Manifestos

Manifestos & Old-School Websites

This Page is Designed to Last
(https://jeffhuang.com/designed_to_last/)

"seven unconventional guidelines in how we handle websites designed to be informative, to make them easy to maintain and preserve"

Everyone should become an HTML expert
(https://xhtml.club/everyone-should-become-an-html-expert.html)

Why?

1. it is easy to pickup and easy to master
2. it provides a better understanding of website structure
3. it allows you to attain your own web freedom

List of Manifestos of the Web Revival
(https://wiki.melonland.net/manifestos)

"There is a long history of digital manifesto writing; going all the way back to the Hacker Manifesto from 1986 and the Indie Web Manifesto from 1997...A web manifesto can be as simple as a document explaining why you wanted to create a site"

web0
(https://web0.small-web.org/)

"web0 is web3 without all the corporate right-libertarian Silicon Valley bullshit."

Breaking Tweets: A Web0 Manifesto
(https://chaiaeran.neocities.org/manifesto)

"Massive tech monopolies have consolidated and corporatized the Web and made consumers out of users, reshaping discourse into the form that best facilitates corporate profit, not robust human connection... What if we brought back the Old Web, with personal websites, moderated forums and chatrooms, and webmasters coding sites with good old-fashioned HTML and CSS? Anyone can host their own site, so there's no big monopolistic corporation sitting in the center tracking everyone's data, and everyone can make their site look and feel however they want; HTML and CSS are far more powerful than the measly offerings of link-in-bio services like Carrd or link.tree."

A manifesto of sorts; or, my love letter to the personal website
(https://aroceu.com/manifesto)

"Like many people on the internet my age, I hate the enshittification of things that used to be free and fun."

The Modern Web Sucks: And what can be done about it
(https://www.akpain.net/blog/the-modern-web-sucks/)

"The modern web is huge. It's a shame that most of it is kinda rubbish"

Old Web, New Web, Indie Web
(https://petermolnar.net/article/old-web-new-web-indie-web/)

see the list of manifestos at the bottom

Make Boring Websites
(https://dx.bearblog.dev/make-boring-websites/)

"In today's fast-paced society, there is no tool more powerful than the ability to comprehend information efficiently. Why should we give this up just for some corporate overlord's convenience?"

I'm a fucking webmaster
(https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/)

XHTML Club
(https://xhtml.club/)

"Xtreme HyperText Movement for Luddites"

"Our websites were pretty damned ugly. Instead of worrying about window dressing, we focused on words, hierarchy, and structure. Each new page started in a text editor"

Why we hate AI
(https://gomakethings.com/why-we-hate-ai/)

"I hate AI with every fiber of my being.

• It's environmentally destructive.
• It's theft without attribution.
• It makes our work worse.
• It's wrong a lot..."

Against AI (pdf)
(https://mctavish.work/library/notesUMDPanel2023.pdf)

"Large language models in the classroom: the case for resistance"

Plain text
(https://northernaction.org/padillaText2025-06-10.txt)

What else is needed? — just the text: transcript of a speech by Senator Alex Padilla

UNIX Manifesto
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)

Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

The World Wide Web Consortiun (W3C)
(https://www.w3.org/)

"Making the web work. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web based on the principles of accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security."