Justin Jackson

I am continually shocked at how few people actually care about this. Maybe I am just showing my age, because I remember in college, and even when I got my first cable modem, I could easily just spin up apache or IIS and have a website hosted from my house, with no additional money or hoops required- start up a webserver, pop in the IP into my browser, or my dynamic dns, and there we were on the web! This lead to all kinds of experimentation and such, even if I did get "hacked by Chinese!" when I had IIS running around 2001ish.

Google has been doing a great job of killing the "personal internet" by making it undiscoverable for several years, but now that we require a third party to somehow be involved, and likely a fee of some sort to be paid- I don't trust that the likes of Lets Encrypt and its duplicators to be available forever, the original "anyone can publish" dream of the web is dying in front of us. This: https://justinjackson.ca/words.html does not require SSL in any form, in fact most websites don't need it at all- and the obsession with even blogs wanting you to make accounts and to have to login, its all just heading in a very wrong direction.

Its just deplorable to me that I now need a third party to essentially tell me that I can be on the Internet. Its a huge step backwards in so many ways. And no one seems to care!

I don't know if he is considered a developer, but I think Justin Jackson has some awesome startup advice (for developers). He follows others closely and draws from their experiences as well.

There are two things that I commonly see:
1. You have to fail in your first startup to understand.
2. Just because you had that experience doesn't mean the same person will

I don't fully agree. The fact is, you can always take heed of advice from ANYONE who has run a startup, gained experience, knows what works and what doesn't; and feel pretty confident that those people know what they are talking about.

When it comes to startup.. no need to jump right in and fail like so many others. There are plenty of things you can do in order to NOT fail... and that is.. following the advice of others who have failed, maybe still failing, and found even some hint of successes.

His website deserves a visit and a few reads.. just randomly choose some articles with good headlines: https://justinjackson.ca

He'll pull you right in. Sounds like a great guy who is just trying to make his own living to support his family while creating financial freedom away from the mundane workplace, while also helping others.

I still completely disagree making the web an application platform. Because of the absurd HTML5 cult, many websites are obtaining unpredictable and inconsistent behavior. The difficulty of explaining it to my old parents is increasing day by day. Moreover, browsers are getting fatter unlimitedly and only a few vendors can survive and develop them. It gives browser vendors special privileges. As we are experiencing now, no one can stop this "Disable JavaScript" removing. How can people say this is "open" movement? The good old web is dying.

The web should be words and documents first (I think this page is worth reading http://justinjackson.ca/words.html). It's too late to say but if you want a sandboxed application platform, develop it out of the web. I still believe the plug-in was not a that bad idea, not the best idea though. At least you can disable it anytime and you have freedom of choice.

I suspect that the back button will be eliminated next. Because it collapses most web applications and "user experience".

If the web want to become a perfect application platform, all virtue of the web will be lost.

Hey Justin! Thank you very much for your time on writing this great comment. You made a good point here so I'm going to follow your advice around those tips.

At the moment, the only thing I know for sure is WHY I'm building it. Curiously, I did read some time ago your excellent post about the "The freedom ladder" (https://justinjackson.ca/freedom/). I realised I needed to startup from the bottom. I'd say I'm in the 2nd or 3rd step of the freedom ladder, so I aim to: Make a small project, Release for free, Help people and Build my audience. Obviously, it would be nice to get some revenue later, so I can dedicate my full time to help others with my project, but that's not a priority for me at the moment.

I'll continue working not defining those points. I'll also definitely check your book and related new interactive course.

Great thanks!

Rafa

This already is a nice template. Plain text that responds well to zooming by the user; default colors that are easy to read and make links obvious; a few important images that are large enough to see, but don't take up half the screen like some sites' banners. If you prefer white-on-black text and have a user stylesheet for it (which I do), the site responds well to that too, without any nested <div>s or background-image:s complicating things (unlike some). I don't think that HTML5 web fonts or a whitespace-heavy designer template would aid in conveying any of the brief and well-organized information on the page.

See also: http://justinjackson.ca/words.html and http://motherfuckingwebsite.com.

(The only thing I would add to either of those is this bit of CSS: body{max-width:900px;margin:0 auto;} to make it easier to read on wide screens.)

The manifesto of "have a fucking website" or "I'm a fucking webmaster"[0] or "The People's Web"[1] is something that in the modern age, ends up as a commercialized newsletter or as an e-tip jar or blogspam with a thousand Amazon affiliate links.

The website as a means of personal expression came about because traditional communications media ignored the niches they cared about. Fan sites and shrines covered TV shows or bands that didn't get coverage in mainstream magazines. Conspiracy sites arose because traditional media eschewed them. Today, every niche is covered somewhere, because the Internet became a business.

A GIF site on Geocities was free. Buzzfeed took that idea and became a publicly traded company.

[0] https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/
[1] https://www.anildash.com/2019/12/23/the-peoples-web/