Last year's shutdown of @glitchdotcom@mastodon.social was a blow to my pedagogy. Glitch was ideal for creative coding classes and workshops. I looked around for alternatives. But there was nothing that was open, decentralized, and not at the mercy of VCs or Big Tech.
So I built my own. Here's Glitchlet.
Glitchlet runs on any shared hosting service (e.g., Reclaim Hosting). If you can run WordPress, you can run Glitchlet. Projects-in-progress are stored in the browser's local storage, but you can also one-click publish to make them public and remixable. Glitchlet is designed with educators in mind.
There's no single, primary Glitchlet that everyone uses. The idea is that every instructor installs their own Glitchlet and manages their own classes/workshops/projects. You can seed your instance with template files, or Glitchlet can easily import projects (including archived Glitch .tgz files).
Making something so easy to install and host has trade-offs, of course. No fancy pants Node or React projects, but Glitchlet works beautifully with HTML/JavaScript/CSS. No live collaboration, but you can still remix published projects.
Best of all—you're in control and not subject to the whims of some startup that suddenly decides to "sunset" a key pedagogical tool.
Glitchlet is alpha now, but its code will available to all very soon!
