hover any square to see its coordinates · double-click an open spot to claim it
tap any square to explore · claiming a spot is desktop-only
pick your pixel's color
chosen color
Red
#ef2b42
tell us about your space
space name *
0/42
name *
0/30
space url *
rss feed · recommended
your mark · auto from your domain
about your space · recommended
links get removed here — your space url is already on the card
0/120
topics
chosen 0 / 5
spot reserved
Your spot is set aside while your site gets a quick look. After that, your pixel will either light up or the spot will return to the field.
your private edit link
save it — it's the only key to your cube.
About Pixel Area
I’ve always liked the part of the web where people build things for themselves.
A personal blog or a small site about some very specific hobby. Some are polished, most aren’t. No algorithm asked for any of them. Someone just wanted them to exist.
They’re everywhere, really. They’ve just become surprisingly hard to stumble across.
That’s why I built Pixel Area.
Pixel Area is a 100×100 coordinate grid with room for 10,000 websites. Each pixel belongs to a real person and links to whatever they have online: a blog, a project, or just a small site they made. You pick an empty spot, choose a color, add a short description, and visitors find you by wandering around the map, one coordinate at a time, without really knowing where they will end up.
And yes, it does look a bit like the Million Dollar Homepage. The resemblance stops at the pixels. Nothing here is for sale. All 10,000 spots are free, and every one of them belongs to a person, not an advertiser.
Behind every pixel there is a person who wanted to have their own place on the web. Someone keeping a blog, a photo journal, or notes about their garden that maybe three people read – and they keep doing it anyway. That’s the part I care about: there is a person behind every square, with their own interests, ideas and way of doing things.
One of my favorite things is opening the map and seeing hundreds of little pixels there. The number itself is not really important. Running an independent site can feel lonely – you publish something, your RSS feed updates, and somewhere another person is doing the same thing without knowing about you. Seeing the map fill up is just a simple way of showing that the independent web is very much alive.
There is one more thing I hope happens because of Pixel Area. Maybe someone comes here because of one blog and then opens another one. An hour later they’re reading about vintage synthesizers, local history, or a stranger’s travel notes. And somewhere in there: maybe I should build something of my own.
If even a few people decide to make their own site because of it, I will be happy. Every new personal site makes the web a little more interesting.
If you already have a site, you’re more than welcome to claim a coordinate. If not, hopefully it inspires you to create your own space.
— Oleh Providnyk
Exploring the field
The field is dark until you arrive. A lantern follows you across 10,000 squares – whatever it touches lights up, and everything it leaves behind sinks back into the dark. There’s no front page and no “top blogs” here: what you find depends entirely on where you wander.
Bring your light to any colored square and it opens: a name, a short description, a few tags, the author’s mark. That little card is a door, not a destination – step through it and you’re on their site, not ours. Every square leads out.
Some squares breathe under your light – a slow pulse means the author has posted recently. The card keeps it honest: a green dot means someone has been writing there recently; a quiet gray one means the place is resting.
Random & walking
Don’t know where to start? random space drops you somewhere on the field – a photographer in another hemisphere, someone’s cooking journal, a stranger’s reading notes. From any open square you can also walk: ‹ prev / next › leads to the nearest neighbours, one door at a time.
The thread above the field remembers this session’s path – the squares you visited and the ones chance handed you – so a good find is never lost mid-wander. It lives only in your browser and is gone when you leave.
Thirteen topics
Every blog carries up to five tags – tech, books, travel, music, food and so on. Switch a few on and the field turns into a constellation: only matching squares stay lit. Wander the pattern, then clear the tags and the whole field comes back.
The districts
One more thing, for the patient: the field has districts. They aren’t in any menu and there is no map of them. They reveal themselves only to a lantern that lingers.
Every square has an address
Each cell answers to its coordinates – a link like pxlarea.com/x47y23 lands anyone right on that square. Found something worth showing a friend? Send them the address. And if one of these squares is yours, there’s a badge for that.
Take a badge
A badge is a small link back to your pixel – a way to show you’re part of the field from your own site. Drop it in a sidebar, footer, or about page. It points straight at your coordinate, so anyone who clicks lands right on you, then can wander the other 9,999 spots from there – a quiet backlink, and a small sign that a human was here.
your squareX:
classic88×31
compact80×15
textplain link
The badge is inline SVG, drawn pixel by pixel: it needs no fonts and no server, so it looks the same everywhere and can’t break when we’re down. Prefer a file? PNG saves the badge as an image file you can host yourself and link however you like.
Two switches sit above: outline adds a thin edge for dark backgrounds, where the badge can otherwise melt into them, and PNG 2x saves it at double size for crisp screens – set width="88" when you use that one.
Some hosted platforms strip embedded code from posts and widgets; if a badge doesn’t show up after pasting, the PNG or the plain-text version works everywhere.
Adding your blog
Pixel Area is for the personal web – sites people make because they want to, not because they have to. Claiming a pixel is free – no account, no email, just your site and a few details.
A good fit is anything with a human behind it: a personal blog or newsletter, a digital garden, a technical journal, a home for your photos, art, music, writing, recipes, or travels. It doesn't need to be polished or popular, but it should be somewhere new things appear – a public page of your own that you come back to, even if only once in a while. What matters is that it's yours.
Not a fit: online stores, company websites, affiliate or SEO sites, or a profile on someone else's platform – link your own site, not your social account.
Every submission is read by hand – the field is a map people come to wander, so each pixel should be worth someone else's click. Not every submission gets a spot, and I don't always have a tidy reason why.
Claiming your pixel
Find a free dark cell on the field and double-click it to open the form. (It's the only slightly non-obvious part – the rest is easy.)
Pick a color – this is how your pixel shows up on the field.
Add your details: a space name, your name, and your URL are all you need. Recommended: an RSS feed, a one-line description, and up to five tags.
The description is worth the minute – no one knows your site better than you do; if you skip it, we'll draft a basic one, and you can always rewrite it later.
Your pixel's mark (identicon) is generated automatically from your domain – nothing to fill in. If the pattern isn't to your liking, shuffle it for another one right in the form, or any time later on your edit page.
Submit and save your private edit link – it's the only key to your pixel. Copy it or download the .txt; you can edit your details with it any time.
A quick check. New pixels are reviewed before they light up, so yours may sit quietly reserved for a little while. After that it either lights up in your color, or the spot returns to the field.
That's it. Welcome to the field.
One honest rule keeps the field alive. If a site disappears from the web for a few months, or a whole year passes without a single new post, its pixel quietly returns to the field – and if you come back to writing later, you're welcome to claim a spot again. The same goes for sites that drift over time into something the field isn't for – if a place no longer matches the criteria above, its cell may quietly be set free.
One more thing – don't forget to grab your Pixel Area badge linking back to your page. Available in classic 88×31, compact 80×15, and plain-text versions.
Claiming your pixel
That part needs a desktop or a laptop. You claim a cell by double-clicking it on the field, and the form behind it – color, tags, description – asks for more room and a steadier pointer than a phone can offer.
So if your site is a fit, open pxlarea.com on a bigger screen when you have a couple of quiet minutes. Nothing is reserved in advance and nothing runs out – the field is patient. You'll leave with a private edit link to keep, and your pixel lights up once it's been looked over – or the spot quietly returns to the field.
Exploring, though, works everywhere – wander the field from any screen you like.
Privacy
Pixel Area is a non-commercial index of personal websites, made and run by one person. It is built to know as little about you as possible.
If you’re visiting: no accounts, no cookies, no fingerprinting, nothing that follows you anywhere. Clicks on blog links are counted only as a simple number for each square – nothing tied to you. The site uses Cloudflare’s cookie-less analytics for a rough idea of how many people visit; it isn’t used to identify you. The thread of squares you’ve seen lives only in this tab, and disappears when you close it.
If you register a pixel: everything you submit – space name, your name, URL, description, tags – is public by design; that is exactly what appears on the field and on the plain-HTML directory page next to it. Your email and any other personal data are never asked for. After that, the site periodically checks for new posts – your feed if you have one, your homepage if you don’t. That’s where the activity dot on your square comes from. Your private edit link is the only key to your square: the database keeps only a one-way hash, so nobody can read the link out of it – not even me. Keep it somewhere safe; if you lose it, write to me and you’ll get a fresh one. To keep bots from claiming half the field overnight, new sign-ups are rate-limited for a day; nothing about that check survives on an approved square.
Every square is approved by hand. Before review, each submission is automatically checked against the site it points to. Anything you wrote yourself stays as you wrote it; empty fields may come back with a draft description and tags you’re free to change.
Changes & removal: want your blog’s entry corrected – or taken off the field entirely? Email hello@pxlarea.com. Removal requests are honored quickly, no questions asked.
Someone else added your blog? It happens – a reader may put a site they love on the field. Write to the same address and I’ll hand the square over to you, or take it down. Your call, and no proof is needed beyond an email from the site itself.
