Have you ever opened social media and wondered why your feed looks nothing like what you actually want to see? Algorithms decide what gets your attention, while platforms shape how you present yourself.
Neocities offers another option. You get your own corner of the web, built around what you care about.
Neocities is a website hosting service that lets you create and publish your own static website. You can write HTML, add CSS, upload images and other files, and make your site available on the web.
You can get started without installing a development environment or learning how to configure a server, making it approachable to newbies.
Its main features include:
As of October 2, 2026, Neocities has recorded 15,945,004,559 site visitors and 362,953,952 site updates. While not as popular as mainstream social media, the indie web is alive and thriving.
Neocities has a different business model from advertising-driven social networks. According to the platform, it does not put advertisements on user websites or sell users’ personal information to advertisers. This reduces some of the incentives for collecting large amounts of behavioral data.
While you will still need to take precautions to secure your data, you can rest easy knowing that the platform itself will not sell you out. This distinction matters when you look at the broader problem of data exposure, with 3,205 data compromise cases recorded in the U.S. in 2023.
Social media made publishing easier, but it also put much of the online experience behind someone else’s interface. The result can feel less like having your own place on the internet and more like visiting someone else’s property.
Social platforms use recommendation algorithms to decide what happens in your feed. They look at signals like clicks, likes, comments, watch time and other forms of engagement to predict what might keep you on the platform.
This framework can create feedback loops. Watch a few videos about mechanical keyboards, for example, and your feed might quickly fill with keyboard reviews and desk setups. The system is designed around engagement. Your feed reflects what the platform thinks will keep you looking.
Most major social platforms don’t charge you to create an account or scroll through a feed. Advertising provides most of the revenue, and user data helps companies understand audiences and target ads.
A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 73% of Americans said they had little or no control over what companies can do with the data they collect. The survey also found that 77% had little or no trust in social media leaders to take responsibility for data misuse.
You can customize a social profile, but only within the boundaries of the platform. You get a profile picture, a bio and whatever other options the company decides to provide.
The same goes for what you can post. You get text, photo and maybe some video. How you present yourself and the information you are allowed to share hinges on the platform’s design and guidelines.
The indie web is built around the idea that you should be able to have a meaningful presence online without putting everything inside a major social platform.
If you remember GeoCities, the concept might feel familiar. People once built personal pages devoted to hobbies, music, games, pets and favorite television shows. Those sites could be chaotic, colorful and intensely personal.
The modern indie web carries that idea forward. Users can connect personal websites through links, blogs, RSS feeds, directories and webrings compared to social media’s centralized feed.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has also discussed decentralization as an important principle of the open web. The idea is that people should be able to publish and connect without everything passing through a single controlling system.
Neocities gives that old personal-web concept a modern place to live.
One of the fun parts of Neocities is that there isn’t a single correct way to run your website. You can build something practical, personal, strange or all three.
A Neocities can work as a portfolio for writing, art, photography, programming projects or other work. You decide how visitors move through the site and how you present your projects.
That freedom can be useful when standard portfolio templates feel too restrictive. You can create a page around a single project, build a custom navigation system or design the whole site around your personal style.
A digital garden is an online space for ideas that are still growing, allowing users to track their thoughts and find links between them. Instead of treating every page like a finished article, you can publish notes, unfinished thoughts, reading lists, project updates and links.
You might return to a page weeks later and add new information. Another page might stay rough for years. There is no requirement to turn everything into a polished blog post before you publish it.
Fan pages and personal sheinfs are a direct continuation of the old personal web tradition. You can collect images, write reviews, create timelines, share your art or simply explain why you care about something.
Webrings add another layer by connecting sites around shared interests. Instead of hoping an algorithm recommends your page to the right people, you can link directly to other sites and let visitors follow those connections.
You don’t need a huge audience or advanced coding skills to have a personal website. Neocities gives you a place to start. Build a fan shrine, a digital garden or a portfolio. Start with one page and see where it takes you.
