With Docker, I think a lot of this stuff is there, but docker isn't easy, so we'd need a hosting platform to play ball. What if the hosting platform gave you a list of registered platforms, then attempted to install them for you? Or you provide the host with a github, the host pulls then does a docker-compose up? Someone just needs to come up with a nice hosting service and a somewhat generic protocol for installs, like Docker.

I agree. I miss the PHP apps of old that were a sub 1MB zip file with all the necessary code included. No package managers and requiring nothing more than a MySQL database. You just uploaded the files, ran the setup script, and were on your way in about 10 minutes.

'"So that next time we say to someone: “You should own your own domain, and publish on your own website,” and they answer with “How?”, we can give an answer that’s more than just: “Install Wordpress.”'

What goes around comes around. Didn't we solve this already in 1999 with Blogger?

I understand and agree with the sentiment, but for many people the, "unzip, upload to the shared hosting they’ve just paid for," steps are going to be just as big a hurdle as running Terminal commands. The linked post treats those parts as trivial, but things like SFTP, inscrutable upload UIs that vary from host to host, file ownership and permission issues, and even navigating a filesystem are significant barriers for tons of folks. Oh, and that "paid for" bit automatically excludes a huge number of people who will not or cannot spend money on something like this.

The answer to making "the tricky technical stuff go away" does not involve people signing up for a traditional shared web hosting account or unzipping and uploading files to it.

I like what Micro.blog is doing, basically making the SSG Hugo available for everyone (but you can't have your own server), but I don't see the other open source static site generators like 11ty, Jekyll, Svelte, Astro offered with a similar easy alternative. I like what Ghost, Bear blog, or the great Blot (and even Tumblr and plenty others) are doing but these are not tools you can use easily with your own server, just like Squarespace, which I think is the point of the article (the developer version of Ghost -- which one can install on a server -- looks more complicated than say Wordpress). Kirby sure looks good, but it's hard to really try before buying. SSGs are really too complicated for most people, from the installation to the documentation (and also publishing via Git commands in a terminal!).

I think Substack's interface is really good for this, but I don't agree with the line they chose in terms of the paradox of tolerance, so I'm hesitant to use it or encourage others to do so. A shame, because I have a lot of long-form researched articles that I would love to share somewhere, but I haven't found the right platform yet.

Giles posted a follow-up to his post: More on the easier indie web.

This is a sticky wicket and I don't want to get myself into trouble, but the "platform tolerance" problem and the "we want the web to be weird again" problem are a little bit at odds. If I have the skills and resources to make a platform that makes it easy enough for the web to be little weirder, but I don't have the skills and resources needed to foster a healthy community and make sure it doesn't let the bad elements in, and if that's something I don't care to inflict upon the world, then I'm not going to get started. The community part, the human part, is always going to be hard. It's relatively easy to challenge developers to build better tools. It's constant work over time to keep those tools out of the hands of world-class jerks.