astra bun

You Don't WANT to Make a Website (NOW)?

October 17, 2026 · Astra · 9 minute read

Not yet convinced? Or feeling swayed by the dark side (Attie)?

This post is a follow up to "YOU Should Make a Website (NOW)".

It's also hosted on Apollo! What's Apollo? Well, you didn't read on yet! I'll link the Apollo mirror at the verrrrry bottom of the page, so I don't spoil it for you yet!

Not yet convinced? Or feeling swayed by the dark side (Attie)?

It's been a little over a week since I last yelled about how everyone should make their own personal site. It seemed to resonate with a decent number of folks, which was great to hear! I've seen a few sites pop up using my template as well as other work-in-progress screenshots and posts, which was very encouraging to read.

"But what about..."

There were a few questions and concerns as well, which I think are worth bringing up here as FAQs:

  • Domains are expensive / I have privacy concerns RE: whois data:
    • RE: cost - I totally understand this. A yearly fee to keep a domain name active is not in everyone's budget.
    • RE: privacy - I also understand there are different restrictions for certain TLDs and for certain countries. I am not super well versed in these but I recognize it's not desirable if there's a legal obligation to publish an IRL name associated with your web handle. In some cases, I know WHOIS data can be redacted for the public but still needs to be shared to the registrar, but that might still not meet your needs.
    • Overall - if a domain is not a good option for you, then something like Neocities may still be a great option for you! You get your own subdomain to use on there, for free! No ID/payment info needed!
  • Servers / computer parts are too expensive
    • Luckily, you don't need to use your own server, if you don't want to or if it isn't in your budget! You can use GitHub Pages (if GitHub isn't experiencing an outage that day), Cloudflare Pages, Neocities, and many other options to host content for you. You control the source content and just choose where to deploy it. Ideally, with a domain in front of it so that if you change hosts, you can still send visitors to the new location of hosted content, but see the point above for concerns there.
  • I don't know how to code / I don't want to learn how to code
    • That's totally understandable. I do recommend trying, but if you don't want to, there are options out there! Search the web for "wysiwyg html editor" and you might find something that will write HTML for you (not in an AI way, but like, just translating the formatted text to HTML).

Enter... Attie.

Bluesky Social just rolled out a big update around their tool "@attie.ai", designed to "make your own corner of the open social web."

A screenshot of the Attie profile on Bluesky Social

That sounds like what I'm encouraging. But eagle-eyed readers will see the .ai in that handle, and, rightfully so, yell: "SLOP".

Yep, Bluesky [has expanded] its AI-powered Attie app to let anyone build websites, games, and more. Toni Schneider, CEO of Bluesky, wants you to do "social vibe coding or vibe coding for your community".

But, why does this need to use AI? We've had social media for years and years, and we've had a sense of community on the web for MUCH longer. I suppose this is one way to "stay relevant" during whatever phase of the AI hype cycle we're in now, but I have another suggestion.

How about... no.

Bugs Bunny saying "no"

It's so, so easy to just... not. You don't need AI to claim your corner of the web. You can upload a one-line file that says "I'm here" and you've done it. Don't need tokens to do that.

But okay, yes, as I've already written, you can make a site using something like a static site generator, or really with any method you want. But maybe that doesn't appeal to you, maybe you want something like what Attie offers, where it's content tied to your Bluesky account?

What if I told you: you don't need to use Attie/AI to do that.

SonaSky Apollo

That's right. Yet another Sonasky project (maybe I should have called it YASP). This time: Apollo.

Why "Apollo"?

I searched "Attie name" on DuckDuckGo and after a bunch of scrolling, one site said it was short for "Athena", so if Attie is supposed to be a tool of "wisdom" (if you say so; I say AI investments in present times will be seen in retrospect as quite unwise), I thought naming this project after "Apollo", the god of light, healing, (positive things) music, poetry (human things) was appropriate.

Apollo is an app that you sign into with your Bluesky account (like SonaSky Ref, the ref sheet hosting app I made a while back) that lets you create something like a personal site. You can create a homepage, customize the color theme, write custom CSS for styles if you want, customize the layout if you hate the base template, and add multiple pages/a blog!

No AI editor/prompting needed. You write what you want to show up on your site, and it's there. And it's all stored in your Bluesky account. Not quite as portable as what I proposed in my last post, but you can't win 'em all, I suppose. This might bridge the gap for some people. Or at least give folks a NON-AI version of this to use.

What it isn't designed to do (on purpose):

  • Create feeds: the personal web is not about algorithms. Don't. Embrace the old. Maybe create or join a webring? (spoilers: read on)
  • Reports: what are you, a C-level executive? You want your Power BI dashboards to tell you how good you are at social media this week? Need those metrics to keep trending up to keep the shareholders happy? Stop treating the internet like it's this source of happiness for you to keep the dopamine flowing - just have fun! No numbers required!

What you do get: "What makes Attie so interesting is that it comes with the Bluesky distribution, so it doesn’t stand alone." Well, Apollo uses Bluesky too. But in a more human way.

Using SonaSky Apollo

Signing In

Just visit apollo.sonasky.app and type in your Bluesky handle. You'll be sent to the Bluesky OAuth page where you enter your details, then be presented with a review of what permissions you're granting Apollo (the ability to create Apollo records on your account and upload media, along with reporting permissions if you need to report another site on the platform for malicious/dangerous content).

Apollo can't make Bluesky posts for you or anything like that, it can only interact with records that are for the Apollo app.

Onboarding

Apollo onboarding page lets you select a starter template for your site

Pick a template, if you want, or start from scratch! It doesn't really matter what you select unless you think you really want to use one of these more than the others. You can always delete and start over again too.

Pick a site name

Set your site title. This, too, can be changed later.

Pick a site theme

You can then pick a (starter) theme for your site, for colors and fonts. You can customize this too, and add extra fonts (currently supported: Google Fonts) after onboarding.

(There's also a note here about community themes; these will live in the code repository for folks to contribute themes to, if desired!)

Create!

The home dashboard of Apollo, showing navigation options of: Pages, Blog, Theme, Media, Rings, Settings, Advanced, and Help. There's a count of how many users have made sites. The page we're on is "Pages" and we can see one page (the home page) available to edit.

At this point, I encourage you to explore and build! I don't need to write a step-by-step tutorial here, because you can decide what you want to put on your site!

What I will say is this: you can decide how you want to build your site based on your level of knowledge/comfort. There are three modes to edit pages: Blocks, Writing, and HTML.

Blocks is meant to be the easiest, least-experience-required option. You have a few options of types of content you can put on a page, including: Heading, Text, Image, Link buttons, Gallery, Event, Bluesky profile, Bluesky post, Starter pack, Divider, and Space.

“Add a block” menu with a two-column grid of block types, each with a blue icon and short description: Heading, Text, Image, Link buttons, Gallery, Event, Bluesky profile, Bluesky post, Starter pack, Divider, and Space.

Writing mode gives you a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get, for anyone born after me, the last generation that is likely to maybe know what that stands for) editor where you can compose content for the page and use some nice buttons to format text like you were in a word processor. There is an option to view/edit the source Markdown if you want as well.

HTML mode strips away any visual editor fanciness. Instead, you just write HTML. Simple as that.

At the bottom of the editor, you can also flag a page with content warnings just like Bluesky posts. There, you can also set a share image (Open Graph), which is not required, but might be nice if you're sharing links to pages on your site on Bluesky or on other platforms like Discord, where a nice preview is generated.

Blog!

There's a section for blog posts, if you like to write!

Settings! (calling out just a few)

You can update your navigation menu at the top of your site in the settings, with links internal to your site, or external to other platforms.

Be aware links to sites other than Bluesky or Apollo (or Sonasky) will have a small warning page in between to help with instances where inevitably eventually someone links to a phishing site on one of these. That's why there's a report button so you can send that record up to Bluesky to deal with!

The settings page also has a section for setting the Title and Description for your site in sharing links, much like the sharing image. Here, you can also customize the favicon (the little icon that goes in your open tab for the site). You can also flag your whole site as adult oriented if appropriate.

Webrings (for Apollo sites only, though)

Remember webrings? Remember when I made a webring? If you don't, tl;dr - webrings are a way to discover sites and build community! It's how things worked back in ye olden days before we were beholden to The Algorithm.

Got some friends who share an interest and you each have stuff on your sites that's about that interest? Make a ring and invite those friends. Each of you will then have a "Previous" and "Next" button in your site's footer that lets you discover those similar sites!

“Invites” panel showing a pending invite to “Rabbit Friends” from @txt.astrabun.com, with a blue Accept button.

Webring page titled “Rabbit Friends” on a cream background, with a welcome message, a “Visit a random site” button, and two member cards: Example Site and Astra Bun.

Page footer on a blue background reading “Made with SonaSky Apollo,” with “← Previous,” “Rabbit Friends,” and “Next →” links.

Short-link to your site

Change the "bsky" to "sitesky" in your profile URL on Bluesky to redirect to your Apollo site (if you've made one).

https://bsky.app/profile/astrabun.com

→

https://sitesky.app/profile/astrabun.com

More?

What might come down the line: maybe more features that also don't need AI. Polls? Guestbooks? We'll see! I don't know yet!

What about your last post?

I still firmly believe that's the better option long term. Go build a personal site, outside of the Atmosphere. It's an adventure that's really worth it. You learn a lot, you have a lot of fun, you have the most control.

If you're pretty locked into the Bluesky/Atmosphere ecosystem, then sure, use Apollo all you want. One day, Bluesky will be no more, and I'll be a little sad about that (maybe), but my personal site will still be alive and kickin'.

Anyway I'm Tired Now

I spent a bunch of time on this and now I'm ready for a nap. I hope I didn't miss anything in this blog post but I'll probably edit if there's anything I forgot later when I'm more awake!

What do you think? If you weren't convienced to make a personal site before, will you now in order to, at a minimum, spite Bluesky's sisyphean decisions to keep doing more with AI?

Oh, I promised you the Apollo mirror link

Here you go: link.

Bluesky comments

Reply to the post on Bluesky and it'll show up here.

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Webmentions

Reply from your own site or the fediverse (e.g. quote/reply on Mastodon) and it can show up here - see webmention.io.

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    I don't have anything useful to add, but I am going to start ranking all my conversations topics in terms of potato size now, so thanks for that. :3
  98. Astra
    oh yeah I should link it: apollo.sonasky.app
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    Who needs AI generated community when we can have *human-driven* community