Fluorite Guillotine is a love letter to 90’s websites. It was built on the principles of the indieweb — the idea that people deserve ownership of their online presence. As the largest social networks continue to invade privacy and scrape data for unethical AI features, it has become increasingly important to carve out a space on the internet you have control over. The indieweb movement seeks to empower people by teaching them older ways of forming community. These methods are decentralized and designed for longevity, since they do not rely on the continued support of frameworks and libraries.

Structurally, Fluorite Guillotine is pure HTML and CSS. There is a single JavaScript file which animates falling stars and does nothing else. It was a little tricky to implement, but the website is fully mobile responsive through CSS alone. The wall of 88×31 badges and the recently added webring connects the website to similarly-minded folks in the community. Intentional linking like this is how we build discovery without relying on algorithms. Out of every website I have worked on, this one is my favorite.