Newsonaut: Turning inner space into outer space

Sunday, June 14, 2026

I’m happy to join the IndieWeb Webring but it wasn’t exactly easy

In my newfound zeal for the indie web, I joined the IndieWeb Webring. You can see my version of it at the bottom of the page.

You get some code to copy and paste into your site, but as I soon discovered, the presentation can be whatever you imagine it to be. I wanted to make mine obvious but also fit in with the Newsonaut style.

Going from site to site on the ring, I found all manner of implementation. Some were big and bold, others were tiny or hidden in an accordion. Some were part of a site interface that was almost entirely inscrutable. And then there were some that I swear were missing entirely.

Are you allowed to do break the ring? Shouldn’t you get kicked off for doing that?

Also, it seems a bit like cheating if you make the next site in the ring open in a new tab. Is it because they're hoping visitors will stay on their site longer?

I’m assuming that people who choose to be part of the IndieWeb Webring must be at least a bit tech savvy, given the requirement that you must use IndieAuth on your site.

I read this article and was no wiser as to what that meant. After some digging around, I found a service that makes it much easier.

Being part of the web ring means you can be included in a directory, but only if you include something called an h-card on your site. This was new to me, but I eventually figured it out.

So where, you might ask, is my h-card? Well, I hid it with display: none, because I couldn’t think of a way to make it work with my layout. Ideally, it would be on the About page, but IndieWeb Webring wasn’t able to find it there.

I’m of two minds about this whole experience. On the one hand, it seems unnecessarily difficult to join. Luckily for me, I’m used to working with code so it didn’t scare me off. On the other hand, it might be a good way of making sure the web ring doesn’t get overrun with bots and opportunists.