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agentromanoffsir · 1 year

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neocities guide - why you should build your own html website

do you miss the charm of the 90s/00s web where sites had actual personality instead of the same minimalistic theme? are you feeling drained by social media and the constant corporate monopoly of your data and time? do you want to be excited about the internet again? try neocities!!

what is neocities?

neocities is a free hosting website that lets you build your own html website from scratch, with total creative control. in their own words: "we are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don't let us truly express ourselves. it's time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again."

why should I make my own website?

web3 has been overtaken by capitalism & conformity. websites that once were meant to be fun online social spaces now exist solely to steal your data and sell you things. it sucks!! building a personal site is a great way to express yourself and take control of your online experience.

what would I even put on a website?

the best part about making your own site is that you can do literally whatever the hell you want! focus on a specific subject or make it a wild collection of all your interests. share your art! make a shrine for one of your interests! post a picture of every bird you see when you step outside! make a collection of your favorite blinkies! the world is your oyster !! here are some cool example sites to inspire you: recently updated neocities sites | it can be fun to just look through these and browse people's content! space bar | local interstellar dive bar creature feature | halloween & monsters big gulp supreme peanutbuttaz | personal site dragodiluna linwood | personal site patho grove | personal site

getting started: neocities/html guide

sound interesting? here are some guides to help you get started, especially if you aren't familiar with html/css sadgrl.online webmastery | a fantastic resource for getting started with html & web revival. also has a layout builder that you can use to start with in case starting from scratch is too intimidating web design in 4 minutes | good for learning coding basics w3schools | html tutorials templaterr | demo & html for basic web elements eggramen test pages | css page templates to get started with sadgrl background tiles | bg tiles rivendell background tiles | more free bg tiles

fun stuff to add to your site

web revival manifestos & communities

also, there's actually a pretty cool community of people out there who want to bring joy back to the web! melonland project | web project/community celebrating individual & joyful online experiences. Also has an online forum melonland intro to web revival | what is web revival? melonking manifesto | status cafe | share your current status nightfall city | online community onio.cafe | leave a message and enjoy the ambiance sadgrl internet manifesto | yesterweb internet manifesto | sadly defunct, still a great resource reclaiming online social spaces | great manifesto on cultivating your online experience

in conclusion

i want everyone to make a neocities site because it's fun af and i love seeing everyone's weird personal sites that they made outside of the control of capitalism :) say hi to me on neocities

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engravedlives · 29 days

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blue graphics blinkies stamps

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madlyfluffy · 2 months

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Yearly reminder to everyone trying to find alternatives to tumblr/social media in general: go make a Neocities account and teach yourself basic HTML and post your art/writing/shitposts there.

It does take extra time to set up (but there are templates out there!) but it is so so worth it to have a site that is 100% YOURS!

You don’t even have to be that good at coding. I’m not. My site is not very accessible via mobile devices but that is fine with me (keeps me off my phone) but there are plenty of ways to make your site mobile friendly. There are plenty of bare bones/accessible sites I adore purely for the media on it.

Imagine having your site on your phone and showing someone- hey! I coded this from scratch. And I didn’t even have to pay a company like squarespace. All your images, links, writings, in one place. I have my fandom edits, memes, fanart, and custom graphics there.

Neocities has a very bare bones follower and comment system, but you can disable this if you want your site to truly abstain from any social media-isms. I use it because its a great way to meet other webmasters and get help with coding problems. Neocities isn't an exact replacement for Tumblr (no reblogging here) but html coding is an invaluable skill to know, as is keeping a personal website in this day in age.

The awesome thing about having your own website is if, god forbid, Neocities goes down, you can move your site to any other number of hosting platforms (like Teacake.org). Your site is truly YOURS, and no one else (shitty tech CEO cough cough) can take it away from you.

If you need help getting started, I recommend checking out sadgrl.online. (More links to resources in the comments section of this post).

I know neocities has been talked about before, especially within my follower circle, but I thought I'd bring it up again for anyone unaware of this awesome platform.

#neocities #website #website design #personal website #web resources #indie web #web graphics #web #social media #artists on tumblr #writers on tumblr #tumblr alternative #twitter #instagram #html website #html coding #madlyfluffy #coding

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kafus · 10 months

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i made a free to use, 100% customizable comment widget for neocities users! it's really easy to install and add comment sections to any page. no more boring cbox or external guestbooks if you don't want them! and it comes with two themes to get you started!! please enjoy! you can find it here on my personal site!

#neocities #indie web #old web #webdev #geocities #javascript #html css #ayano was here #ayano.txt #i'm so proud of this!! yayy

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bnyrbt · 11 months

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pleeeeeeeease indie web and scenecore and whatever other subcultures.... have fun and be cringe but PLEASE be careful with your blinkies. if your website has flashing lights that are on by default or that can't be turned off, then it is inaccessible to photosensitive people. if your post has flashing lights, it needs to be tagged. PLEASE. i love indie web stuff but the prevalence of unavoidable flashing lights makes me really anxious!! people have migraines and seizures! please use tags like "flashing lights" and "eye strain," NOT "epilepsy" or "epilepsy warning," and please consider making your site accessible by removing flashing lights or making them avoidable. PLEASE. make the web usable for photosensitive people.

#op #indie web #neocities #webcore #scenecore #scemo #old web #yesterweb

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dearimasu · 2 months

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hello tumblrheads. with the ongoing shitshow i remembered im the spokesperson for this tumblr alternative so,

WAFRN.NET, a tumblr-style, queer-safe, alternative

pictured: wafrn users in their natural habitat

wafrn is a fediverse-based* social media consisting of majorly of queer people, it has an active userbase, a ton of them doing fuck-all and having fun :]

perks!

It has custom css! You can customize your profile with pretty much anything and make themes for you dashboard

It connects to Mastodon, Pleroma, Firefish, Misskey and such, so you can connect with over 100k other people on remote servers!

We're even working on an independent wiki! That means we'll have a comprehensive wiki with notable user-generated moments and events and it wont be hosted on fandom!

It's indie, no corporations attached.

Its open source! You can open it right up and look through the code :)

Predominantly Leftist: Bigots and bootlickers are banned the moment they make themselves known, and the staff [that includes me] actively interacts with the userbase.

*the fediverse is this interconnected chain of servers operating on the same network [that being ActivityPub], allowing people on entirely different websites to connect with eachother, basically.

#tumblr alternative #tumblr alternatives #queer #fediverse #social media #trans #html #indie web #old web #photomatt #wafrn

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icatconowo · 6 months

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my little pony 88x31 button i made for my website feel free to use without credit lol

#mlp #my little pony #friendship is magic #mlp:fim #my little pony friendship is magic #mlp fim #88x31 #88x31 buttons #neocities #indie web

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azuremist · 7 months

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A guide to all accessibility-related needs on the indie web!

I've been sharing this site around in all sorts of places, but I wanted to post it here, too - the Accessible Net Directory!

The indie web has a problem with accessibility. Namely, it seems like very few creators care to implement it. Which I get! It seems daunting to tackle at first. But also, it makes the indie web really, really difficult to traverse for disabled folks.

The Accessible Net Directory is two-fold in its uses.

1) It provides disabled people a list of safe indie sites

In order for a site to be featured on the directory, it needs to meet basic accessibility guidelines. This includes (but isn't limited to) no autoplay, unlabeled flashing images, low contrast, small / hard-to-read fonts, keyboard inaccessibility or non-described images.

Additional, non-required accessibility options for the directory are encouraged, and listed in a site's description on the directory. (Such as zoom-friendliness and different font options.)

2) It provides webmasters a ton of resources for implementing accessibility

It not only provides a list of steps one can take to make their site more accessible, but also provides the "why" of each step.

For example - one listed guideline for the directory is to use rem/em instead of px units for font sizes. Why? Well, the directory explains, "Users with low vision may need to increase the size of the text in order to be able to read and see better. Therefore it is important to always use scalable units for text."

Then, it goes on to list RESOURCES for changing px to rem/em!!

This site is an absolute treasure trove of resources for making your site accessible, and doing so with ease! I've used the resources listed to make my own site more accessible, and it's made the process seem so much more manageable!

So! If you run a personal site, then give the site a look, learn about accessibility practices, and apply them to your site! An inaccessible web is not a free web!

#neocities #indie web #web revival #old web #webcore #old internet #html #website #resource #guide #directory #accessibility #disability advocacy #azure does a thing

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sybillapandemia · 2 months

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i need to collect all of these

#neocities #web banner #bird #old web #webcore #neocities stamps #web resources #web graphics #indie web

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plentyeyes · 5 months

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portfiend's oc directory template

three weeks ago i began work on a little Eleventy-based website template for storing character information akin to Toyhou.se. it's been in a releasable state for about a week, but i've also been pushing updates to it near daily!

i also wrote up a quick tutorial for setting up the project on its download page, but i plan to improve it in the future.

click here to preview this template: NeoCities click here to get the code: GitHub

features:

built-in "namespaces" for characters, locations, and stories, with their own page templates and information card formats

uses eleventy's tagging system to allow you to tag pages for fine categorization

a big focus on linking to other pages. each "creative" page lets you navigate between the previous/next item in the category. pages have a "linked pages" list that allow you to navigate to related pages, including "what links here"

a content filtering system allowing developers to hide/blur certain content from people who have not opted into it. optionally supports needing to click an "i am 18+" box before entering the site

lightbox images; clickable image links that can reveal metadata such as captions and artist credits

tabbed views allow you to view specific sections of content at a time, used in the various creative pages

SASS wrapper for optional better-formatted stylesheets. don't know how to use SASS syntax? SASS also supports regular CSS!

this project is licensed under MIT License.

#neocities #neocities template #website template #web resources #webdev #indie web #indieweb #character directory #original character #worldbuilding #worldbuilding resources

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beebfreeb · 2 months

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My website update is now live!

You can now see the fruits of my labor... 3 whole pages of HTML and CSS with stuff to click on. My homepage, the DREAMLAND page, and the DIDL page have all been redesigned! (The other DIDL related pages are still down and being worked on, but they should be up soon.)

If you aren't already familiar, Daisy in DREAMLAND is my weird webthing (My webcomic? My serialized webnovel with illustrations?) which you can read. There is a summary on the pages linked above, but very quickly: It's about a silly cartoon cat who needs to collect their things from their old apartment before the landlord throws it all out.

#beebfreeb art tag #beebfreeb website tag #didl #daisy in dreamland #my ocs #neocities #indie web

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chocoboxes · 9 months

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the-timewatcher · 9 months

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A disgruntled Tumblrina (gender-neutral) made a website and why you should too.

Or "reject social media, return to personal websites".

PART 1: THE PART WHERE I CONVINCE YOU TO MOVE TO PERSONAL WEBSITES

So, the Web 2.0 social media infested landscape seems to be crumbling before our very eyes. Reddit's leadership is increasingly greedy, Twitter is sinking under the weight of Elon's massive, yet increasingly fragile ego, Tumblr is slowly turning into another lifeless corpo-fest, complete with the layout, Instagram continues to be vapid and soulless and Facebook seems to be going the way of MySpace.

(feel free to check the alt text on these, btw)

In these troubling times, where everything looks the same and you're expected to be milked for every dollar you're worth, what is a disgruntled Internet surfer such as yourself to do? Move to an untested alternative that's bound to get overrun by fascists thanks to poor moderation? Stay the course on the sinking ships you're used to?

Well, what if I told you that we've solved this problem way back in the 90's and early 2000's and were merely duped by the Big Zuck into forgetting our legacy? What if there was a cure for the sanitized, dull social media hellscape?

It takes a bit of work, when compared to just using a social media site, but even if your particular use case makes switching difficult (ex. an artist looking to promote their work), it's still a good secondary option to consider.

The core appeal is the ability to customize and individualize, make a corner of cyberspace unabashedly yours,

It can also be an exciting avenue of creative expression, giving whatever you want to say a unique coat of paint,

Most website hosting services are a bit more lax about what you can do on them, due to changes in the profit structure (rather than depending on advertisers and investors, they either have a premium option to give supporters perks, have another product, or, in the case of paid services, you renting that space IS the product),

If you want your website to be more accomodating and accessible, you don't have to file tons of feedback - do it yourself,

If you'd like to connect with other webmasters and promote each other's websites, we have webrings - sets of circular links that connect websites with something in common, be it a topic, aesthetic or friend group,

You're less likely to have your stuff purged by an ill-advised change in policy (especially if you have a backup of your files somewhere),

The more people do it, the less power those massive social media corpos have over the internet,

It can be a load of fun!

If I have you convinced, keep reading into part 2. If you just wanna see what I did, skip to part 3. If neither, feel free to continue scrolling. I won't hold it against you. You'll be missing out, that's all.

PART 2: SO, YOU WANNA MAKE A WEBSITE!

Good choice, here's some resources!

sadgrl's absolute beginner's guide to Neocities - what it says on the tin!

W3Schools - a more in-depth tutorial site, a learning resource so excellent it substituted for what I was supposed to learn in technical highschool (because our teacher just told us to go on W3Schools instead of teaching us shit)

A list of free layouts for your website - whether to use as a base to learn from or to simply take for yourself,

Neocities - the posterchild for free website hosting for personal websites. Doesn't allow video or audio, but you can get around that by linking those files from elsewhere. Beginner-friendly to a fault - once you have an account just drag and drop your files in,

Gitlab (& Gitlab Pages) - a more advanced option, but it has a few advantages of its own. Gitlab is a website hoster second and a version control service first - which is programmer speak for "keeps track of changes in your code and stores a backup of it online". it helps a lot when working on multiple devices or co-writing with a friend. And secondly, you can use Gitlab Actions to automate putting your website up (even on Neocities, like I do!)

My askbox - I am not joking, if you have any questions about any of this, I'd love nothing more than to help you out!

But with most of my indie web propaganda out of the way, it's time.

PART 3: Welcome to Timewatcher OS.

Of course, because I couldn't be normal when it comes to making a website, I had to turn it into a fake operating system. Each subpage is an "app", opened in a separate embed window. It has unlockable wallpapers (no pay2win, prommy). There's bideo games on it! I even made a music player for it so I can share my incongruent music tastes!

Like I said in my Tumblr bio, if I ever go radio silent for more than a month, it means I've gotten fed up with this hellsite and moved to my own homepage permamently. And I highly advise you make an option like this for yourself too! Lastly, if any of y'all would like to start a webring, do let me know in the askbox - I'm down to manage it if I'm not alone in there.

Anyways, I hope I convinced you to make a website, or at least check out some of the cool sites you've been missing out on! Hope to see you on the Old Web!

#webdev #web development #old web #neocities #webcore #indie web #codeblr #resources #save

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kafus · 1 year

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beginner’s guide to the indie web

“i miss the old internet” “we’ll never have websites like the ones from the 90s and early 2000s ever again” “i’m tired of social media but there’s nowhere to go”

HOLD ON!

personal websites and indie web development still very much exist! it may be out of the way to access and may not be the default internet experience anymore, but if you want to look and read through someone’s personally crafted site, or even make your own, you can still do it! here’s how:

use NEOCITIES! neocities has a built in search and browse tools to let you discover websites, and most importantly, lets you build your own website from scratch for free! (there are other ways to host websites for free, but neocities is a really good hub for beginners!)

need help getting started with coding your website? sadgrl online has a section on her website dedicated to providing resources for newbie webmasters!

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the core of what all websites are built on. many websites also use JS (JavaScript) to add interactive elements to their pages. w3schools is a useful directory of quick reference for pretty much every HTML/CSS/JS topic you can think of.

there is also this well written and lengthy guide on dragonfly cave that will put you step by step through the basics of HTML/CSS (what webpages are made from), if that’s your sort of thing!

stack overflow is every programmer’s hub for asking questions and getting help, so if you’re struggling with getting something to look how you want or can’t fix a bug, you may be able to get your answer here! you can even ask if no one’s asked the same question before.

websites like codepen and jsfiddle let you test HTML/CSS/JS in your browser as you tinker with small edits and bugfixing.

want to find indie websites outside the scope of neocities? use the search engine marginalia to find results you actually want that google won’t show you!

you can also use directory sites like yesterweb’s link section to find websites in all sorts of places.

if you are going to browse the indie web or make your own website, i also have some more personal tips as a webmaster myself (i am not an expert and i am just a small hobbyist, so take me with a grain of salt!)

if you are making your own site:

get expressive! truly make whatever you want! customize your corner of the internet to your heart’s content! you have left the constrains of social media where every page looks the same. you have no character limit, image limit, or design limit. want to make an entire page or even a whole website dedicated to your one niche interest that no one seems to be into but you? go for it! want to keep a public journal where you can express your thoughts without worry? do it! want to keep an art gallery that looks exactly how you want? heck yeah! you are free now! you will enjoy the indie web so much more if you actually use it for the things you can’t do on websites like twitter, instead of just using it as a carrd bio alternative or a place to dump nostalgic geocities gifs.

don’t overwhelm yourself! if you’ve never worked with HTML/CSS or JS before, it may look really intimidating. start slow, use some guides, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. even if your site doesn’t look how you want quite yet, be proud of your work! you’re learning a skill that most people don’t have or care to have, and that’s pretty cool.

keep a personal copy of your website downloaded to your computer and don’t just edit it on neocities (or your host of choice) and call it a day. if for some reason your host were to ever go down, you would lose all your hard work! and besides, by editing locally and offline, you can use editors like vscode (very robust) or notepad++ (on the simpler side), which have more features and is more intuitive than editing a site in-browser.

you can use ctrl+shift+i on most browsers to inspect the HTML/CSS and other components of the website you’re currently viewing. it’ll even notify you of errors! this is useful for bugfixing your own site if you have a problem, as well as looking at the code of sites you like and learning from it. don’t use this to steal other people’s code! it would be like art theft to just copy/paste an entire website layout. learn, don’t steal.

don’t hotlink images from other sites, unless the resource you’re taking from says it’s okay! it’s common courtesy to download images and host them on your own site instead of linking to someone else’s site to display them. by hotlinking, every time someone views your site, you’re taking up someone else’s bandwidth.

if you want to make your website easily editable in the future (or even for it to have multiple themes), you will find it useful to not use inline CSS (putting CSS in your HTML document, which holds your website’s content) and instead put it in a separate CSS file. this way, you can also use the same theme for multiple pages on your site by simply linking the CSS file to it. if this sounds overwhelming or foreign to you, don’t sweat it, but if you are interested in the difference between inline CSS and using separate stylesheets, w3schools has a useful, quick guide on the subject.

visit other people’s sites sometimes! you may gain new ideas or find links to more cool websites or resources just by browsing.

if you are browsing sites:

if the page you’re viewing has a guestbook or cbox and you enjoyed looking at the site, leave a comment! there is nothing better as a webmaster than for someone to take the time to even just say “love your site” in their guestbook.

that being said, if there’s something on a website you don’t like, simply move on to something else and don’t leave hate comments. this should be self explanatory, but it is really not the norm to start discourse in indie web spaces, and you will likely not even be responded to. it’s not worth it when you could be spending your time on stuff you love somewhere else.

take your time! indie web doesn’t prioritize fast content consumption the way social media does. you’ll get a lot more out of indie websites if you really read what’s in front of you, or take a little while to notice the details in someone’s art gallery instead of just moving on to the next thing. the person who put labor into presenting this information to you would also love to know that someone is truly looking and listening.

explore! by clicking links on a website, it’s easy to go down rabbitholes of more and more websites that you can get lost in for hours.

seeking out fansites or pages for the stuff you love is great and fulfilling, but reading someone’s site about a topic you’ve never even heard of before can be fun, too. i encourage you to branch out and really look for all the indie web has to offer.

i hope this post helps you get started with using and browsing the indie web! feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions or want any advice. <3

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spiders-around · 3 months

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fuck ittt im posting the new game thing.

I made a short interactive game where you haven't gone to work in a week since the closet corpse went missing, and your coworker is (understandably) worried about whatever that even means.

The game has two routes with entirely different stories, and two endings. It is quite short and I spent a good amount of hours making it (help). Play it at:

https://spiders.neocities.org/z-closetcorpse/0-start

#neocities #indie web #interactive fiction #ocs #original characters #NewsMan #ScreenWriter #Closet Corpse

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dearimasu · 5 months

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" i eagerly await the day my site gets posted on a tumblr webcore blog without any credit, thats how i'll know i've made it big" - the site's owner, whoever that is

#webcore #old web #persona 3 #neocities #aesthetic #animecore #blue aesthetic #cybercore #y2k #90s #indie web #html #otakucore #nostalgiacore #00s #2000s #hikkicore #neetcore #weebcore #anime #p3

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