The best Creative Commons stories on the Web
I wanted to do two things at this site: post the best Creative Commons stories that I’ve read and liked, and keep it as lightweight and clutter-free as possible.
Here are some of the sites that I regularly read that use Creative Commons license for all or part of their content:
The Conversation, ProPublica, Global Voices, Democracy Now!, Common Dreams, New Frame, ROAR, The Third Pole, Yes! Magazine, Mosaic, The New Inquiry, Open Democracy, Knowable Magazine, Sapiens, Singularity Hub, Aeon.
Lightweight, low-bandwidth, text-only website
On keeping the site as lightweight as possible: I personally use an ancient iPhone SE with a monthly data plan of 2GB so when casually surfing the Internet I’m drawn to simple, text-only sites like CNN Lite and NPR Text that use no images and other media.
I made Kidlat in the same vein: no photos* or videos, only text. Needless to say, I also have no use for trackers, cookies, or scripts** found in most websites. So this site is as lightweight and clutter-free as I’d like it to be.
Technical stuff
I use Hugo to build the site; files are hosted on Github and served from Netlify.
Links
Kidlat is a member of 1MB Club, 512KB Club and 250KB Club, collections of lightweight, performance-focused webpages from across the Internet. Listed in GreyCoder’s A List Of Text-Only News Sites.
I have a Twitter account.
*A number of websites that use Creative Commons license actually embed an invisible 1px-by-1px image in their stories to know where and when the content is republished.
**Stories from some sites contain PixelPing, a small snippet of Javascript code that functions as a page counter, much like the invisible image mentioned above that other websites use.