique content about things that interest us, but other than that, there’s no single site-wide theme. I know very little about folk music and nothing about performing, two of Victor V. Gurbo’s most frequent subjects here. He may say the same about the subject of big tech alternatives, which I have written about on several occasions over the past few weeks.
We believe that for people who come upon The New Leaf Journal, the range of topics covered may be a good thing. While it is unlikely that there is a single person who happens to combine all of my interests and those of Victor, there are perhaps many people who will find some of our content interesting.
Of course, people expect a site about one thing or centered on one idea. As part of my day job, I write articles about immigration law for the website of an immigration law firm. While I have no role in the search engine strategy there such as I do here, other than drafting content and designating search engine terms, it is likely easier to craft a strategy around a site about a single topic. Because we are not that, we do not have a clean and simple selling point that many modern web users expect.
On Artisanal Website Writing
David Perell writes on his website that his motto is “Write every day.” I suppose that could be my motto too. We posted every day in September 2020, and I have not taken too many days off since.
While we do not express ourselves through unique web design like Mr. Satyal and some of the one-of-a-kind websites he references in his essay, we do express ourselves and our unique viewpoints and interests through posting content.
This leads to a question: Why post content on your own website instead of on a big platform?
Platforms tend to make the content posters themselves the content. By owning your own website, you own your own content. At The New Leaf Journal, I do not post at the pleasure of Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey, nor can they and their algorithms use my content to sell me and other readers to advertisers. Here, I own what I write, and Victor owns what he writes.
Or as Mr. Larry Sanger wrote when he argued that personal websites running WordPress with their own RSS feeds could be the best alternative to Twitter:
If you already have a standardized place—your blog or web space—then isn’t that where you should be able to do your microposting? After all, you should own your own data; so why not there? There’s no better place.
I could not agree more. That is why we now have our own makeshift microblog here at The New Leaf Journal.
Humane Website Building and Maintenance
What is an artisanal website? I consider it a site run by a true craftsman of his or her form, whether that craft is site design, writing, photography, art, or something else entirely. The artisanal site hosts, or is in and of itself, the product of the artisan’s work. To the extent one could consider us artisans at The New Leaf Journal, the product of our work is our writing, occasional photography, and other projects such as Victor’s music and game design work. The artisan focuses on his or her content first, not on faceless algorithms and stratospheres of optimization.
But what if there is an even broader concept that ties together artisanal website content and an even greater idea? Perhaps we should consider humane web design.
By “humane,” I refer to websites made for humans instead of machines. Content created by humans and for humans. Content that treats humans who read it as humans rather than as bundles of amorphous information useful for some other end. Websites may pay attention to search engines and other ways to draw visitors, but never forget that good content must be by humans and for humans, and that the forum for the content must treat humans as humans.
I mean it in a somewhat different sense than the Humane Tech Institute uses the term, although similar in some respects.
That, even more than artisanship, perhaps, ties together the ethos of the early web and many unique, if under-exposed, projects today. In the internet-context, human-centric content creation and presentation can be part of the aesthetic that “injects the world with visions of a better tomorrow” – as Mr. Perell eloquently puts it.
Making Humane Websites the Norm
I will only address this final point briefly, for it would be inhumane of me (in another sense) to keep you here too long. Furthermore, visions of a better internet is a subject that I have written about, and will continue to write about, here at The New Leaf Journal.
Humane artisanal websites that express the craftsmanship of their creators tend not to be optimal for fighting for viewers and views in a world of algorithms and content that treats readers as commodities. As Mr. Satyal notes about the small web, small web masters have neither the means nor inclination to go toe to toe with the businesses that stay abreast of every new development in Google’s and Facebook’s algorithms.
Progress will be slow, but we can make progress. Cross-linking is a valuable way to create a network of interesting sites that may otherwise escape the attention of the algorithms. Perhaps some small sites should create and maintain their own directories of interesting content from around the web – which is something that I am thinking about as a long-term project here.
Websites should also encourage readers to pursue better ways of content consumption. For example, small sites should make their RSS feeds easy to find and perhaps explain why RSS is a better way to stay abreast of interesting content than big social media platforms. A website may tout other ways to find content, such as alternative search engines. We will all be at the mercy of Google’s algorithms so long as 90% of web searches are made with Google.
Regarding social media, to the extent that one uses it, it is worth looking at and studying alternative social media platforms to the big tech giants such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Finally, always work on producing genuinely pleasant or useful content. Without that, what need would one have of the site, small or large?