Edit: I appreciate everyone's suggestions and recommendations! After speaking with my co-worker, I think we'll got with a Managed WordPress solution. Still have a lot more to discuss and figure out, but I suspect that'll at least put us on the right footing. Thanks!

Hello Tilderinos. I need your knowledge and advice.

The organization I work for wants to build a new website. Traditionally, we've used an AMS, which is an Association Management System. These are typically used by non-profits, which is what we are, a voluntary regulatory non-profit. It combines a CMS with a CRM in a proprietary package. It's also entirely hosted and managed by the AMS developer, which is typical for these platforms. Basically a turnkey solution.

We have a web designer/developer-yet-doesn't-want-wear-the-developer-mantle and me, who's really more of a desktop support/low level sysadmin for our small organization. I'm jack of all many trades, master of none.

Our web designer is really interested in either self-hosting WordPress or even looking into a headless CMS. He wants more creative and functional control over our website than what we currently with our AMS. We are very limited to what we can do right now, since we're playing in the AMS' sandbox with only some HTML/CSS and light JS use. Anyway, from there, we'd use API calls to query the new CRM that's currently being built out (it's a proprietary one, akin to Salesforce) to generate dynamic content.

I could go out and get webhosting at like a GoDaddy (I wouldn't use GoDaddy) or somewhere like that. I've done that before for some smaller auxiliary sites. Sites that, if they go down for a day or two, it's kinda NBD, while I try to figure out what's going on and reach out to the webhost for assistance. I literally just did that earlier this week on one of those sites.

But this would be our main website. And we have a global customer and stakeholder base. People are always on our website 24/7. I'm hesitant to commit to doing it this way because I feel like there's so much that would drop into our laps that we don't know how to handle. What happens when the site goes down for some reason? Is there a failover? How do I even set that up? How do we do backups and rollbacks? How about security issues? How do I harden the site and system? What happens if we do get hacked? We've discussed the issues with WordPress, which are many. How do we deal with all those issues on our own? I don't know the answer to any of these.

Like I said above, we don't have to deal with any of those questions right now. Our AMS provider deals with all that. I'm sure they have a team in a NOC or similar that watches the infrastructure 24/7. Part of what we pay them is so they can handle all that. No way in hell my co-worker and I are willing or able to do all that. And it's not that I'm not willing to learn how to do all this stuff, but to me, this seems like the wrong venue and time to be learning on the fly.

Idk. Are my concerns overblown? Is it really just as easy as getting some webhosting space somewhere and installing WP or some headless CMS and letting my web dev go to town? I know my co-worker could build the site out. I'm just not sure if I could support it all during and afterwards.

Any advice or suggestion would be appreciated. Because right now, him and I are going around in circles trying to figure this out, ha. Thanks.

Web devs: what's up with this trend? For enterprise apps, I get it…single sign-on needs to detect what your email domain is to send you to your identity provider. For consumers, I feel like it's gotta be one of these reasons:

• Users don't know about the tab key being able to move to other fields on a page
• Mobile users don't really have a tab key, despite there being "previous/next field" arrows on the stock iOS keyboard since its inception (Android users, help me out please)
• Users tend to hit Enter after typing in their username, leading to a form submission with a blank password
• Security, maybe? In the past I have sent a link and a password in separate emails or separate communication methods entirely. Are you hashing/salting these separately for better MITM mitigation?

Did your UX team make a decision? Are my password managers forever doomed to need a "keyboard combo" value for every entry from now on?

Non-devs: do you prefer one method over the other? If so, why?

Tildes maintainers: selfishly, thanks for keeping these together :)

This is more focused towards those that use custom domains for their email. My current plan is up at Zoho for my team in a month, and even though I've used them for the past few years its been hit-or-miss (especially when using third-party apps or programs).

Who do you use? Who do you not trust? Who would you never go back to?

Sidenote: I hope this might eventually kick off a ~privacy group, one day.

I'm a supporter and believer in the small web and minimalist websites (i.e. NOT "minimal design" websites, which are not minimalist more often than not).
Some examples:

• Tildes.
• Sourcehut.
• HackerNews.
• To a limited degree, the different motherfucking websites (as they are, in essence, websites with no purpose).
• Members of the 512kb club (also see https://10kbclub.com/).
• Tools like Miniflux and Kanboard.
• Pinboard.in.
• And many others.

What is your experience, if any, with the small web?
Which steps have you taken (if at all) to ensure your website is not bloated?
What do you think can be done better both individually as well as globally to make the web a nicer, faster place?

Edit: So I don’t look like I don’t practice what I preach, this is my blog. I try and follow the minimalist principles.

In the 2000s, I had Blogger or a subdomain on some random free host. I even tried Ning at some point.

Since 2012, I’ve had a personal site at a custom domain, on Squarespace, then WordPress who knows where, then Tumblr, then WordPress on Linode, now a combo Bear Blog and GitHub Pages.

I dislike WordPress for how clunky it is, Squarespace for how expensive it is, Tumblr for how obviously Tumblr it is (I could say the same about Squarespace and many WordPress sites), GitHub Pages for making me use git to post. Basically, I’m not happy with anything.

So I thought I’d ask los Tildeños—do you have a personal site? What web host and tech stack are you using for it? What do you like/dislike about it? What else have you tried?

This is sort of a "does anyone else?" type question, but I think it can create some interesting discussion.

We have become accustomed to having many things for free online. Search, social media, news, videos, games etc. The price of course is ads and our personal data. But spending money on these kinds of services that exists for free sometimes feels like a hurdle to overcome. I recently gave the paid search engine Kagi a try, and I spent way too much time pondering whether it was worth the $5. Yet I can spend ten times as much on random physical purchases or a round drinks with only a few seconds of decision making.

Even though we have lived with digital products for decades now, having something tangible and physical between your fingers still feels better. With some exceptions, because most people are paying for streaming services but renting movies in the video store have always cost money, so we are used to that - unlike stuff like search and email which many of us have gotten used to being available for free.

Can this ever change outside very tech-minded people? Because services that rely on subscriptions rather than dataharvesting and ads do exist, but with the exceptions of maybe the big streaming services, few get wider appeal and the masses flock to the so-called free services instead. I find it almost depressing that we have all these brilliant and innovative tech companies around the world doing amazing things, but a good deal of it all ends up with the goal of showing more ads. It is hard to compete with free, but is it possible to challenge the current most successful business model of "paying" with ads and data?

Have you been visiting just too many different social media platforms lately, checking them out to see what the deal is? Well, same here. It feels like I've been a guest every night in different houses for the past month and I must say: I am exhausted.

But it's not over, far from it.

And I'm here to give you a heads up: we've witnessed platforms dying in the past, I'm guessing most of us have been a part of some sort of digital exodus before but I have a feeling that this one is going to be more painful.

Mainly because we've created so much data over the years and the majority of it got collected by centralised platforms. There are very few ways to take it with us and move elsewhere, it's all locked in.

Backing up your data now would also be a good idea, before some CEO comes with up the plan that it should be a paid feature.

I just want to say that this is all to be expected because the social web is in a transition period, and that golden bookmark doesn't exist yet. However, I think there are some contenders for it. What I want to ask is: where will you go next?

I've got some ideas, feel free to add your preference if I'm missing anything.

• Threads: Meta's Twitter clone that will be out some time this summer. It will be a federated (ActivityPub-enabled) platform.
• Bluesky: Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter clone. This one is also federated but it uses AT Protocol.
• Mastodon: The Twitter clone. It's got a fairly large userbase now, with lots of instances to choose from.
• Blog: Maybe it's not a bad idea to set up shop on a platform like Micro.blog (which is ActivityPub-enabled and has got community features built-in) and lead a quiet digital life.
• Threadiverse: Reddit-alikes.

I'm no luddite. I'm a tech consultant who likes shaving microseconds off API calls.

But for social media, dear tildellows, please consider embracing a slower web. I mention this as I hear a few people for example missing push notifications for messages, etc.

Consider that nobody on social media websites needs to reach you instantly.
Consider that there is nothing happening on such sites that you need to read ASAP.
Consider that you will never be able to keep up with the world, and that trying to stay at the edge of some information will just mean you're missing out on some other edge.

Read your town's local news, which is a lot more likely to impact you. And it's ok to respond to your DMs after a couple days.

I think most of us probably agree that browsing the net and taking part in online communities used to have more of an allure, and that in recent years the online experience has been really negatively affected by corporate and cultural trends. At the same time, I have a feeling that many of us probably disagree about when the "golden age" was, and probably disagree even more strongly on what made the golden age so great. So I am curious, what was the golden age of the internet to you? What time or era did you get the most enjoyment and fulfillment out of being online, and what about that era made it so?

Most of the world seems to be settled around Chrome and Safari these days. I remember using Firefox a long time ago myself but then everyone started switching to Chrome and that also turned out to be a natural path of least resistance for web developers like me who had to test web apps in local environment.

This switch happened in circa 2015-16 if I recall correctly, many other browsers have evolved since then and people are looking at alternatives. The Android Kiwi browser, for example, is a great alternative for power users on mobile who need plugins but Chrome won't allow that. Other alternatives have evolved too like Brendan Eich's Brave browser which seems to be promising. Anyone here tried that yet?

I have half a mind to go back to Firefox but I recently learned about how Mozilla Corp is also funded by Google and that turned me off. Wouldn't you rather want to deal with the Devil directly instead of the Devil's assistant or sidekick!

And then there are also those who use Garibaldi, Midori, etc. but I can't go that purist way. I'm way too dependent on the digital way of life and sites like amazon and flipkart won't work in those browsers. What do you think should be the right path ahead from here?

Yesterday, Adsense support sent an email to their users regarding their upcoming policy changes. This primarily affects how subdomains are monetized. Going forward, your subdomains inside the primary domains in the "Sites" section (www, etc.) won't be allowed, any existing ones will be removed and their rules will be merged with the primary domain (such as example.com).

Furthermore, what constitutes a "Site" will also change henceforth. You can only add a primary domain (such as example.com) and the subdomains which are listed on the public suffix list (such as github.io, blogspot.com, etc.). Thus, your own subdomains (such as xyz.example.com or www.example.com) won't be allowed in Adsense.

I don't know what they will achieve by doing this considering they already vet and audit each site before approving them for adsense? In any case, other alternatives to Adsense exist such as Propeller Ads, CJ Affiliate, etc. for those affected by this move but I don't know their efficacy.

I say that after throwing some caution to air because I understand that every new thing has some initial resistance or pushback due to the "past comfort zone" effect.

But having said that, I feel the aesthetics of the old site was much better than the new one. But then again, I'm from the old-school world who also prefers old reddit to the new one in browsing experience, so my opinion could be biased! But even considering the modern web design, don't you think the black icons on the top right have a somewhat odd look? And the "21 languages" feels a bit verbose, the I10N icon already conveys what that dropdown is about? And finally, that scrollable sidebar on the left looks a tad ugly?

I just hope this is just a beta stage or something of Wikipedia's new version and a better one will evolve soon! But that's just one humble unpopular opinion, me thinks!