Discussion

Other Strangeness — merritt k

protocolture: Lots of businesses never get beyond a mobile number lmao

0_____0: In MX and elsewhere lots of them are just mobile number through Whatsapp specifically. Like they have a phone number but it may be data-only.

blinkbat: Agree but most small biz don't conceive or care about the internet this way

kulahan: What makes you say that? It’s rare that a store I’m going to, even local only, doesn’t have a website.

ghayes: Instead of focusing on why having a website is better for customers (100% it is), the article is really an attack on... developers at Meta and tech other companies? I love a good profanity laced rant, but the entire article reads unfocused and unpersuasive.

system2: I agree, the reasons were skipped, except for business hours and rates. People really need a reason to spend countless hours on something digital.

kulahan: Countless hours? Get someone to make you a webpage, they can use Wix or Shopify or something like this. It’s never been easier or cheaper. In the grand scheme of running a business, it’s one of the best effort:return ratios you can find.

stackghost: Random pho restaurants (or whatever) are usually literal mom-and-pop shops and asking these people to put up (and maintain!) a website is usually too daunting for them. These are the places that tend to end up with only a facebook page or an insta.It's just too hard for normies to DIY, and local "web dev firms" are usually predatory in their insistence on making decisions that require ongoing maintenance, because recurring revenue.Just try to get your local web design firm to build you a static html-only site and hand you the creds for all the hosting, etc.What random hair salons or coffee shops need is basically github pages with bring-your-own-domain, WYSIWG editing that works on mobile, and zero git. but AFAICT no such service exists.

rdevilla: Well fucking said. JavaScript was a fucking scourge upon the web as it convinced everybody that you need to know how to write an "app" to share text and jpegs, which we have been doing with the Document Object Model for literally decades.Websites and HTML/CSS are documents. If you can write a Word document you can write a website. Death to walled gardens which have been the main locus of enshittification of the web.If the CG-NAT problem can be solved one day I look forward to a rebirth of true P2P networking and information sharing with no central authority.

vivid242: I disagree. It is not an attack on the developers, but the platforms‘ mechanics.

vivid242: You‘re absolutely right. (I‘m not an LLM ;-)) And the fact that (I‘m looking at you, LinkedIn!) platforms actively block people from using external links is a good warning sign.Connection with people- this is what I want from the internet, too.

Arainach: Someone wrote and deleted a comment saying> I don't get it. LLMs are supposed to have 100% bridged this gap from "normie" to "DIY website." What's missing?This is an all too common thought process among technologists, so:Where to even start? Well, let's start that every single "AI" company is massively overhyping everything to try to avoid any unfortunate realizations about the emperor's clothes regarding their CapEx and finances. Yes, even your favorite one.The very short version: running a small business like a restaraunt takes all your resources and then 20% more. Long hours, hard work, all your time. You do not have 2 hours to learn about LLMs or to pick which company to pay. From there:* Most people don't know what they want* Most people don't know the words for what they want* Even if you say "I want a website", what do you want it do look like? To say? These people aren't experts in web UX nor should they be.* You have some HTML and images. Where do they go now? Again people literally don't know what they want or need. If you realize you need a "web host", how do you pick a trustworthy one? How do you know if it's a good price? How do you get a domain name? How do you get the files onto the server?* Do you want people to be able to buy things? Now you're taking payment methods and have security concerns.* Your site is live. You want to change something on it. How do you do that? Where are the original files? How do you change them? How do you get the changes on the server?It's not "Hey, write me a website". There are lots of steps that assume a lot of knowledge, and it is easier, faster, and better for people to focus on their expertise and just pay some service for their web shop.

crooked-v: You just described Wix and Squarespace.

wahnfrieden: It is not RARE.

squirrellous: Sounds like what we need is Facebook pages, except as a free service from the government or non-profit.

misswaterfairy: I wonder if Microsoft FrontPage was still a thing HTML/CSS websites might be a little more common?Those were the days...

janalsncm: Yeah, setting up a website is a pain.But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your menu, put up your hours, and put up your location. And a phone number.

weird-eye-issue: Really, it's 2026 and you don't think that there are website builders for small businesses? I'm sorry, but are you kidding me?

zjp: Millennials delenda est. Or maybe Gen X. But definitely millennials. I am stockpiling champagne for when performative profanity goes to the grave. I do not want to order the sloppy toppy burger at BURGERSLUT. Just give me a cheeseburger.

typon: You will be forced to watch Firefly for eternity. Millenials will rule the internet for a 1000 years (a millenia).

asukachikaru: On one hand, I totally agree, as I'm all for indie small web. Haven't used Facebook and Instagram for years. On the other hand, it's not (small) business owners deliberately choose to not have a website, it's customers saying it's too much friction for anything outside of FB or IG. For some people if you are not on IG you do not exist, no matter how nice your website is.

capncleaver: The aside about mailing lists is well made: with the exception of SMS, email is the one method of customer contact not mediated by big tech networks (save arguably Gmail) and portable across service providers. In games it’s the best way to keep in touch with players, much better than discord where the dots accumulate and most members ignore most server updates and notifs.Bring back site specific forums, too ;) But most businesses’ customers don’t have enough to talk about for a forum.

dumpsterdiver: Do you have any justification in mind for the “free service” being funded by tax payers? Why should it be free for the people who need it, and why should tax payers fund it?

tossandthrow: Such proposal doesn't need justification. You can merely disagree.Anyhow. The justification is that it is an important part of a communications infrastructure.Just like the government finances roads, etc.

tayo42: I don't think he's saying don't have social media and replace it with a website but also have a basic website in addition to what ever else your doing

stackghost: I've admittedly never heard of wix, but I was under the impression squarespace was selling "e-commerce solutions" and stuff.

mrhyyyyde: It's very common, almost 1 in 3, to _not_ have a website or online presence (~10mm+ small businesses have no online presence or site) in 2025.

qwertytyyuu: You have a what website? A website that does what!?

ghurtado: I'm not disagreeing with you, but shouldn't free Internet access come before that?

miramba: Menus change ie seasonal, and there is a daily changing handwritten chalkboard: Make a photo, put it on IG. Hours change: This week only opened from 8 instead 7: Post it on IG. Who has the time to answer a phonecall? And who uses phone numbers these days anyway? Text me on whatsapp like everyone else does. Disclaimer: Don‘t use IG. But if I want to know if our favourite pizza place is open (cook travels to football games a lot), I ask my wife to check on Insta.

einr: the entire article reads unfocused and unpersuasive.Nice, a human wrote it! Thanks for the recommendation!

pigeons: And security

Jeffrin-dev: The sentiment is right but I think it misdiagnoses why small businesses don't have websites.It's not laziness or ignorance. A solo tattoo artist working 50-hour weeks doesn't have 4 hours to debug why their Squarespace contact form stopped working, chase down a DNS issue, or figure out why Google isn't indexing them. Instagram just works, and their customers are already there. That's a rational choice, not a failure of character.The real problem is that we never built infrastructure for this. Email has SMTP. Phone numbers have number portability. But there's no equivalent for social followings — no standard that lets you pack up your audience and move it somewhere else. That's by design, obviously, but yelling at the tattoo artist for not having a website doesn't fix it.The mailing list advice is genuinely the best practical suggestion here though. Low friction, you own it, works across every platform shift for the last 30 years. If there's one thing worth pushing people toward, it's that — not the website itself.

einr: Maybe turn off this dumb bot since it’s against the rules?

replooda: "Millenniales delendi sunt." Now, write it out a hundred times. If it's not done by sunrise...

zhivota: So how do I do that? I can't host it easily on the machine in the office because NAT and dynamic IPs have trained us that this is not really possible (it is, buty you have to know what you're doing).Pay a hosting provider, but who? Do I need to buy an SSL certificate, because we decided we need HTTPS everywhere for some reason? What about if my site gets DDOSed? Do I get charged more?So I can use something free like Github Pages, but now I'm under a different tech overlord, no?I can see why people just say screw it and go back to IG/FB. The web is too complicated now.

Lammy: > Set up a websiteI dislike how this article handwaves its own recommendation away. The steps required to “have a fucking website” are so much more complex than they used to be. Mandatory† TLS is the biggest hurdle, because now there needs to be software running to renew your certs instead of just tossing some plain files up in a directory on an HTTP server that could run for years unattended. Gone are the days when it was easy for a website to outlive its author, and it's our fault!† Yes, the fact that the world's most popular browser puts a big red NOT SECURE!!! warning next to any non-TLS website makes it mandatory regardless of the fact that plain HTTP still technically loads. Scareware works on people or they wouldn't do it.

throawayonthe: i don't see how that's more of a hurdle than running an always-accessible web server -- for the average normie (plus managing dns in the first place etcetc)i think the implication is "just use a web host" and i agreeif i was helping someone set up a website i'd either set them up with a WYSIWYG website builder-hoster a la wix (i'd have to google around for a specific one to try though) or if i had faith enough, i'd set them up with a workflow publishing to cloudflare pages; both would handle the domain and ssl for themif they want to take payments then idk lol

jrflowers: > I do not want to order the sloppy toppy burger at BURGERSLUT. Just give me a cheeseburger.Seems odd to complain about the kitschy menu item names after walking into BURGERSLUT intent on ordering

palmotea: > Do you have any justification in mind for the “free service” being funded by tax payers? Why should it be free for the people who need it, and why should tax payers fund it?Because the government should provide useful services. It should be funded by tax dollars because I'm tried of libertarians, and it's well-demonstrated that the free market has consumer hostile incentives that I'm sick of.

askmike: I think most comments miss the point on why many small businesses don't have websites:It's not about it being hard to create and manage a website, it's that the vast majority of customers use social media platforms (as well as platforms like google maps) to find out about shops and F&B. For many businesses having an Instagram page will draw a lot more people than having a random website.

andreygrehov: +1 I can’t even delete my old stuff on HN. I don’t own my comments here. In contrast, I can go ahead and delete any of my Facebook posts or comments from 10 years ago. In a way, HN is more hostile than Facebook.

dickiedyce: I daren’t ask “What have Millennials ever done for us?” because I have a suspicion that it would be a surprisingly unfunny answer.

elwebmaster: What techies are missing is that AI doesn't make it possible for mom and pop shops to create and manage a website but it levels the playing field for enterprenuers. We can't expect plumbers and restaurant owners to spend 12+ hours fighting with AI website builders just to get a cookie cutter-website that is nothing more than a brochure. Nor can they fork thousands of dollars for web design agencies and spend months in mindless meetings. Thanks to AI now there is a way: small mom and pop local website builders can offer a white-gloves solution that scales and drives revenue for the SMBs.

techterrier: Good idea, I did just such a thing myself, deleting all my socials and only posting my photos to my own website: https://dombarker.co.uk/Was fun to make 'just a website' for a change too.

vasco: I'm sure I've read they support this if you email them. It's a manual action but if you're based in Europe they will have to do it by law.

unmole: > Europe they will have to do it by law.Realistically, they can simply ignore it with no consequences.

rkagerer: IMO it comes down to making your stuff available without it being behind a login-wall, pay-wall, ad-wall etc. The big platforms have made it seductively easy to get started with little effort, but you rob yourself of audience by letting them lock up your content behind it. I hope we see a larger exodus of users who take the author's lead and escape the walled gardens.

asukachikaru: Then it's twice the work. For a mom-and-pop restaurant, putting food on the table (pun intended) probably already cost them 24 hours a day.

rich_sasha: A few comments point out, and I agree, that setting up, never mind maintaining a webpage, has become a PITA:- server (AWS? 10 optional services to config etc etc, config, updates etc)- domain- SSL certAre there solid providers who do it all-in-one? I pay one bill, get a domain, SSL certificate, renewed, and a managed, pre-configured Linux box, or even static hosting? Thinking of setting up a webpage for my consulting business and I'd rather not spend weeks fiddling with all this, or (shudder) use Wix.

scosman: Is there a way to view IG pages without logging in? I would love to delete the app and setup privacy redirect.

ptek: Try switching to desktop mode

wolfhumble: They have already been doing that for 10-15 years via page builders and themes in Wordpress. It is easier now, but small players have had relatively decent tools for quite some time.

ptek: Www.neocities.org is waiting. It’s a small fun site to practice with :)

Dylan16807: We should be making sure everyone has internet access, but hosting some basic pages is about 1000x cheaper, so no I don't think free internet access should come before that.

ThrowawayTestr: Squarespace made a business simplifying all that. It's expensive but there are templates and it had a WYSIWYG editor.

gigabyte9592: Sure, right after DNS, hosting, SSL, and convincing Google I exist.

rich_sasha: For the last bit - nothing wrong with the same Insta account with a link to your webpage. Agreed on the first bit.

johnfn: > The concept of congregating in walled gardens owned by pedophilic fascist speed freaksAre we really calling everyone we don't like a pedophilic fascist now? I honestly had really hoped that this sort of polarized, low-quality content wouldn't make it onto HN. :(

speedgoose: I thought it was pretty factual.

orthecreedence: NearlyFreeSpeech might be what you want. Been using them for over a decade and still love them. They handle domains/DNS, hosting (static and other), mysql hosting, email forwarding, and much more. They also have great content policies, ie they only kick you off if you're breaking the law.

tristanMatthias: Great photos! Thanks for sharing!

zjp: You don’t always get to choose the restaurant. Sometimes your friends drag you places.

pprotas: This has always been the case, not sure why you’d frame it as a recent development. Not that long ago you even had to PAY for an SSL cert. Domains are nothing new. You always needed a server.

flomo: Irrelevant nerd myopia. They mostly just paid someone to do it (until they decided "wordpress guy" was not worth the marketing budget). If anything DYI is easier than ever.

999900000999: Alright cool.Your assuming the local government employed webmaster won't favor his friends restaurants.Craigslist basically is this, and it's more or less free.

kraai: I think many people here are overthinking it. OP is mostly talking about simple business website not huge platforms to host. Ddos protection is kind of irrelvant for such small projects. But anyhow there are so many local hosting companies (europe) for at least the last 10 years that provide a free ssl cert, one-click options for wordpress etc. It’s really not that complicated.

johnfn: If you think that everyone who works on a website that is a walled garden is a "pedophile fascist", I don't know what to say to you -- I don't think we live in the same reality.

vasco: Well I've read comments by dang saying they support it so that is besides the point. Just email and find out.

alastairr: Couldn't agree more. Worth pointing out that sites owned by Meta and Twitter in particular have become much more hostile to signed out users - often impossible to view a business' listing without a signed in account. Walled gardens are going to wall, of course. But I'm not sure how much small business owners realise that a proportion of traffic / interest has much more difficulty in finding them.