# Single-Serving Site (シングルサービング・サイト)

> A site made of a single page on its own domain that does exactly one thing. Jason Kottke gave the form its name in February 2008, and around four hundred readers wrote in with examples, which is how it settled into a recognised type. There is no navigation and nowhere to go next: the answer fills the screen and that is the whole site.

- IndexStyle No.541 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/single-serving-site
- Kind: Layout · Family: Reading on the Web · Era: 2008–
- Mood: Play, Rebellion
- What this family collects: Forms of reading that only hold together inside a browser, solving by stretching downward, spreading sideways or answering to touch what paper would have solved by binding.

## Defining characteristics

- The domain name is the question and the page holds nothing but the one word answer
- No heading and no paragraph, just one word or one image occupying the middle of the screen
- No menu, no search and no footer links, so there is nowhere the visitor can go next
- Titles that can be answered yes or no, in the manner of Is It Christmas? and Is Twitter Down?

## Best used for

- Building a page that answers one question, by putting the answer in the middle as a single word and cutting everything else
- Publishing a notice or a status readout on its own domain as one page with no header and no footer

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Blow the answer up to the width of the viewport. One typeface, and no other text anywhere on the page.
- Layout & structure: One page, one screenful, nothing below the fold. A single element in the centre and margin everywhere else.
- Material & texture: A flat background colour. No ornament and no layering; when the answer changes, only the word or the colour swaps.

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #FFFFFF
- The colour it is remembered by: #E4002B
- Text and outlines: #111111

## What to avoid

Keeping it to one page but adding explanatory copy, share buttons and related links breaks the only rule that matters, and what is left is just a short landing page.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: The domain name is the question and the page holds nothing but the one word answer
- [ ] Visible in the piece: No heading and no paragraph, just one word or one image occupying the middle of the screen
- [ ] Visible in the piece: No menu, no search and no footer links, so there is nowhere the visitor can go next
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Titles that can be answered yes or no, in the manner of Is It Christmas? and Is Twitter Down?
- [ ] The layout follows: One page, one screenful, nothing below the fold. A single element in the centre and margin everywhere else.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Blow the answer up to the width of the viewport. One typeface, and no other text anywhere on the page.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: A flat background colour. No ornament and no layering; when the answer changes, only the word or the colour swaps.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #FFFFFF as ground, #E4002B carrying the style, #111111 for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Web 1.0 (ウェブ1.0)** — Reuses the naivety of the constrained early web as directness and charm. In the 2020s it came back as a movement to take the personal site back, gathering under names like Neocities and Yesterweb. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/web-one
- **Web Brutalism (ウェブ・ブルータリズム)** — Puts the browser's default rendering straight on screen and refuses the finished look of templates. The bare structure of the HTML becomes the style itself. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/web-brutalism

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=single-serving-site+web-one

## Further study

- opening the February 2008 kottke.org list itself, and the ratio of those still alive to those gone
- comparing how the screen is built for titles answered yes or no and for those that are not
- how far the domain name and the words shown on screen overlap, checked across a few examples

## Reference works

- kottke.org (Jason Kottke) — Single Serving Sites — https://kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites

## Source of record

- kottke.org (Jason Kottke) — Single Serving Sites — https://kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/single-serving-site
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/single-serving-site/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)