Isn't this simply talking about personal websites? They haven't gone away, a lot moved to wordpress which gives them a cookie cutter feel, but a lot of other ones are still independent and feel like they're on their own.
From the description, this is more about personal wikis or notebooks. Individual pages may get edited again and again, and nothing is necessarily in a "polished for publication" state.
In exploring new notebook apps -- like Notion, which allows you to publish pages and subpages -- I've found numerous examples of people having basically their own notebooks open on the web, such as https://notes.andymatuschak.org/
As someone with a site like that, I've found it to be very freeing to just publish some thoughts and tweak them over time. When I tried to blog, I felt too much pressure to make something super high-quality and definitive, that will stand the tests of time and never be edited... So I ended up publishing nothing besides the "I'm starting to blog again!" posts or something small and safe.
+ By tweaking over time, the work can unwittingly become bigger, better, or more polished than it'd have been if I'd tried to make something so intense from the start.
I think it's a move away not from WordPress specifically, but the kind of structure a "blog" providers. Personal sites for so long have been: home, about, portfolio, blog. Digital gardens seem to be more along the lines of: I'm gonna dump whatever I want here in whatever style and structure I like because it's my site and you can't tell me no.
Hai there, ¬unicornporn (forgive the dad joke, por favor). Indeed, life is, nomad. ^‿^
Perhaps it is one of your names? Well, whoever you are, it's my honor. And, for the record, maybe you already have spoken with me, for all I know.
I am, sadly, absurdly slow in my letter-writing (it's downright shameful), and I don't want to disappoint any further than I probably already have. I will continue to work on that front. But, I am also happy to piece together a faster channel. I think we have an enormous amount in common.
As to this account, I have run into it a few times (this is my second time through your account), but I've been too shy to say anything. You are quite a beacon on this forum.
It is very rare for me to speak with my voice to anyone who isn't basically family or in my physical proximity (and even then, I'm often quiet). However, for an irrational reason I can't quite put my finger on, I have a good feeling about you. If you are ever up for it, I would gladly speak in voicechat with you.
I wish I could make one of those blushing emojis. We live in unicode times after all?
Voice sounds great, but English is not my native tongue and you'll probably be disappointed if you expect me to be well articulated in audio. I write English every day, but I speak English about twice a year. Hence, my English mind moves slower than my fingers dance across my mechanical keyboard.
End of disclaimer. I will contact you by other means and many years from now, when someone asks how we me met, we'll just give them this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25006561
Yes. It's a rebranding. But I've used the term before myself when trying to highlight the two classes of web that exist today. http://superkuh.com/blog/2020-02-22-1.html
They have been largely supplanted by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. A resurgence in the concept of personal websites/digital gardens and protocols like Gemini is encouraging.