Getting Started with the Tildeverse: Old-School Homepages with Modern CSS

In 2014, the writer Paul Ford registered a domain and tweeted an offer that sounds like a dare: a shell account and a public_html folder, no CGI, for anyone who wanted one. Within days he had handed out around 600 accounts, the server began to "gasp and wheeze," and at least a thousand more people were waiting. That domain was tilde.club. It started a movement.

My friend Brennan Kenneth Brown just published a beautiful history of all this called Here Is a Person: Enter the Tildeverse. Read it. This post is the practical companion: how to join, how to put up a homepage, and how to make that homepage look good with CSS written this decade.

What is a tilde? #

A tilde is a shared Unix computer run by volunteers. It is also called a pubnix, short for public-access Unix system. You get a home directory, and your homepage lives at an address like tilde.town/~yourname. That squiggle is the tilde, and it is the whole brand.

The tildeverse is a loose association of these communities, including tilde.club, tilde.town, tilde.team, tilde.institute, ctrl-c.club, and cosmic.voyage. Each runs independently. What they share is a spirit: learning how computers work, together, without anyone selling your attention.

For digital humanities, the tildeverse is a living lab. It is minimal computing in practice. Plain HTML files. A shared machine. A community that sets its own norms. If you want to understand what the web was before platforms, and what it could be after them, this is where you go.

Step 1: Pick a home #

Browse the member list on tildeverse.org and read each community's rules. Every community has its own culture, its own admins, and its own expectations. Pick the one that sounds like your kind of neighbors.

Step 2: Make an SSH key #

Tildes do not use passwords for login. They use SSH keys. Open your terminal and run:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Accept the default location and set a passphrase. The second command prints your public key. You send that one. The private key stays on your computer forever, like your diary or your search history.

Step 3: Apply like a human #

Most tildes ask for a username, an email address, your public key, and a sentence or two about why you want to join. A real person reads it. As Brennan puts it, "You're applying to join a digital neighbourhood, not signing up for an app." Double-check your email address. Expect approval in days, not minutes.

Step 4: Log in and look around #

Once approved:

ssh [email protected]

Type yes the first time to trust the server. Read the welcome message. If terminal editors frighten you, try micro, which Brennan recommends because ctrl+s saves and ctrl+q quits like a normal program. Nobody needs to learn how to exit Vim on their first day.

Step 5: Make your homepage #

Your website lives in a folder called public_html. Make it if it does not exist, then create a page:

mkdir -p ~/public_html
micro ~/public_html/index.html

Paste this in:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>~yourname</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
  <header>
    <h1>Hello from ~yourname</h1>
    <p>I study digital humanities and I am learning the web by hand.</p>
  </header>
  <main>
    <h2>Now</h2>
    <p>Reading about archives. Building an Omeka site. Drinking too much tea.</p>
    <h2>Links</h2>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="https://tildeverse.org/">The tildeverse</a></li>
    </ul>
  </main>
  <footer><p>Made with plain HTML. No trackers were harmed.</p></footer>
</body>
</html>

Save it, and visit your address in a browser. Congratulations. You have a homepage, and you did not have to accept any cookies.

Step 6: Add modern CSS #

Old tilde pages are famous for Times New Roman on a gray background, which has a certain archival charm. But CSS has grown up, and you can keep the simplicity while gaining readability, dark mode, and accessibility. Create ~/public_html/style.css:

:root {
  color-scheme: light dark;
  --ink: light-dark(#1d1d1f, #e8e6e3);
  --paper: light-dark(#fdfcf8, #16161a);
  --accent: light-dark(#8a2be2, #c9a0ff);
}

body {
  font-family: system-ui, sans-serif;
  font-size: clamp(1rem, 0.9rem + 0.5vw, 1.2rem);
  line-height: 1.6;
  color: var(--ink);
  background: var(--paper);
  max-inline-size: 65ch;
  margin-inline: auto;
  padding: 2rem 1rem;
}

h1, h2 {
  line-height: 1.2;
  text-wrap: balance;
}

p { text-wrap: pretty; }

a {
  color: var(--accent);
  text-underline-offset: 0.2em;

  &:hover { text-decoration-thickness: 2px; }
  &:focus-visible { outline: 3px solid var(--accent); }
}

img { max-inline-size: 100%; height: auto; }

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
  * { animation: none !important; transition: none !important; }
}

Here is what that buys you:

• Automatic dark mode. color-scheme plus the light-dark() function picks colors based on the reader's system setting. MDN reports it has worked across current browsers since May 2024.
• Readable line length. max-inline-size: 65ch keeps lines around 65 characters, close to a printed book.
• Fluid type. clamp() scales text smoothly between phones and big monitors, with no media queries.
• Nicer line breaks. text-wrap: balance and pretty even out headings and avoid lonely last words. Older browsers simply ignore them, which is the polite failure mode CSS is built on.
• Native nesting. The &:hover lines live inside the a rule, no Sass required.
• Accessibility basics. Visible focus outlines for keyboard users, and respect for people who ask their computers to reduce motion.

That whole stylesheet is smaller than most tracking scripts.

Step 7: Be a good neighbor #

Write a .plan file so people who run finger yourname@host learn something about you. Say hi on IRC. Visit other people's pages. Link to the ones you like. The tildeverse runs on volunteer labor and goodwill, so follow the rules, report problems kindly, and donate if your tilde accepts it.

Why this belongs in a DH course #

Tilde homepages are tiny acts of self-publication on shared infrastructure. They raise the same questions we ask of archives and platforms. Who maintains this? Who sets the rules? What survives? Building one by hand teaches you more about the web than a year of drag-and-drop editors.

Next week, the series closes with the bigger question: how to move your scholarly life beyond the corporate web. Until then, get a tilde, make a page, and send me your ~. I will add it to my reading list.