Indie Web Before Web3: Owning Your Domain Since 2001
The early 2000s web was less about platforms and more about places. Not the infinite feeds we scroll today, but literal domains, personal websites that you owned, coded, and curated yourself. By 2001, staking a claim online meant buying a domain, setting up hosting, and uploading your own HTML, GIFs, and maybe a clunky guestbook. It was rough, sometimes ugly, but it was yours.
Before Web3 promised tokens and wallets, the Indie Web already embodied digital ownership. Its ethos was simple: your corner of the Internet should belong to you, not to a corporation. And back then, you didn’t need a blockchain to prove it, you just required ftp.
Era of Digital Homesteading
Registering a domain in 2001 felt like planting a flag. Services like Network Solutions and later GoDaddy opened the gates, making it possible for anyone to secure myname.com.
Your site wasn’t rented space on someone else’s app. It was an archive, a portfolio, and a soapbox rolled into one. Unlike today’s fragile social accounts, if your host folded, you could pick up your files and move. That sense of portability defined the Indie Web: ownership was more practical.
Decentralized Network Before the Name
The early 2000s personal web was a patchwork of blogs, zines, and hand-coded experiments. What connected them wasn’t a central feed but links—blogrolls, webrings, and static “links” pages.
This was the first decentralized social graph. You didn’t need a platform’s permission to join. You bought a domain, wrote some HTML, and you were live. Discovery happened through hyperlinks and word of mouth, not algorithms. It was fragile, imperfect, and deeply human.
Blogging as Identity
By 2001, blogging tools like Blogger and Movable Type were lowering barriers. They allow you to publish more easily while maintaining ownership. Soon, WordPress would follow and become the backbone of countless personal sites.
Blogging turned websites into identities. You weren’t constrained by character limits or algorithmic nudges. You could customize templates, control archives, and move your content freely. For many founders, this was their first taste of building a digital brand on their own terms.
Platforms Take the Stage
By the mid-2000s, the gravity shifted. MySpace, then Facebook, then Twitter offered free hosting and instant audiences. Most users abandoned the hassle of managing servers. The Indie Web ethos dimmed as people moved into walled gardens.
It was a trade: discovery and convenience in exchange for ownership. The result was a more standardized Internet, but also a more centralized one.
Web3 Déjà Vu
Fast forward two decades. Web3 arrived with a familiar pitch: digital sovereignty, decentralized identities, permanence. It sounded revolutionary, until you remembered the Indie Web had already delivered those promises in 2001.
RSS feeds, portable domains, and open publishing were sovereignty in practice, not speculation. The difference? Back then, the currency was curiosity and pride. Today, it’s cryptography and speculation.
For Founders
Revisiting the Indie Web matters because its ethos remains relevant. For founders, three lessons stand out:
- Control is non-negotiable: Platforms change, pivot, or vanish. Your domain remains.
- Community grows from roots, not algorithms: Slow, organic connections last longer than viral spikes.
- Independence signals seriousness: A site under your name still conveys more credibility than a profile you don’t own.
These principles weren’t just true in 2001. They’re truer now, when digital identity is often rented rather than owned.
Reclaiming Your Web
Owning a domain in 2001 meant configuring servers, editing HTML, and troubleshooting broken CSS. Today it’s almost trivial. You can buy a domain for a few dollars. Hosting is cheap and scalable. Tools like Ghost, Hugo, or Jekyll make publishing frictionless. Distribution can run through RSS or newsletters.
In other words, the Indie Web spirit never died. It’s easier than ever to reclaim, if you’re willing to treat your domain as home base and platforms as satellites.
The Indie Web before Web3 wasn’t perfect. Sites broke. Links rotted. Designs were clumsy. However, its central principle, that you should own your online presence, was timeless.
Founders today can rediscover that blueprint. Don’t lease your identity. Don’t rely on feeds that can turn off overnight. Own your name, own your story, and let platforms orbit around it.
Because in truth, decentralization wasn’t born with Web3. It started in 2001, with ordinary people buying domains and making the Internet their own.