SBTH Website Roadmap

What Changed with the Internet over the Last 15 Years — and Why It Feels So Different

It's not your imagination that things have gone wrong

By Mike Berst, Saving Birds Thru Habitat

1. The Rise of the Platform Economy

Between 2008 and 2012, Facebook, Google, and later Apple captured most of the web's attention. The model shifted from many independent sites linked together to a few centralized platforms that keep users inside their walls.

Advertising and surveillance metrics became the economic engine. Instead of visiting sites, users began logging in to platforms. Tools like Disqus and social login quietly centralized comment and identity systems that used to be local to each site.

2. The Toolchain Explosion

Where it was once possible to build a site with relatively simple protocols, HTML, CSS, and a dash of PHP, today's front-end world often involves JavaScript frameworks, build tools, package managers, linters, transpilers, and CI pipelines.

All of it is powerful, but it is layered with dependencies that obscure what is really happening. The complexity often serves the industry more than the craft. Developers can bill for it, agencies can sell recurring maintenance, and users cannot easily take control.

3. Design Lost Its Humanity

From about 2012 on, “UX” became a marketing buzzword. The real art of human-centered experience — clear navigation, readable text, intuitive paths — gave way to metrics-driven manipulation: dark patterns, conversion funnels, and sticky pop-ups. In short, the user became the product.

4. Loss of Ownership

At one time in the early days of the web, people owned their sites and their mailing lists. Now, many rent space in a SaaS system. Open source shrank to niches, and even WordPress became a hosted service model for many users.

We wanted to create the website with something that has become increasingly rare: a humanist approach to technology. The web was originally built by people like us — people who saw it as a medium for learning, collaboration, and autonomy. If anything, the task now is not to catch up to modern web development, but to reassert those lost values in our organization's digital presence.

We felt we could do that by keeping interfaces direct, readable, and unmanipulative, and by publishing in open formats rather than within proprietary platforms. That represents a powerful counter-current to the mainstream.

Every added technology has a cost — in maintenance, security, and energy. We should use only what truly serves the mission.

The Platform: Open, Understandable, Durable

ProcessWire aligns with these values. It is open source, built on clean PHP, and conceptually similar to the systems of the early web while being modernized for security and flexibility.

The goal is a site we can host anywhere, back up in plain files, and maintain ourselves without depending on an agency.

Publishing Strategy: Content That Lasts

Our articles, newsletters, and essays should live in a durable, reference-quality form on our own site first. Everything else — email, social media, and other forms of outreach — should point back to those originals.

• Write in Markdown or clean HTML, using future-proof and portable formats.
• Maintain stable URLs — permalinks that never break.
• Use open metadata such as schema.org and OpenGraph for indexing, but avoid proprietary tracking scripts.

The result is that our site becomes part of the independent web again: readable, indexable, and fully owned by the organization.

Communication Ecosystem: Independent, Open, and Human-Scaled

Instead of depending entirely on commercial social media platforms, the goal is to build a communication system that remains under direct organizational control while still participating in the broader open web.

• A custom social layer built around the website and discussion forum, designed to encourage thoughtful interaction rather than algorithmic engagement, tracking, and data collection. In essence, build our own social media platform.
• SMF forum: longer-form discussion, collaborative development of ideas, and community participation connected directly to the website.
• PHPList newsletters: direct communication without advertising systems, engagement tracking, or algorithmic filtering.

The intention is not to recreate commercial social media, but to recover some of the original strengths of the web: direct publishing, open standards, slower conversation, durable discussion, and communication organized around shared interests rather than platform incentives.

These systems are designed to support autonomy, long-term stability, and meaningful participation while reducing dependence on centralized platforms whose priorities may conflict with the goals of the organization.

Interaction: Human-Centered Community

When we eventually open public discussion, the goal should be to use open source, non-manipulative software, moderate for civility and substance, and encourage long-form conversation — threads that read like essays, not social posts.

This restores the disciplined, in-depth discussion that was once the hallmark of the early web.

Infrastructure: Reliable, Modest, Transparent

The hosting setup should be independent, reliable, and modest, with daily automated backups stored offsite.

The goal is for everything to be auditable and under our control.

Stewardship: Skills Worth Keeping Current

Rather than chasing trends, the focus should remain on timeless, high-value skills.

• HTML and semantic structure — the foundation of accessibility and searchability.
• CSS Grid and Flexbox — modern, elegant layout methods.
• Basic PHP and ProcessWire templates — for dynamic content.
• Markdown — a portable text format for writing.
• Command-line basics — SSH, rsync, and backups for autonomy.

That is all we need to remain capable and independent.