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Okay soooo I was free roaming on the internet and in my favorite websites, when I was struck by the fact that I actually know NOTHING about the web. Considering that I wasn't old enough in the 2000's to know all the web secrets and incomprehensible stuff behind creating a website or get to know people on the internet through websites or whatever was happening in the net in the 2000's, I find myself in the "old/nostalgic" side of the internet barely knowing how to put a blinkie in my Spacehey profile page.
As I was browsing for some more blinkies and stamps, I found a specific website that really made my heart sink: not only it was full of the material I was looking for as usual, but it also had a shit ton amount of links that lead to millions of other super cool websites and pages belonging to other people?? Now, I know it's me that I know nothing about the net and this is probably something normal to whoever knows how to properly browse or create pages, but it really made me realise that It's so easy for me to get lost through net pages and stuff, and that if I were to create a website like those (I suppose through Neocities?????? which I discovered today what it was) it would take me a lifetime to learn how to make a website that people seem to create so easily and effortlessly.
I think the stuff that struck me the most are the links, those little rectangular buttons that people customize (how????) that you find in the web pages of friends or affiliates and if you click them you directly go in their website. How does it work? like- do they actually know each other? Does one just get their "link" button and puts it on their personal page for no reasons? Does one have to ask before? Is there a community in which all these people with cool asf websites know each other that I have no clue about?? So I'm here, sitting at my computer with a thousand questions, like a 5 years old discovering the world.
Could some kind soul that casually encountered this blog entry enlighten me with the net knowledge? And maybe explain me some basis of the net during the 2000's. I dont even know how to word it since I'm not really sure where to start with the questions...
I feel like such a poser ToT...........
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lonesome canine
hey man ! i got into neocities in the beginning of summer , it looks HELLA daunting but trust me its a piece of cake . you'll probably wanna get started learning html and css ! html is like the bones of your website will CSS is the decor . i recommend you learn these by finding website tutorials and following along and writing these into something . i recommend phoenix code as its an easy to use software that lets you write code and see it update real time instead of having to constantly save your code and refresh it to see the changes !
once you learn html and css i HIGHLYYY recommend you go to neocities pages and just inspect elementing everything , once you learn html you'll further understand and cement your knowledge once you see it actually used in websites ! it really helps and provides a lot of inspiration and ideas too ! also if you wonder how they link websites with a rectangular button , you can actually hotlink websites on to images! that can be done with html . hence once you press an image , that being a small button someone drew for their website , it'll take you to their website ! kewl innit ?
extra small website tips , once you learn html and css you can check out grid boxes with css , they help a lot with laying out things! also stamps , blinkies ,gifs , are a huge part of neocities websites ! you can also join discord servers about html and website shtuff that usually have help sections . most important of all , just dive right in ! just start and get something happening because only then can you determine what to work on !!! goodluck , the indie web is SOOOO awsom and such a creative space ! trust me it aint hard you just need some determination and some time on your hands!
omg thank you for the amazing comment!!! Ty for being nice!
by R4v3n_Whatzername; ; Report
TechPerson389
In all honesty, making a website with HTML and CSS isn't that hard once you learn how. A great resource for this kind of thing would be the MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Getting_started/Your_first_website/Creating_the_content
If you can find a place where you can get help from others on web design, you can get through making your own website and have it the way you want, and have fun with it. For example, I am in a discord for another web hosting website called "Nekoweb" and they have a lot of wonderful people who aren't afraid to help others.
And if you are worried about your website looking terrible, here was the first version of my website: https://techperson389.nekoweb.org/old/1.0/
It wasn't good at all, but then with enough learning from different resources on the internet and other people, I was able to code this myself (for the most part): https://techperson389.nekoweb.org
Also, your website doesn't really need a purpose. If you eventually find one, that's great. But if you just want to have a website because it is fun to make, you should go do it, because you having fun is really what matters.
Hope this helps!
NOTE: it took me a few tries to send this comment because I couldn't put code snippits into the comment lol
thank you SO MUCH for the comment! I really appreciate it, and for what it's worth, I think your old website still has it's own charm! AHAHA ty for being nice!
by R4v3n_Whatzername; ; Report
meatbuuuuuns
i'm still new-ish to the indie / old web revival scene (abt... a year and a half or so?) but i love diving deep into things like this so i'll try to share what i know.
the buttons are sorta just that. buttons. you don't necessarily have to know each other, but sharing your buttons is a good way to build community and awareness of each other. usually you don't have to ask or even point out you did, unless you want them to add your button as well.
building community goes beyond buttons, too. there's webrings and fanlistings, which have their own functions. webrings use j.s (period since spacehey's weird abt writing the words out lolz) to form a sort of virtual neighborhood. and fanlistings show what the webmaster(s)'s into, and it links back to a main page where all fans can be found and find each other's sites. then there's chatboxes and guestbooks as well; occasionally people share links back to their own site, and friendships could occur that way.
it's totally easy to make a site. truly! as others mentioned, there's a plethora of layouts to choose from out there (personally i love the ones shared by eggramen on neocities, or if u want something more complex there's always the iconic createblog (i talk abt them so much lolz)), and lots of code resources in general if you wanna try building from scratch. w3schools, mdn web docs, tutorials, etc...
and as a final word of encouragement, maybe, regardless of who reads this. it's important to remember slow progress is better than none! it's really easy once it clicks, but i understand from personal experience that figuring out div tags and positioning can be hard at first. if ur site doesn't start out looking like the most popular on neocities or nekoweb, it is completely okay. in fact, i'd encourage it. it's good to know how site structure really works from the ground up. but again, not totally essential if u just wanna put in the layout and add content. the indie web is supposed to be freer, after all. be free! do whatevs! at the end of the day, people will find ur site eventually. a space that u created for urself, fully for you.
feel free to respond with any more questions, i love rambling about this :D
also i hope i made sense lolz.
by meatbuuuuuns; ; Report
Thank you so much for the availability and for the useful comment!!! I couldn't imagine to have many people helping me and I'm so thankful for that! Tysm for being nice! This really helped me!
by R4v3n_Whatzername; ; Report
hal
ok, i drafted up a big ass reply and for some reason spacehey killed it dead.
coding a site is not super difficult, honestly! there's layouts (repth and sadgrlonline) out there you can use or you can create something from scratch. it's basically a step up from editing your spacehey profile. other good resources are w3schools, geeksforgeeks, and mozilla web docs. there's also a bunch of youtube tutorials out there!
buttons (the rectangle links) are just pngs that folks let people use to link to them. you don't need to be friends with someone to add their button to your site, i typically just add sites i think are cool looking :p you can make them with an 88x31 button maker online or just in an art program of some sort.
in terms of being a social platform... i use it mostly for site hosting, so im unsure how much chatting people do, but it's definitely harder at the start to get eyes on your site. keep working at it and make something youre proud of!
and re: the 2000s web... a lot more of it was in browser. if you think about how people use the internet these days, they mostly stick to a few core sites-- instagram, tiktok, etc-- but back in the day sites like newgrounds and independent forums and yes, myspace thrived. it was "decentralised" as a lot of webgeeks like to say. rather than carving out a niche within some larger social environment, individual "ecosystems" existed catered to certain topics
geocities (what neocities is based on) goes farther back to the 1990s. essentially, users could sign up to create their own site on geocities' servers for free, which made it a lot more welcoming for everyday users to use the personal web. i'd suggest looking more into geocities history if you're interested! there's some cool shit out there
by hal; ; Report
clone
very interesting. can you please send me those links i would also like to dive into this
Hi! some of the most popular ones I found are these: 1) http://sd.silentears.net/ 2) https://cinni.net/ 3) https://dollzrevival.neocities.org/
I easily get lost in these cool sites because it's full of other cool links that lead to more cool sites ToT I feel like a toddler in a candy shop ;-;
by R4v3n_Whatzername; ; Report
also, in the second one I listed, theres a specific section literally called "cool links" where there's an incomprehensible amount of other neocities sites and "internet neighbors"??? idk what that even is... but it really shook me ;-;
by R4v3n_Whatzername; ; Report
this is pretty cool ngl some people just use https://neocities.org/ to crate their own custom website for free im going to save this as a side project and make my own tysm i also found another one called geocities which is pretty cool too but it shut down in 2009 in the us
by clone; ; Report
it's no problem! Ikr its so cool!
by R4v3n_Whatzername; ; Report