Similar sites to OWOT

*See also: Ways People Discover OWOT

A list of YWOT clones from the now defunct Textwall

The logos for YWOT, OWOT and Textwall

Sites similar to OWOT, namely in being infinite canvases editable by anyone(or by being similar/related to OWOT in other ways).

Some of the items on this page were taken from the world /owot_type_websites.

Mr.Guy is also working on compiling a larger list of sites similar to OWOT.

Sister sites of OWOT(or "The Three Sites")

SLC graphic of The Three Sites by JRT

Coined by Lemuria in Our World of News, "The Three Sites" refer to a triad of infinite canvases that are labeled as sister websites of one another. Currently these are YWOT, OWOP, and FP's OWOT.

Though prior to 2015, the "Three Sites" would have been YWOT, the original OWOT and Jotleaf, all of which were created by Andrew Badr.

Most of the following sites were advertised at one time on the Center Console of YWOT.

Your World of Text

Main article: Your World of Text

Possibly the first infinite canvas on the internet.

This is a black and white site that does not enable teleportation, instead encouraging users to manually explore the page and add their own content along the way.

YWOT was created in 2009.

Our World of Pixels

Main article: Our World of Pixels

YWOT but with pixels.

Launched by Eldit in 2016, hosted by InfraRaven.

Our World of Text

You are here.

The newer version of OWOT was launched by FP in 2017. It adds a variety of features to the base YWOT code, such as colors, a chatbox and teleportation.

Like OWOP, the new OWOT is also hosted by InfraRaven.

*Old OWOT

Created by Andrew Badr in 2010.

Largely identical to YWOT, except there were no rate limits.

Shut down in 2015 due to funding issues. Worlds from this version of OWOT can be found at Old Worlds.

Jotleaf's logo

*Jotleaf

Created by Andrew Badr in 2012.

Jotleaf was an infinite canvas where, in addition to writing text, users could also add images, embed video/sound files and customize the background.

The site was mostly focused on individual userpages, which users were encouraged to share like more conventional social media blogs.

The site was shut down in 2015 due to funding issues, but an example of a Jotleaf page can still be found at fornowband.org/.

FP once attempted to create a site named Uvias Vector, which would have been a blend of Jotleaf and Discord Jamboard. The project did not go anywhere, however.

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  Original Jotleaf Home Screen(October 12th, 2012)
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  Updated Jotleaf Home Screen(March 4th, 2013)
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  World settings
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  www.jotleaf.com/meowstic/big-fucking-furrie/ (November 2nd, 2015)
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  fornowband.org/, notice the images and playable sound files
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  Jotleaf selfhosted by FP in January of 2023
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  FP selfhosting Jotleaf pt. 2, notice the different fonts, customizable text sizes, and map of the page a the bottom left corner

OWOT betas

Main article: OWOT Betas

Following the closure of the original OWOT in 2015, there were numerous attempts at reviving the canvas before the current site was born.

All of these failed for one reason or another, and in 2017 FP's project Node World of Text would formally receive the "ourworldoftext.com" domain.

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  JerryStarField's beta(September 2015 - Late 2016)
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  Poopman's beta(Late 2015 or Early 2016)
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  Sammich's beta(Late 2016 - December 2016)

OWOT clones/instances

Main article: Running from source

OWOT is open source, meaning that many people have created their own instances of the site, some with significant modification.

Fern's Instance

Fern, a moderator of the OWOT Discord, briefly ran her own instance of OWOT.

Catha'vi's Instance

Concept art

"Idea: a site like owot where everyone can make words but:

each character supports graphics as well as characters so images can be pasted at a higher resolution

there are "world portals" (areas that sync from a target world to other worlds) the homepage is mainly made up of these world portals, with users who are registered for longer getting larger portals

the portals are arranged semantically (can be achieved using embeddings and t-sne reduction) meaning similar worlds will be close together

the general vibe of worlds will be less editable, with them acting more like myspace sites/tumblr blogs

(wip)"

- Catha'vi on OWOT Discord

Currently nonexistent, though Catha'vi has created a thread in the Discord for users to suggest features for the hypothetical World of Text site.

fox's Instance

Main article: Jan soweli Asike § Custom OWOT client

Other canvas sites related to OWOT

Sites that are not considered sister websites of OWOT, but whose userbases have interacted with OWOT in the past.

Walloftext.co

Walloftext.co was created by Louis Stowasser in 2014. It is a site where users type in draggable textboxes instead of on the canvas itself.

Walloftext.co presented itself as a site for note-taking and brainstorming, intending to forgo YWOT and OWOT's constant drama. I don't know how the developer went about trying to do this but it clearly didn't work.

Most of its worlds(including /main) are still rather empty.

*See also /the-making-of-wall-of-text-d95f63dada2d.

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  walloftext.co/main
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  walloftext.co/ourworldoftext
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  An unclaimed wall

Tixtels

An infinite pixel canvas similar to OWOP.

Tixtels was created around 2018 by an OWOT user named SuperOP535.

The site was located at tixtels.glitch.me/ before closing down some time after May of 2024.

Goatway, the Discord channel(later a separate server) which catalogues messages from OWOT's chat, was named after a feature from Tixtels.

Tixtels UI

Some World of Text

In April of 2018, SuperOP535 created Some World of Text(SWOT) from the OWOT source code.

SWOT was located at swot.glitch.me/ until its closure in February of 2023.

Among other things, the site allowed users to change the background colors of individual cells all the way back in 2018, roughly four years before the feature was added to OWOT. This was later removed for unknown reasons.

Textwall.cc

Main article: TextWall

Textwall was a 2020 OWOT clone where rather than having distinct URLs, worlds were located at specific coordinates on the Mainpage. The canvas also technically wasn't infinite, and was limited to 100,000 coordinates on all sides.

The site garnered a bad reputation for the sheer toxicity of its (predominantly underaged) userbase. However some Textwallers have since become well respected members of the OWOT community, with Lime being the most notable example.

Textwall was permanently shut down sometime in 2024, though FP was able to implement a custom server for it and revive the site at tw.2s4.me. However it must be noted that this is an entirely new canvas without any content from the original Textwall.

Duckgroup.xyz

A multiplayer drawing site made by the creator of TextWall.

Like OWOT, Duckgroup contained a number of subpages that can be accessed by adding words after the URL. Each page seemed to be limited to a small square which users can doodle on.

The site was taken down sometime before 2022 because PinkiePie repeatedly spammed porn on it.

TextBoard.fr

Main article: Aywen

TextBoard.fr was a recreation of Your World of Text that was launched by French Youtuber Aywen as a social experiment. He made several videos about the site in December of 2024, prompting a massive incursion of French users primarily into YWOT, though some activity had also spilled into OWOT. The effect of this was that YWOT's spawn temporarily became a bilingual environment, and there was an increase in scripting in both WOT sites as Aywen's tech-inclined audience began to experiment with the text canvases. FP in particular was amazed at just how fast their scripts progressed.

TextBoard.fr is currently shut down, though Aywen has said that it may be brought back every year as a seasonal event.

Inftext

Only known screenshot of Inftext

An infinite text canvas by Sarah Caltrop that was formerly located at text.caltrop.dev.

While it was active, the site drew the attentions of a few OWOT users, most notably Lemuria.

Inftext was shut down due to the death of its founder in October of 2023. The source code can still be found here.

Our World of Vectors

"Messing with the SLC vectors for my PR gave me a random idea last night: Our World of Vectors, where you can draw lines (and maybe curves? not sure how I'd do them tho) at virtually any point on screen (some rounding as to not make the DB infinitely large) but it'd be a little too ambitious for me to make"

- fox

March 15th, 2025

A WIP sandbox by fox where users place lines(vectors) on an infinite canvas.

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Other text canvas sites

Infinite canvas sites whose existences are generally unknown within the OWOT community. Some of them have been shut down, while others are simply too obscure to garner much attention.

Nevertheless, the following websites are significant for making great innovations to the infinite canvas format.

Written World

Written World's typing animation ported to OWOT using a script by FP(December 30th, 2021)

Written World was a 2011 YWOT clone whose canvas used a real world street map for its background. In addition to basic YWOT features, users were able to change their text colors and the direction they typed in(i.e. you could set it so that you typed downwards or backwards by default). The creator also assigned animations to actions like typing and deleting, intending to encourage "constructive participation" by making edits feel more engaging. Other utilities included an "echoing" feature that was "analogous to upvoting" and allowed users to "add permanence" to content they thought was good.

The site's main gimmick was that it took place on a real world street map generated using 250+ GBs of data from Planet OSM. Each user spawned in at their IRL locations and could use the UI to see other players in their proximity. The purpose of the experiment was to "combine online chat with the pre-existing relationships that are inherent to real-world places," as seen in instances where players used text to mark up IRL locations and curved their messages around the contours of streets and geography. The whole canvas gave off a personal feeling as users explored, commented and drew on what is essentially a digital version of the city they lived in, all while interacting with others who inhabited the same area.

Written World's geopositioning feature was initially restricted to New York, but the developer had planned to expand it to a greater area.

The site was created by Zack Shwartz as his Interactive Telecommunications Program thesis. Its central idea was previously conceived during a group project for Clay Shirky's Designing Conversational Spaces class.

Written World was shut down roughly one year after its launch, owing mostly to cost issues and the author's inexperience with programming.

A similar concept can be found in wplace.live, a popular pixel canvas from 2025 that also takes place on a real world map.

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Ascii Collab

Ascii collab is a lo-fi, art-centric text canvas founded by Martin Stewart in 2020. The site's purpose, as its name suggests, is for users to collaborate on making original ASCII art; copy-pasted content is strongly disincentivized.

The site has a very ingenious way of preventing spam. Users can click on a button to highlight each user's edits in different colors, and if they click on a patch of text in this mode then all edits by that user is instantly hidden, but only on their end. Similarly, the site owner can use this feature to revert text for everybody.

Though Ascii Collab is mostly obscure, Martin Stewart has implemented various measures to encourage collaboration among its meager userbase. First off, users can choose to have the site notify them on email whenever a new edit is made. A meet up service was also created to facilitate ASCII art sessions, and several events were held throughout 2021.

The area around the center of Ascii Collab is surrounded by a large rectangular border. On February 2nd, 2021, all art within this region was stitched into a massive poster, which can be seen below.

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3D cursor in typetobuild

Typetobuild.com(3D YWOT)

Typetobuild.com, also known as Anchored, was a 3D text canvas by SuperQGS where users could toggle their cursors to move horizontally or vertically. A later update made editing more intuitive by highlighting the layer of text you're on.

The canvas was infinite just like in YWOT and OWOT but had a vertical height limit. It was very sparse in content due to limited advertisement, but one YWOT user did make a road all the way to Y:1000. There were also a number of simple three dimensional ASCII drawings, which SuperQGS had stated to be an entirely new art form. Anchored was mostly identical to YWOT with the exception of the 3D aspect. It did not have teleportation or color, nor was pasting enabled to any capacity.

The beta for Anchored was released in April 2023 and taken offline later that same year, but the creator plans to revive it at some point in the future. In the meantime, you can find the source code here.

The developer discusses the inspiration behind typetobuild here. He had previously created an ASCII survival game named The After with YWOT/OWOT style base building, and intended to make a similar game set in typetobuild's 3D canvas.

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  A user rotating the 3D canvas(Note: A script was used to increase the rendering distance)
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  What Spawn looks like at regular zoom
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  SuperQGS on rendering the "/" character to better facilitate 3D ASCII art
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  Highlight feature
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  SuperQGS on the planned survival mode
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  Typetobuild concept with colored text
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  Survival mode concept with an image background
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  SuperQGS concerning the end of typetobuild.com

(Infinite) pixel canvases

Most of these were inspired by r/place rather than Our World of Pixels, despite the latter site being one year older than the former.

r/place

/r/place was the project that popularized the concept of pixel canvases. It set a trend for future pixel sites to impose a strict time limit on how often you can place pixels, which encourages users to band together in order to create any sizable drawings.

pxls.space

pxls.space

pixelplace.io

pixelplace.io

wplace.live

See also:  Wplace

Wplace is a pixel art website created by Brazillian developer Murilo Matsubara, and launched on July 21, 2025. Lemuria is one of the few OWOT users who also use Wplace. On the site, he has worked on numerous projects globally, such as multiple signs in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Lemuria has considered starting a fan wiki for Wplace to document the occurences on the site, but has not found the time, or the computing resources to do so.

Technical details

This page contains text from Lemuria's private wiki that he has willingly released.

Wplace uses the Mercator projection. Pixels are not intended to map cleanly onto specific coordinates. Wplace divides the world into a 2048×2048 grid, making for 4,194,304 tiles. These tiles are 1000×1000 pixels, giving a total of 4,194,304,000,000 pixels; over 4.1 trillion. Wplace's coordinate system assigns four coordinates to each pixel; tile X, tile Y, and within that tile, pixel X and pixel Y. The official interface displays these in the format "(Tl X: 597, Tl Y: 783, Px X: 43, Px Y: 408)", though Lemuria uses a shorter format, "597.43, 783.408" (tileX.pixelX, tileY.pixelY).

The map is divided into regions, which are 4000×4000 pixel squares. They are named after a nearby settlement with a number (such as "Port Elizabeth #5"). Region names do not always map cleanly; regions containing a city may be named after a completely different area. The naming convention for these regions is unknown, but with the sheer volume, it is likely auto-generated.

Publicly editable text documents

Edit The Text

The website where Fern and Tap20 discovered OWOT.

Edit the Text(ETT) was an experimental, public text editor created by the Huang Twins. While it wasn't a canvas in the same way as OWOT, the fact that it could be edited by anyone gave rise to much of the same anarchic behavior that is found in the World of Text sites.

Fern recounts on the Discord how entire factions of trolls would wage war on the site's many pages, with there even being a cult-like organization in their midst. One of the most popular tactics was to overload pages with so many edits that they could no longer be loaded properly.

In the absence of any moderators, admins, or even rate limits, the ravages of trolls and griefers had to be counteracted by the efforts of individual users. Fern recalls participating in a full-on arms race to create scripts that could save and restore pages from spam scripts.

In addition to fighting spam, Fern was also part of the "Wordet" faction which had pages on both OWOT(no longer exists) and walloftext.co.

ETT was taken down in 2018 because the creators didn't want people to use it as a platform for storing their data.

A revival has since been created at tikolu.net/edit/.

Garyc Textfield

garyc.me/textfield/ is similar to ETT, but supports a much smaller amount of text.

Other sandboxes that have minor similarities to OWOT

The following websites have all been occasionally mentioned on OWOT.

Multiplayer Piano, Infinite Homepage and Cursors.io all share some of their userbases with OWOT, with several users finding OWOT from those sites.

Multiplayer Piano

wip

wip

wip

wip

wip

Mudgolt

wip

wip

wip

wip

wip

Cursors.io

Cursors.me

A copy of cursors.io.

Moved to cursors.uvias.com/.

wip

wip

wip

wip

Infinite Homepage

wip

wip

wip

wip

One Million Checkboxes

One Million Checkboxes(OMCB) is an experimental site created by eieio in 2024. It is a public sandbox consisting of one million checkboxes. Checking a box checks it for all users.

The story of the site is detailed in this Twitter thread.

OMCB was followed by One Million Chessboards.

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Bonus: Mr.Guy's Chalkboard

To continue my study into the public canvas concept, I've purchased three small chalkboards and a box of chalk. I'm going to mount the chalkboards in public places and leave chalk with them and check back periodically to see what happens.

Not technically infinite.

Not technically a site either.

Mr.Guy once placed chalkboards in various social spaces as an experiment to replicate the OWOT canvas IRL.