lost sites
This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.
lost sites are former sites (including IndieWeb sites) on domains that the owner abandoned or lost control over (AKA domain deaths), are unresponsive or often taken over by other parties, sometimes turned into zombies; links to such domains should be replaced with Internet Archive versions.
Note: a site that removes large (most or all) of its content has experienced a site-death and the domain owner may still be the same, they may use it for some other purpose. It's not a "lost site" in that regard since the owner still maintains control over it, and may restore some or most of the content eventually.
Why document
This section is a stub. You can help the IndieWebCamp wiki by expanding it.
We document lost sites that are relevant or mentioned in the IndieWeb, or technologies that the IndieWeb is based on, or related projects & proposals, so if people go looking for them, there is some chance theyβll find this page and learn what happened to such sites.
We also document lost sites as a substitute for old links on the wiki. Instead of linking to the lost site, we link to its domain as a page on this wiki e.g. indieweb.xyz instead of https://indieweb.xyz.
How to document
This section is a stub. You can help the IndieWebCamp wiki by expanding it.
How to document lost sites:
- Keep in mind, be kind. Most lost sites were a personal effort or possibly a hobby or other labor of love that the creator/maintainer either ran out of time to maintain (see: life happens), or otherwise forgot or lost interest. When you document a lost site, be kind as to possible reasons etc.
- What to document any site/domain that has/had links on the IndieWeb wiki (or mentioned in chat) is worth documenting because
- Create a domain page or redirect when you find a lost site, create a page (or redirect to an existing page about that person, project, or org) for its domain here on the wiki so there's a place to relink other links to that domain on the wiki.
- Add it to a list below
- IndieWeb Examples: for former IndieWeb sites, e.g. mentioned in an IndieWeb Examples section on another page on the wiki
- Notable Independent Sites: other independent sites (personal sites) that were never explicit IndieWeb Examples per se.
- Other Examples: other domains that the IndieWeb wiki linked to at some point or another
- Consider adding to site-deaths or zombies
- site-deaths: If the lost site also lost a lot of profiles and content from other people, add it to site-deaths.
- zombies: If the lost site has been squatted or otherwise taken over by a dangerous site (scamming, phishing, cryptocurrency mining or other kind of deception), please add it to the zombie page.
IndieWeb Examples
When adding a site here, either link it to its last valid/recognizable Internet Archive version (beware of archived zombie versions), or to the equivalent IndieWeb.org User:domain page.
- goifnetwork.org β used to organize HWC Accra meetups.
- j4y.co was Jay Funabashi's personal site 2014-2016, domain since lost and squatted
- kylewm.com and subdomains like 2015.kylewm.com,
Kyle Mahan's personal site, and versions thereof, lost ~2019
- lionzan.me, was Leonardo Zangrandoβs personal static site on S3
- neverusethisfont(.)com -
Aaron Parecki's blog from 2008-2010, after which the content was moved and redirected to aaronparecki.com
- silo.pub domain expired and abandoned in 2018, subsequently taken over by an unrelated organization
- woodwind.xyz domain abandoned since 2018
- davidpea(.)ch, David Peachβs personal site since 2019 at least
- indieweb.xyz, domain appears lost sometime after 2023-02-26, redirects to an architecture firm
- indiecert.net, domain lost sometime after 2016-11-09
- notenoughneon.com, Emma Kuo's personal site since 2023 at least (need to check archive.org to determine actual date of loss)
- unmung.com, domain lost since ????-??-??, was hosting the unmung service
- Wavelist, podcast curation project by
Ben WerdmΓΌller
- mf2.link, a link preview service by
capjamesg
Notable Independent Sites
- diveintomark.org, Mark Pilgrimβs blog, which he took down along with his project sites on 2011-10-04. The domain has been taken over by a casino and sports betting site as of 2023.
- shirky.com, Clay Shirkyβs blog, domain lost as of least 2022, possibly sometime in 2019 unfortunately due to being unable to keep up with the admintax of updating WordPress for vulnerabilities & exploits. Notable essays:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060210230250/http://www.shirky.com/writings/information_price.html
- 2003-07-01 A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
- 2003-11-07 The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview
- 2005 Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (his own favorite essay)
Other Examples
Examples of domains linked from IndieWeb sites or other web standards / open web / web development or events related sites. If you find a dead domain from a link you previously blogged (or saw on this wiki), feel free to add it here carefully marked up like:
<nowiki>dead-domain.example.com</nowiki>
to avoid making a live link, and to help warn other IndieWeb folks and provide at least a minimal blocklist for anyone crawling IndieWeb sites.
Alphabetical:
- activitydialog.org β building block of ActivityWeb
- activitypush.org β building block of ActivityWeb
- activityweb.org β 2012 proposal for a simpler replacement for OStatus
- arewemobileyet.com, status site of WebAPIs for various mobile device hardware features β now shows a js;dr domain for sale message
- arewewebextensionsyet.com β a one page site documenting whether or not the WebExtensions API was supported in Firefox, see 2018-03-11 latest Internet Archive snapshot
- as2.rocks - an ActivityStreams2 validator, last archived online 2018-09-03, subsequently at some point later and at least 2022+ for a while redirected to another domain (appmaster.io), then eventually abandoned / unresponsive.
- codingforums.com β died ~2016, was for sale as of 2021, now an Indonesian WordPress spam gambling site
- etherpad-mozilla.org β taken over by an anti-porn site sometime after May 2018.
- federatedsocialweb.net β links to federatedsocialweb.net/... can be autolinked to https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/...
- instagrid.me β used to be a site for displaying tagged photos from Instagram, e.g. http://instagrid.me/tag/indiewebcamp however since squatted and turned into gambling spam
- Instead use: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/indiewebcamp/
- interoperabilitybridges.com started redirecting to a Bing search, and down as of 2023
- itclixsocial.com β was a replacement for instagrid, in particular to "Download Video". now redirects to a js;dr Chinese site
- lanyrd.com β Lanyrd β events aggregation site used by many IndieWeb folks; dead / unresponsive since 2022 at least
- opensourcebridge.org β OSBridge conference site
- openwebcamp.org β open web conference at Stanford 2010β2013, currently (2023) squatted by an Indonesian gambling site
- ostatus.org β currently (2022) squatted by an Indonesian gambling site, squatted (by them or another party) since 2018-09 or earlier, lost in 2012.
- pdf-18.com (and www.pdf-18.com) β Personal Democracy Forum 2018 Conference site β as of 2023 redirects to a gambling site.
- personaldemocracy.com β site for Personal Democracy Forum 2014 (and possibly other years) β unresponsive as of 2023.
- pronoun.is β a simple pronoun usage site that made use of Herokus free tier, which was discontinued in 2022 (last working Internet Archive version)
- Github issue to get it back online: https://github.com/witch-house/pronoun.is/issues/147
- stagram.com and web.stagram.com β since squatted and redirects to CBD spam
- stalkscan.com β site went down in early 2020, domain put up for sale ~2020-02-14, subsequently (~2023+) offline
- statigr.am β used to be a site for displaying tagged photos from Instagram (e.g. http://statigr.am/tag/indiewebcamp), got bought or turned into a site for "buying followers"
- Instead use: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/indiewebcamp/
- status.net β was a flagship implementation of OStatus, now (2023, probably earlier) an SEO spam WordPress site.
- userscripts.org, directory of browser aka Greasemonkey user scripts
Notable subdomains β subdomains are generally not tracked / included on this page, except on notable sites whose main domain appears to still be up (and consistent with its past)
Sorted alphabetically by main domain:
- demos.hacks.mozilla.org β taken down in 2012 (latest Internet Archive version)
- wiki.openwebfoundation.org β a MediaWiki that succumbed to spam, taken down end of 2013
- usa10.webdirections.org β a 2010 web design & development conference site that was hacked with pharma spam
See zombie examples for particularly dangerous lost sites.
See Also
- site-deaths
- zombie
- Use-case: don't bother indexing/crawling links to these domains