John Ankarström writes about hand-written HTML websites, static versus dynamic sites, replacing JavaScript, and using old computers.
Commenters share his posts on writing HTML by hand, saying others still do it, and one built a tiny static site generator inspired by it.
http://john.ankarstrom.se/html2/
>Sustainability is also the one of the many reasons why my web site is served over HTTP and not HTTPS. The problem with HTTPS is that you need to get a certificate from a trusted authority, which either costs money or is free but needs to be updated every month, and even if you pay for it, you need to renew the certificate every year or so. If the operation of your blog depends on a monthly certificate renewal from Let's Encrypt – even if the renewal is set up to be automatic – it is less sustainable than serving your site over HTTP. HTTP will always be around, will always be supported and will never require a certificate.
>Another problem with HTTPS is that it is very difficult to revert back to HTTP once you have started using HTTPS. Every outside link to your web site will be incorrect, and you can't redirect HTTPS traffic to HTTP without a valid certificate. In other words, once you start using HTTPS, you will be forever dependent on the certificate renewal process.
> For me, the joy is not in having a website, the joy is in building the website. Why would I want to hand off the joyful part?
To each their own. I wanted something functional. A stable platform which is organised. I also wanted to write more. Which I still haven't gotten to do. It's more of a functional project than an art project.
That doesn't mean the OP's website is bad. But that is not why I created my website. But I have thought about Writing HTML in HTML after being inspired from Writing HTML in HTML by John Ankarstrom [1]. But it will be a forever art project and not my real estate on the internet. It's OK to want different things from the indieweb. That's what makes it diverse.
1- http://john.ankarstrom.se/html/
Inspired by [http://john.ankarstrom.se/html](Writing HTML in HTML), as well as
other articles I'd been reading, I wrote [https://git.sr.ht/~acdw/unk](UNK), a
static site generator in 1000 bytes of POSIX sh.
Yesterday I realized even that is too bloated, so I pared it down to 445
bytes, resulting in NEF, the son of UNK. It's more a proof-of-concept than
anything, but I like it.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20238289
And if you want to do this again, see the followup post they made more recently 6 months ago:
http://john.ankarstrom.se/html2/
A much better post on the same topic: http://john.ankarstrom.se/html/
Some people still do this. http://john.ankarstrom.se/html/