#i know a little of html and JavaScript

[continuallycowardlycod]

(not adding a I don't code option as it would skew the results)

(also I forgot to write it as html and CSS so just pretend I did please)

[thunderlina]

In the wake of the TikTok ban and revival as a mouthpiece for fascist propaganda, as well as the downfall of Twitter and Facebook/Facebook-owned platforms to the same evils, I think now is a better time than ever to say LEARN HTML!!! FREE YOURSELVES FROM THE SHACKLES OF MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AND EMBRACE THE INDIE WEB!!!

You can host a website on Neocities for free as long as it's under 1GB (which is a LOT more than it sounds like let me tell you) but if that's not enough you can get 50GB of space (and a variety of other perks) for only $5 a month.

And if you can't/don't want to pay for the extra space, sites like File Garden and Catbox let you host files for free that you can easily link into NeoCities pages (I do this to host videos on mine!) (It also lets you share files NeoCities wouldn't let you upload for free anyways, this is how I upload the .zip files for my 3DS themes on my site.)

Don't know how to write HTML/CSS? No problem. W3schools is an invaluable resource with free lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and a whole slew of other programming languages, both for web development and otherwise.

Want a more traditional social media experience? SpaceHey is a platform that mimics the experience of 2000s MySpace

Struggling to find independent web pages that cater to your interests via major search engines? I've got you covered. Marginalia and Wiby are search engines that specifically prioritize non-commercial content. Marginalia also has filters that let you search for more specific categories of website, like wikis, blogs, academia, forums, and vintage sites.

Maybe you wanna log off the modern internet landscape altogether and step back into the pre-social media web altogether, well, Protoweb lets you do just that. It's a proxy service for older browsers (or really just any browser that supports HTTP, but that's mostly old browsers now anyways) that lets you visit restored snapshots of vintage websites.

Protoweb has a lot of Geocities content archived, but if you're interested in that you can find even more old Geocities sites over on the Geocities Gallery

And really this is just general tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. If you dig a little deeper you can find loads more interesting stuff out there. The internet doesn't have to be a miserable place full of nothing but doomposting and targeted ads. The first step to making it less miserable is for YOU, yes YOU, to quit spending all your time on it looking at the handful of miserable websites big tech wants you to spend all your time on.

[losergames]

Just found this WIP today. I'm absolutely in awe with the aesthetics and designs of your game, and your blog. If you ever wrote/did any kind of crash course in UI design for Twine, I would pay serious money for it. I feel like it's really hard to get such a professional, clean, and unique look for a game!

thank you so much that is so incredibly kind!!!

honestly my best advice is reference! reference your butt off!!! so much of design is looking at other designs first before attempting your own. chop shop's twine build came from a lot of places. i looked at the need for speed series, forza, GTA, saints row and hitman from the top of my head.

in fact chop shop's main console was inspired by the menu from need for speed underground 2:

i highly recommend checking out Game UI Database - it categorises games by genre, style, themes and more! i'm always looking at stuff on there for ideas to improve my own ui! i 100% recommend looking at the cyberpunk 2077 ui page, it is so incredibly detailed and has so many stills of the different menus.

twine can be intimidating for sure. sugarcube 2 is basically limitless since it's html, css, and javascript. but again i say, use as much reference as you can! the best ideas are not usually your first and it's always easier to build something when you've already got a base to look at y'know?

i hope that's a little helpful! please let me know if you wanna talk more about ui and design! <3

[dervampireprince]

so i've been coding a website

home of: the dervampireprince fanart museum, prince's art gallery, a masterlist of resources for making websites and list of web communities, and more!

[18+, minors dni (this blog is 18+ and the art gallery and art museum pages on my site have some 18+ only artworks)]

littlevampire . neocities . org (clickable link in pinned post labelled 'website')

if you don't follow me on twitch or aren't in my discord, you might not know i've been coding my own website via neocities since june 2024. it's been a big labour of love, the only coding i'd done before is a little html to customize old tumblr themes, so i've learnt a lot and i've been having so much fun. i do link to it on my carrds but not everyone will know that the icon of a little cat with a wrench and paintbrush is the neocities logo, or even what neocities is.

neocities is a free website builder, but not like squarespace or wix that let you build a website from a template with things you can drag in, it's all done with html and css code (and you can throw in javascript if you wanna try hurting your brain /hj). i love the passion people have for coding websites, for making their own websites again in defiance of social medias becoming less customisable and websites looking boring and the same as each other. people's neocities sites are so fun to look through, looking at how they express themselves, their art galleries, shrines to their pets or favourite characters or shows or toys or places they've been.

why have i been making a website this way?

well i used to love customising my tumblr theme back when clicking on someone's username here took you to their tumblr website, their username . tumblr . com link that you could edit and customise with html code. now clicking a username takes you to their mobile page view, a lot of users don't even know you can have a website with tumblr, the feature to have a site became turned off by default, and i've heard from some users that they might have to pay to unlock that feature.

i've always loved the look of old geocities and angelfire websites, personalised sites, and i've grown tired of every social media trying to look the same as each other, remove features that let users customise their profiles and pages more. and then i found out about neocities.

are you interested in making a site too?

neocities is free, though you can pay to support them. there is no ads, no popups, they have no ai tool scraping their sites, no tos that will change to suddenly stop allow 18+ art. unlike other website hosters, neocities does have a sort of social media side where you do have a profile and people can follow you and leave comments on your site and like your updates, but you can ignore this if you want, or use it to get to know other webmasters.

to quote neocities "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."

i'd so encourage anyone interested to try making a website with neocities. w3schools is an excellent place to start learning coding, and there are free website templates you can copy and paste and use (my site is built off two different free codes, one from fujoshi . nekoweb . org and the other from sadgrl's free layout builder tool).

your site can be for anything:

a more fun and interactive online business card (rather than using carrd.co or linktree)

a gallery of your art/photos/cosplays/etc

a blog

webshrines to your a character, film, song, game, toy, hobby, your pet - anything can be a shrine!

a catalogue/database/log of every film you've watched, every place you've visited, birds you've seen, plushies you own, every blinkie gif you have saved, your ocs and stories, etc

hosting a webcomic

a fanwiki/fansite that doesn't have endless ads like fandom . com does (i found a cool neocities fansite for rhythm game series pop'n music and it's so thorough, it even lists all the sprites and official art for every character)

i follow a website that just reviews every video game based on whether or not it has a frog in it, if the frog is playable, if you can be friends with it. ( frogreview . neocities . org )

the only html i knew how to write before starting is how to paragraph and bold text. and now i have a whole site! and i'm still working on new stuff for it all the time.

i just finished making a page on my website called 'explore the web'. this page lists everything you might need to know when wanting to make or decorate your website. it lists:

other neocities sites i think are cool and i'm inspired by, check them out for more ideas of what your site could look like and contain!

website building resources

coding help and tutorials

free website html code layouts you can use if you don't want too start coding from scratch

places to find graphics and decorative images for your site (transparent background pngs, pixels, favicons, stamps, blinkies, buttons, userboxes, etc)

image generators for different types of buttons and gifs (88x31 buttons, tiny identity buttons, heart locket open gifs, headpat gifs)

widgets and games and interactive elements you can add to your site (music players, interactive pets like gifypet and tamanotchi, hit counters, games like pacman and crosswords, guestbooks and chatboxes, etc)

web manifestos, guides, introductions and explanations of webmastering and neocities (some posts made by other tumblr users here are what made me finally want to make my own site and discover how too)

art tools, resources and free drawing programs

web communities! webrings, cliques, fanlistings, pixel clubs (pixel art trades) and more!

other fun sites that didn't fit in the other categories like free sheet music sites, archives, egotistical.goat (see a tumblr users audio posts/reblogs as a music playlist), soul void (a wonderful free to play video game i adore), an online omnichord you can play, and more.

i really hope the 'explore the web' page is helpful, it took three days to track down every link and find resources to add.

and if you want to check out my site there's more than just these pages. like i said in the beginning, i recently finished making:

the dervampireprince fanart museum

every piece of fanart i've received (unless the sender asked me to keep it private) has been added to this museum and where possible links back to the original artists post of that art (a lot the art was sent to me via discord so i can't link to the original post). every piece of fanart sent to me now will be added on their unless you specifically say you don't want it going on there. there's also links to my fanworks guide on there and how to send me fanart.

other pages on my site

about me (including favourite media, quizzes, comfort characters, kins, and more)

art gallery (art i've made, sorted by month)

graphics (so far it's just stamps i've made but plan to remake this section of my site)

media log (haven't started the 2025 one yet, but a log of all films, tv, writing, music, theatre, fandoms, characters and ships i got into in 2024)

silly web pets

shrines

site map

update log

my shrines so far:

i have ones for lucifer from supernatural, sam winchester from supernatural, charuca minifigures (arcade prizes i wanted as a kid that i'm trying to finish collecting as an adult), my waifuroulette discord tcg collection. my masterlist of every lgbt+ marvel character is a wip. i love making each shrine look different and suit the character/fandom/thing the shrine is about. and then there's also:

the european musical section

i ramble about them a lot and it's no surprise there's multiple shrines for them. i fell in love with german musical theatre in 2020 and that expanded in being interested in all non-english language musical theatre and trying to spread the word of it and how they deserve to be as known as english-language musicals. one musical in particular, elisabeth das musical, is my biggest special interest so expect a very detailed shrine about that one day.

so far this part of the site includes

'enter the theatre' an interactive web theatre where you choose a ticket and that musical will play on the stage (click a ticket and the embedded youtube video for that musical will appear on the stage and play. i dealt with javascript for the first time to bring the vision i had for this page alive, it might be slow but i hope enjoyable)

elisabeth das musical webshrine [not made yet]

tanz der vampire webshrine [not made yet, might abandon the idea]

my favourite european musicals [not made yet]

a masterlist of european musicals [a wip, only two musicals listed so far, i am listing every musical and every production they've had, this was a word document i kept for a long time that i always wanted to share somehow and this page is how i'll do it. there's no other list for european musicals out there so i guess it's up to me as always /lh]

the future for my site

i will update my art gallery, the fanart museum, my media log and other collections as often as i can. there's so many more pages i want to add including:

profiles for my ocs

finish my european musical masterlist

finish my 'every marvel lgbt+ character' masterlist (i have no love for marvel or disney's lgbt+ representation nor are all of these characters good representation and a lot are very minor characters, but for some reason i have gotten hyperfixated on this topic a few times so here comes a masterlist)

make shrines for loki (marvel), ares (hades), my sylvanian families collection, vocaloid (and/or vocaloid medleys), my plushie collection, pullip dolls

make a 'page not found' page

and i have one big plan to essentially make a site within a site, and make a website for my monster boy band ocs. but make it as if it was a real band, an unfiction project (think like how welcome home's website portrays welcome home as if it was a real show). this site would have pages for the band members, their albums, merch and maybe a pretend shop, and a fake forum where you could see other characters in the story talking and click on their profiles to find out more about them. and then once that's all done i want to start posting audios about the characters and then people can go to the website to find out more about them. that's my big plan anyway. i hope that sounds interesting.

i also want to make an effort to try and join some website communities. be brave and apply for some webrings and fanlistings, and make some pixel art and join some of the amazing pixel clubs out there.

but yeah, that's my site, that's neocities. i hope that was interesting. i hope it encourages people to make their own site, or at least look at other's small websites and explore this part of the internet. and if you go and check out mine feel free to drop a message in the guestbook on the homepage, or follow me on neocities if you have/make an account.

[sanchoyo]

boooo ive spent like 3 hours trying to install the drivers for the gd usb wifi adapter :/ it installed just fine on this desktop when it was on windows so it cant be a hardware problem i dont think...and the disk HAS a linux version for installation included!! I literally havent had to go to a tech forum and type a question in So Long. this is So Embarrassing. but we will figure it out 😔

so my sister received a MASSIVE ancient desktop computer from our grandfather and she doesnt want it (tiny apartment. big Old Computer. already has laptop/tablets etc) so she gave it to me. and i had the idea that id install games and blender on it (like, heavier programs) and use my laptop for more work related things and keep it lighter (if i can snag a remote job yk...)

but this Big Old Desktop computer. its on windows 7 which. is NOT compatible with the newest version of blender :( (and all the tutorials i need to follow do use the newest versions...) and like. windows 10/11 would cost money to get a product key for (or more time trying to pirate it than I want to spend honestly) ...and since I already have a working laptop I figure its fine if I use the desktop one to fuck around right? nbd if I do smth wrong bc I can fall back on my laptop or do a system wipe on the desktop. so. going to try LINUX for the first time instead of a windows system :3 very excited bc ive wanted to try it forever. penguine time

[dailypokemoncrochet]

Bouncing back and forth between trying to code the birthday pokemon quiz with html and in excel and again I just do not like this whole coding thing, makes not enough sense.

I know conceptually how it should work but not how to make it actually work.

I have 3 images split into 4 subsections each, and every possible combo (64) corresponds to a regional dex and a few Pokemon types.

I have 3 lists:

every calendar date corresponding to a group of Pokemon

key for the 64 image combos

every Pokemon and their types

What I want to happen is

you enter a birth month/day, it gets checked in the calendar list for the group of Pokemon

you pick from the 3 images, it gets checked in the key for a regional dex and types

the group selects one or two pokemon that either match that regional dex or best match the pokemon types.

you get that/those pokemon as your birthday pokemon

I think it's gonna take too much effort for me to figure out on my own coming from very little coding knowledge and I don't even know what specific things to search to do so. I'm pretty sure the whole automating it part is gonna be some kind of javascript which i have even less understanding of than html.

SO! Putting that back in my head to marinate for another year probably. Gonna work on printing out pokemon photos and then I'm gonna open up my laptop and clean it out. Haven't done that in a while (ever, actually) because I have only just recently acquired a set of little tools to unscrew the tiny bits on the back. I imagine it's going to be very dusty and gross and also possibly I might break the laptop in the process of trying to clean it but we'll see!

[lorkai]

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ A/N: Silly and self Indulgent scenario that's been living in my head since I've started learning coding like javascript and html awhile ago, like pls let Idia teach me, I'll listen to everything he has say. Or not. Probably not. I would probably be looking at him all the time like 👀💞.

Coming from someone as quiet as Idia, people would think that he only hides inside his room and that only silence surrounds him. But that was far from true, Idia laughed, screamed or hummed all the time when he was safe and sound inside those comforting walls and, like now, his fingers tapped the keyboard keys frantically.

"What's that supposed to be?" You asked, pointing to a series of strange codes on Idia's dimly lit computer screen. How he could see with all the lights off, you didn't know. But at least, you now knew why he complained about his eyes hurting.

Idia replied without turning around, "They're called arrays. They're used to store more than one code inside a variable, Yuu-shi."

You made an understanding sound even though you didn't understand what that meant. You remembered a thing or two about your world's programming, but the memories were blurred and as today was an especially calm day, you decided to pull a chair close to his desk and sit next to Idia to watch him work. Maybe it would help to understand what those "arrays" were for if you could watch him, besides it was fun.

You noticed how his fingers trembled slightly against the keyboard and the ends of his hair turned pink at your sudden approach, but you preferred to spare him the embarrassment and just watch him create his codes. It was almost peaceful the sound of his fingers and his soft humming.

"That's an opening tag right there, right?" You pointed again not sure and he nodded.

"Yuu-shi..." He mumbled as if unsure of his proposal. Even though you're friends, he's too scared to voice his ideas sometimes and you don't force him to say anything while you wait for him to search for the right words. Finally after a few seconds Idia turns to you with a small smile on his face. "S-sit closer, you'll be able to see better that way. I can even explain what each code is for if that doesn't bore you."

That was his shy way of saying that he would like to have you around and that he didn't mind your questions, and you readily nodded, pulling the chair closer and resting your face in your hand. Idia kept working, fingers practicing typing over and over entire columns of tags and other codes that you gradually remembered the name.

"Yuu-shi, you never told me that you, uh, liked programming." He mutters uncertainly. But then a wide smile spreads across his lips and he looks at you sideways, laughing sinisterly. "But that means I can teach you everything I know, and after I've stuffed all possible coding knowledge into your little pretty head, Yuu-shi, you will evolve from an R card to a UR+."

You shudder comically, wondering if it was too late to run. But Idia's cool hand closes over your wrist and his slender fingers find their way to yours, lacing them together as he opens another page on his computer.

"Let's start with your lesson, Yuu-shi, and... And, uh... And if you get everything right, I have a reward in mind." Idia declares, a rosy blush taking over his face.

And truly how couldn't you deny him that?

[robo-dino-puppy]

I'm alive (theoretically)! I'm almost ready to start putting things up on the armor gallery <- view in a desktop browser for best results pls

the consensus from this post seems to be to keep the sky portion which is fine with me, but last call if you want to make your opinion known! next question:

ok it's not super obvious when the pics are tumblr-sized, but any thoughts on if should I have the shield overlay not visible (left) or visible (right) on the shield-weaver? or both since there will be two images? no overlay with no headgear/visible with headgear maybe?

also I'd still love to find someone knowledgeable in current CSS/javascript/tumblr theme making (my CSS is many years out of date, I don't know js, and while I'm sure I could make a theme I simply don't have the spare brainpower to do it right now). the dropdown menus work on desktop but are iffy at best on mobile, and while I tried to make the theme* responsive to screen size changes, I'm sure it could be done better.

From what I understand of javascript (admittedly very little), a js dropdown menu would work much better on touchscreens - but if there's some sophisticated CSS that would also do the job I'd love to hear about it!

so if anyone wants to help me out in this area, I (and probably anyone who uses the armor gallery) would greatly appreciate it 🙏

*the theme I modified is like... ancient... and doesn't support NPF. which is not exactly a problem because before the old post editor went the way of the dinosaurs, I created *checks blog* 316 drafts in the old format. lol. lmao, even. I may not be good at planning but I AM good at hoarding! still, a theme that's up to current tumblr (and HTML/CSS) standards would be nice.

[sea-angel-blu]

I haven't posted much for a while but I've actually been doing a lot so here's an update! First, I've been learning html and a little javascript so I can build a website from scratch on Neocities. It's a pretty cool place and filled with tons of passionate people all doing the same as me, trying to create their own fun corner of the web.

The site's still as a whole a work in progress but there's some fun stuff to look at. Link to my website if you want to check it out. Second, I've also been learning how to code in the game engine Godot! I want to make fun free web games with it, and I've made a lot of progress on one so far. The hang up on it is actually the art and not the code because I am drawing all the frames for these fish swimming by hand. It's a simple game where you're a small fish trying not to get injured or eaten by the bigger fish around you.

Sneak peak of how it's looking so far, the rudderfish (the white and brown striped fish to the left), has placeholder art and will have its final look with shading later on.

Also here's the swim cycle for the big fish (Goliath Grouper). It's technically done but specifically the spines on the top don't move with the body on the one frame where the fish turns its head towards the viewer, so I will attempt to fix that at some point. But other than that I like the goofy fella's lil animation.

I don't know when I will have the game done, because I have way too many projects I'm working on all the time, but it will get done eventually!

[red-viscountess-emika]

a Tridaily Dose of Emika

(because of exams)

programming languages I use

I do programming, sometimes. I will list the languages I know, chronologically.

Scratch (when I was 10 or something)

Processing/weird combination of a Java library and a very shitty integrated code environment that comes with it, or whatever that word is. (when I was 14, maybe??)

Python (I dunno, used it for the first time at 16, I would guess)

C (when I was either 20 or 19)

HTML, CSS, Javascript (when I was 20??)

Haskell (when I was 20 (I am still 20))

So Scratch is just adorable, right??

Processing?? I dunno, it helped me learn the concepts????? It was really weird looking back at it. I feel like I was very shitty, but it had a library to make visual stuff easy, so it worked. I wouldn't know how to use actual Java, though, because classes were an advanced concept for me back then, and I forgot it since, and I don't ever use classes with the other languages I use.

Python sucks so bad, I hate it, but school coerces me into using it sometimes.....

C is my favourite, and the one I'm the best at. It's just very satisfying, I guess. I've been building a datastructure library lately.

HTML and CSS are kinda funny, Javascript sucks, but you need it I guess

Haskell is so cute, I love it, but I suck at it as of now. I had a month orso of using it and then went back to C, but I do plan to learn more of it later on :3 now, I will tell you more about these languages

Scratch is just some little kid who is throwing paint around (they are fine??? like they're a kid.... you can't judge them)

Processing is some friendly old white dude (he is fine)

Python is some 30-year old in lower upper management of some multinational who thinks very highly of himself and stuff (we hate him)

C is a 25-year old non-binary cool person (we like them)

HTML is not a person

CSS is not a person either

Javascript, we don't know enough to tell, and with we, we mean I

Haskell is a 16 or 17 year old alt girl (we like her)

[goblin-social]

Well, hello word, @jv here.

This is the blog for throwing some news about Goblin, the fediverse-based tumblr clone I'm working on.

The idea is to develop an open-source platform that replicates some of the most peculiar intricacies of tumblr, that anyone can upload to a server, and become part of a federated network that works, in a way, as one. A tumblr-owned tumblr, if you will, that is much more resilient to financial woes than our current beloved hellsite.

None of the current platforms running on the fediverse offers an user experience close to tumblr. And more important: all of them lack the features that make the magic of tumblr happen: Reblogs, html posts, talking in the tags, etc.

So ... let's make one ourselves. The idea is to take one of the mastodon clones and, add the missing features and launch it to the world to use. For purely personal reasons (I know javascript/node much better than any other language) I have forked Firefish, which is itself a fork of Misskey.

The development is being done at https://github.com/johnHackworth/goblin, and yeah, Goblin is the working name of the project.

I have an instance running at http://goblin.band/ . It's closed for new users, and it's extremely unstable at the moment, barely anything more than a very badly configured firefish server, but if anyone wants to poke around let me know and I can allow you to register.

So what it's in the plans for a version 1.0 that I feel confident doing myself (though any help is also accepted, of course)?

[done] Add support for reblog chains

[done] Add support for html posts

[in progress] Change the default editor for a block editor that allows to add content without having to write HTML

Manage notifications (especially what happens when someone reblogs a reblog, which is not supported by Firefish)

Review all the UI to remove any firefish or misskey references, remove unused sections.

Add tumblr-style tag system

Review the UI and polish it a little bit

What's in the plans for that 1.0 that I have no idea how to do / I know I'm terrible doing it myself?

Find a way to package everything so it's easy to install on a server without having to manually install a bunch of dependences.

Actually make my goblin.band server ... a proper server. With HTTPS and all the fancy stuff, you know.

Figure out if this thing actually federates with other servers out of the box or if I have to do anything to make it happen.

Figure out what's best for file storage. Probably disallow uploading anything that's not images, but see what to do with uploaded files and such.

So, if anyone wants to help, as we devs say, Pull Requests accepted!

/cc @echo @analytik2

[losergames]

OH MY GOSH... I never knew UI database was a thing!! I'm so incredibly grateful you responded to my ask with that link, it's a game changer for sure. I've been referencing some of my favorite games when thinking through UI for my own game (Cyberpunk 2077, my beloved) but I never knew there was a site like that for more cohesive referencing. Thank you!!!!

hi!! i am so incredibly sorry i am late answering these. life! you know how it goes.

i recommend w3schools for html, css and javascript! they have a lot of beginner tutorials for things you might be interested in, as well good explanations alongside examples.

i also watched a lot of dan cox's tutorials on youtube. he has a bunch of stuff on his page for sugarcube 2. as far as i know he has a few video for the new 2.37 version, where as i'm using 2.36 but that's up to you! super SUPER helpful to watching someone actively using the programme and talk through it.

idrellegames' coding in twine tag is also super helpful! i was scrolling through it all the time when i got started with twine lol

my best advice for coming up with a design that is unique is to not go straight into the coding first! i mocked up all of chop shops designs in photoshop before i started building it in twine. here are some old mock ups. it doesn't have to be photoshop, that's just the tool i have on hand, but something like canva would definitely work just as well! or, if you don't have access to anything digital, just using a pen and paper would work just as well. it's much easier to draw out a design than start coding it when you're not sure how it's even supposed to look yet.

i hope that helps a little! <3

[pong03]

HELLO TUMBLR COMMUNITY

SHARE TO ME YOUR NEOCITIES PLEASE

AND YOUR TIPS FOR WEB DESIGN AND LEARNING HTML,CSS, AND JAVASCRIPT.

I am just a child (18) who desires the freedom of neocities and a space hey. I need your guidance and knowledge.

I know some goated mf 14 yr old is gonna be the one who has the most knowledge and I'm gonna feel like I wasted my time haha.

but fr, i really want to get into this and HTML is already a big tumblr thing, before the total twitterfication of this website. So yeah I'd love tips or if you just want to share your own websites it would be so COOL. I'm legit a total newbie who learned to code a little bit for a data science class, which is more like python type shit.

[youplush]

Hi! I saw that you have a website where you organise all your plushies which is such a good idea tbh and I'm always looking for ideas of how to efficiently organise them. Apologies if you've answered this before but how did you make it?

Your plushies are so cute btw!! :3

Hi! Thank you :3

I use neocities which is a free website where you can make your own website!

It does require knowledge of coding, but there are LOTS of resources online for learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript!

I'm not very good at coding tbh, so for my plush website I am using a template that somebody made.

Here is the link for the template I used! I'm pretty sure it's a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript! However you don't have to mess with or edit the JS.

I did edit the template a little bit though, to make it fit my needs better :)

If you're interested I could show the coding for one of my pages as an example?

If you can't code I'm sure there's gotta be a website somewhere for organizing stuff!! I know Toyhouse is a good one for OCs, and technically you can add some plushies to it if you make the plushie more original (like giving it a personality).

I really hope you can find somewhere to organize your plushies!!!!

And thank you :3

[highly-nonexistent]

There is something very weird about the relatively short nature of the culture surrounding website creation. As in, like, internet-user-created websites have been around for like 30-31 years at this point, and the culture surrounding them has changed so very much.

People used to create websites left and right for their own needs, their little shops and their little blogs about what they liked. Some websites of course housing horrible content since their dawn, and some being as mundane but as unique as the person behind its code. I have seen older sites, archived, that promoted creating your own site, and that was interesting to see. That culture of creating your own website and of sharing that knowledge on a still-growing facet of communication.

And then at some point social media appeared, and that was interesting, because now everyone was able to quickly present themselves without the need of a website, but that didn't mean people stopped making websites. I mean, hell, Geocities died in 2009, so a lot of people were creating their own websites for free before that time, no need to pay for domain names or hosting. And even without Geocities, there were other website hosting things that yes, while not as customizable, were still a resource for people to work with them. There's still a website floating around that I made when I was a kid using one of these services. Cool stuff.

All this to say that I do feel a weird sense of dread looking back and cross-referencing with the present and seeing things like "website creator powered by AI" and shit like that, because just ?? How did it go plummeting so quickly. There is a weird feeling of having lost a developing culture to corporations making quick access to posting things that, as corporations' nature dictates, are used to sell data or to train models or what have you. Similarly, we get pretty same-y looking pages because of the need to be slick or whatever with designs that just leaves everything looking the same. ALSO, the loss of spaces for kids, or just the gradual lowering of them in favor of cocomelons and whatever else the devil's machine has spawned is like watching an apple decay before having ripened. I do feel like there is this phenomenon in which how to make a site has been lost in the notion of "making a website falls into the realm of evil and scary coding and I could never be a programmer, plus who would look at it, plus we have tools to make them," etc etc etc. Here is a little secret: website creation is not exactly hard to pick up at all. You might say it's very similar to using a rich text editor like Word or a notes app or whatever you use. Similarly, have you used markdown for things like messages or D iscord messages, you know, with the asterisks for bold text and the likes? Markdown is based on html's structures. And truly, you do not have to even learn to code using Javascript if you don't want to, you can just go full html + css and structure your things as you go, adding your little images and your updates. Because guess what !! Html and css are not programming languages, they're a markup language and a stylesheet language respectively, which is a fancy way to say "you make the structure of your page with the first one and make it pretty with the second one". This includes cool stuff like tables, lists, grids, colors, transitions, etc. All of that without any programming. (That being said, if you are interested in programming, Javascript isn't too bad to pick up. The language itself *is* kind of evil, but using it in conjunction with html is not too difficult). I do have to say though, I am glad that there is a push to making your own websites and things, especially with Neocities sprawling a huge community of avid website creators, as well as the huge amount of tutorials and stuff making the push forward with making sites and online spaces and experiences more widely available. Hopefully this becomes a trend that keeps going up, considering the state of seemingly every single social media that has existed since the 2000s- 2010s.

[uroboros-if]

Please please share some coding/designing wisdom. Your game is so damn pretty 😭😭😭 Could you tell us what template you used and how hard it was to make it look like it is today? I imagine so much work must have gone into it

😭😭 I am no expert, but these are just my rationale/methods behind the visual choices I made!

For the template I used—I used Vahnya's Template! However, this post by @/manonamora-if has a whole section for templates that I wish I saw or checked out before making my IF! In another lifetime, I might've just used nyehilism's template to achieve the bottom sidebar instead of torturing myself learning how to do it... ;;

Below, I go into detail the timeline of designing Uroboros, as well as advice through the process I went!

Design Timeline

I started designing the UI late October 2022, and kept fixing, changing, editing it well into February and maybe a little bit of March 2023.

October 2022 - Early iterations of the design. Looked for stock images and began implementing it to add a background to the sidebar and the actual passages. Swatched some color palettes and began implementing them into the IF. Later decided to make the sidebar on the bottom instead of on the side. Also, added a title screen.

November - Testing different backgrounds for the IF's sidebar. Added a textbox to the passages, also worked on the black fade transitions.

December - Finished working on the sidebar background for both light and dark theme, began work on the background of the IF instead.

January 2023 - Finished working on the dark and light theme backgrounds! Started work on drawing the skill icons for light and dark theme, and finished!

February - Changed the title screen to look better on mobile, created a circle logo, added a border to the textbox. Also, made further edits for light theme.

March - Just remade the "Uroboros" logo.

If you're wondering why it took approximately 5 months to get to the final version—don't worry! I wasn't working only on the design for 5 months. My partner helped make the edits for the design, while I worked on coding them in and writing.

I spent a lot of time trying to get a grasp on Javascript, SugarCube, and HTML all throughout this time as well, to know how to fluidly add these things. Meaning, while I was working on these visual elements, I was also figuring out how to do the "looking" mechanic, black and white transitions, figuring out how Tweego worked, radio buttons, and so on.

Do note I've been busy the entire time throughout, so perhaps you can do this much quicker than I can!

The "Secrets"

1. Please—look at IFs you love! What are some visual aspects of other IFs that you love and want to include in your story? I started by analyzing parts of other IFs that I love. I liked Wayfarer's textbox; I liked how the choices looked in When Twilight Strikes. I liked the textboxes in the beginning of Zorlok. Find the things that amaze you about other IFs, and implement it your own way!

This seems like super basic advice—but trust me, once you think, "How can I put this in my game?" you will not only be able to have it, but most likely, you'll also learn a LOT.

While seeing how I could make the radio buttons, for example, I started researching. I googled "How to live change text?" and then I found out about jQuery, how to use the replace macro, etc. etc. JUST from researching how to do exactly one (1) feature.

2. What is missing in other IFs? Think about your own reading experience. I didn't like the clunkiness of some, how the sidebar is on the side when space on a mobile-screen is severely limited length-wise. So, I put the sidebar on the bottom.

I didn't like how other choices look in IFs, so I wanted a way to do mine that's nice and elegant(though it's still a little hard to read, admittedly).

Again, researching how to do the things you want opens many doors for you. I learned how to style <li> and change how bullets look, learned how to style links in Twine in general, etc. etc. again with just this ONE thing I wanted to change/add.

3. Don't do the work all by yourself. I struggled so hard because I hate asking for help. I was happy to Google other people's problems, but I never thought to open up my own thread or ask anybody in the community for help. Please, not only ask, but also—your work doesn't have to be completely original.

Use templates. Look at manon's amazing masterlist of things you can implement. I also have a few macro's that you can use, like multipronouns for MC, that does the work for you, for free.

Rip people's codes—respectfully. I'm not saying from other IFs, but online in other places. If they appear on help forums or are publicly available through places like CodePen, chances are that they're open-source or licensed in such a way that anyone can use it (e.g. MIT license).

Again, here is Manon's masterlist, which includes custom macros you can use in your game (Chapel, HiEv and Cycy are my high recommendations)! Additionally, here's my code for multipronouns here and my code for setting RO genders here.

4. MAKE IT READABLE!! Even if you want your game to look pretty... please, I'm begging you, make it easy to read. This is the most important thing ever.

I have a short attention span, and so does my partner. We reviewed the game to make sure we are NOT compromising the reading experience with our design. As much as we want fantastical backgrounds, we wanted to make sure it was at least not distracting. As much as we want gaudy styles, we want the actual passage to be suited for the long haul.

The most, most important part is to enhance the reading experience--not by adding things on, but by making it simple and intuitive. As someone in the computer science field, the user experience is CRITICAL. Put yourself in their shoes, think about them first and foremost.

Twine is amazingly customizable, and its powers can be wielded for good and evil. Plenty of amazing writers but inexperienced UI designers, especially from CoG, get into Twine. CoG almost completely takes away the design element, so Twine is a whole new ballpark.

Uroboros has a lot of pomp, but the actual textbox is uncharacteristically simple in comparison. The simplicity against an otherwise fantastical, but non-distracting background helps give it elegance. The sidebar, in contrast, is very eye-catching—but, it's also out of view most of the time, and isn't built for long reading.

To add on, make sure it's readable on mobile. I guarantee 80% of your readers are going to be reading your IF on their phone, and probably at 3 AM, so you will want the mobile to look as good as PC, or even better.

Closing Thoughts

Anyway, as basic as this advice is, this is really what guided my entire thought process behind my visual choices! -- Picking and choosing what you like from IFs, figuring out how to do them through research, and making sure your IF is built to be read for a while.

Thanks so much for asking, thinking that I have wisdom to impart!! 😭🫶💕