#i use the css and html i learned TO THIS DAY

[qrevo]

uh can someone. threaten to beat me with a large rock. if i don't finish up my uni work in time. really needing that "fighting for my life" energy to finish these up lol

[thenetvvork]

Okay, so, I think that I'm going to make a Network site on neocities and that can be a hub for me and anyone else in here who wants their own website. And we can have a page for intros that are brief for anyone who doesnt (that we just copy from SimplyPlural lbr) and then if there's a plurality or fictionkind webring we can just add our hub site. Or maybe we could make a webring? Would anyone be interested in that? It might not get off the ground if I'm the only Network member doing it but I think it would be cool I did a light snoop and only found resource sites but I also just got off work and am going to bed so who knows. I don't think it has to be a neocities site to be in the webring if the webring is just like a directory of sites.

-Alison

[borealing]

"learn to code" as advice is such bullshit. i have learned and used four and a half different coding languages through my career (html/css, java, python+sql, c++) and when i say used i mean I've built things in every one but the things that i actually used these languages for??? these earn zero money (with the caveat of until you have seniority in, e.g. front end web dev) what people really mean when they say learn coding is "learn to code. go into investment banking or finance startups." coding does not inherently have money in it. my absolute favourite part of coding? my peak enjoyment? was when i was developing for a visual coding language (you put it together like a flowchart, so say youre using a temperature sensor and you want it to log the temperature once every four hours, you can put the blocks together to make it do that. i was writing the code behind the blocks for new sensors) and i was earning £24k a year and that wasn't even part of my main role. it was an extra voluntary thing i was doing (i was working as a research assistant in biosensors - sort of - at a university, and was developing the visual code for students who didnt want to learn c++) like. i want people to learn to code, i want people to know how their electrical equipment works and how coding works, but dont believe the myth that there is inherently money in coding. the valuable things, the things people are passionate about are still vulnerable to the passion tax (if you want to do it you dont have to be paid for it). skills arent where the money is, money is where the money is.

[bf-rally]

okay finally colored this!

idk what the sites color theme will be, so the colors will most definitely change but for now we have a logo (ft. my oc A)

[phantomrose96]

Honestly I recommend everyone learn just a littttle bit of CSS because it really is powerful and just makes bits and pieces of your internet experience more convenient.

Right now I'm cataloguing recipes I've really enjoyed, just trying to get them all in one place. Many of these are instagram recipes and, because I don't trust link rot (aka the possibility that the instagram link goes dead one day), I'm including a screenshot of the recipe along with the link.

But instagram on desktop... looks like this

(Link, for credit. It's a good recipe)

I obviously could just copy-paste the recipe out of there. But a screenshot would be cleaner for how I'm cataloguing these.

And as-is, I'd have to scroll the whole height of that small right-side window about 4 times to fit it all.

But actually... I can just resize that div holding that whole right-side content

Basically I

hit f12 to open the dev tools

clicked the element finder

clicked on an element inside the recipe side

followed it up the tree until I found the element holding the whole recipe side (do this by hovering the div in the dev tools panel way on the right, then hovering upward and up until I find the element which is the highest up that still only contains the recipe-side content)

in the element.style part, set "width: 1000px" and "height: 1500px"

(I notice the width seems to still be less than 1000px, even though it got bigger)

likely suggests there's an element above it with a max-width set

go up the tree higher until I find the element with the max-width and uncheck that style

screenshot ready

Maybe that sounded complicated but it took me probably 20-30 seconds

And this isn't just about screenshotting recipes like.

website with an annoying gif? select gif, delete gif

do you want a clean screenshot of a digital receipt for record-keeping without a large company banner or irrelevant information? delete unnecessary elements, adjust widths, screenshot

SOMETIMES, you can bypass paywalls if they're relying on something like overflow: hidden, or an overlay in the way, or some JS that runs (you can disable JS in the dev tools)

lost the jpg/png file you used for your profile picture and size doesn't totally matter? grab it from the img src while logged in. (you might even be able to find it in a bigger size by changing the url query parameters)

color contrast on an article really bad? find and change background color. find and change font color

want to make a funny fake screenshot without learning photoshop? just edit the page content in the dev tools

This isn't about like being good enough to write scripts or browser extensions. Really if you just have some basic HTML/CSS understanding a hat worth of tricks, you can make so many little adjustments in your favor.

[versegm]

Already mentioned it in another post two days ago, but it bears repeating: if you use social media primarily as a way to write out your ideas to the world, maybe making your own website on neocities could be your thing.

But I don't know how to code!

Here are two templates you can basically copy/paste and use directly as is. Personally I started with Zonelets and learned html+css from cannibalizing bits of its code & improving upon it.

But I don't know what I can put on it!

Frankly you can just make it your personal blog and post stuff like "ate spaghetti today :)" but if you're here for fandom stuff I really recommend this zine as a list of fansites you can do, from ship shrine to meta analysis to fanlistings.

But how can people keep up with what I post?

Add an rss feed. That way, people will get notified when you post new shit.

But will people be able to interact with me?

Sure! You can add a guestbook for that. Or an askbox. Or just chuck in a duplicate email you made.

I swear it's easier than you think! Just give it a try, what do you have to lose? :)

[omeletcat]

So i was talking to my friends about how sad it is that art and media is seen as content these days, and not as art. mostly just to consume adn then scroll past, and i was thinking hey wouldn't it be cool if people had their own little websites? people used to do this but now everything is done on big platforms. and i had this cool idea of a website that hosts little websites that you can customize and instead of having a feed, you'd share websites YOU like on your own website so people look around!!!!

and then my friend told me THIS ACTUALLY EXCISTS

ITS CALLED NEOCITIES

ITS A FREE WEBSITE, ITS OPEN SOURCE, NO ADS BECAUSE ITS 100% DONATION FUNDED AND ITS BEAUTIFULL

ITS ALL I EVER WANTED, its a perfect space to set up all you're creative endevours and art! to make galleries or to just have your own website!!!

but some people do INSANELY cool things on here!! like

They made a beautifull and unique website thats fun to explore! just messing around clicking on stuff brings you to unique and interesting places!!!!

it is perfection, look at how interesting it is!!!!! there is even more that i couldnt fit into 1 screenshot.

compare this to the boring websites you scroll on daily, wouldnt you much rather find and explore websites like these? i feel it would be much more rewarding to "explore" artists, then to scroll past them. you genuinely have to DO something to enjoy it and thats amazing.

the only thing that is holding Neocities back is the fact you have to know a bit of html and css to make a website BUT THATS SUPER EASY TO LEARN!!!!

SO GO NOW, MAKE YOUR OWN CUTE AND COOL AND INTERESTING WEBSITE PLEASE, LETS GO BACK TO A TIME WHERE WEBSITES LOOKED COOL AND INTERESTING

ALSO FOLLOW MY WEBSITE I ONLY JUST STARTED SO ITS SHIT BUT THATS THE BEAUTY OF IT

TO REPEAT ONE LAST TIME, A FREE, ADLESS, OPEN SOURCE, WEBSITE HOSTING PLATFORM, THAT LETS YOU MAKE AND HOST YOUR OWN WEBSITE FOR FREE, WITH A COOL AND UNIQUE COMMUNITY

[sofia-d-asb]

Hello. I noticed that you said you were using Ren'py for your new game. What made you come to the conclusion that this was the best option, if you don't mind my asking? I am looking into developing something, but I'm unsure which program to use. I thought the point of Ren'py was more for visual novels. I am interested in making something that isn't as visual heavy. Do you think that's possible with Ren'py? Sorry for the randomness. Thank you for taking the time to read. Have a wonderful day!

Hello!

It depends on what you're looking to achieve.

If you want the bare minimum of functionality and the bare minimum of coding to learn, you can go with ChoiceScript. Which, fair warning, is a proprietary language, so if you want to monetize/publish your work without having to adhere to their opaque content rules/cede 75% of your sales, I'd suggest you steer clear, but YMMV.

Twine is a little less easy to use, but comes with higher customization. It supports HTML/CSS/JavaScript, so what you can do is much broader than ChoiceScript. Plus, monetizing your game is fine. I find that Twine is more meant for short-form IF than long-form, but it remains usable. Deploying your game in any other form than HTML (a web game) is a hassle though, and not supported by Twine directly.

Ren'Py comes next; here you must make your own user interface (or you could just use native NVL-mode with no edits, which... it'll work for sure, but the presentation will be questionable), but I find it much more flexible than the other two options. And it comes with the added bonus of making it much easier to deploy your game to multiple OS and platforms including web and mobile.

There are other tools (Ink?) so my advice would be to try them all and settle for the one that suits your needs.

Good luck with your project! And have a wonderful day as well.

[genericpuff]

All the cool kids use ComicFury 😘

Hey y'all! If you love independent comic sites and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, please consider supporting ComicFury, the owner Kyo has been running it for nearly twenty years and it's one of the only comic hosting platforms left that's entirely independent and reminiscent of the 'old school' days that I know y'all feel nostalgic over.

(kyo's sense of humor is truly unmatched lmao)

Here are some of the other great features it offers:

Message board forums! It's a gift from the mid-2000's era gods!

Entirely free-to-use HTML and CSS editing! You can use the provided templates, or go wild and customize the site entirely to your liking! There's also a built-in site editor for people like me who want more control over their site design but don't have the patience to learn HTML/CSS ;0

In-depth site analytics that allow you to track and moderate comments, monitor your comic's performance per week, and let you see how many visitors you get. You can also set up Google Analytics on your site if you want that extra touch of data, without any bullshit from the platform. Shit, the site doesn't come with ads, but you can run ads on your site. The site owners don't ask questions, they don't take a cut. Pair your site with ComicAd and you'll be as cool as a crocodile alligator !

RSS feeds! They're like Youtube subscriptions for millennials and Gen X'ers!

NSFW comics are allowed, let the "female presenting nipples" run free! (just tag and content rate them properly!)

Tagging. Tagging. Remember that? The basic feature that every comic site has except for the alleged "#1 webcomic site"? The independent comic site that still looks the same as it did 10 years ago has that. Which you'd assume isn't that big a deal, but isn't it weird that Webtoons doesn't?

Blog posts. 'Nuff said.

AI-made comics are strictly prohibited. This also means you don't have to worry about the site owners sneaking in AI comics or installing AI scrapers (cough cough)

Did I mention that the hosting includes actual hosting? Meaning for only the cost of the domain you can change your URL to whatever site name you want. No extra cost for hosting because it's just a URL redirect. No stupid "pro plan" or "gold tier" subscription necessary, every feature of the site is free to use for all. If this were a sponsored Pornhub ad, this is the part where I'd say "no credit card, no bullshit".

Don't believe me? Alright, look at my creator backend (feat stats on my old ass 2014 comic, I ain't got anything to hide LOL)

TRANSCRIPTS! CHAPTER ORGANIZATION! MASS PAGE UPLOADING! MULTIPLE CREATOR SUPPORT! FULL HTML AND CSS SUPPORT! SIMPLIFIED EDITORS! ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT GIVE YOU WEEKLY BREAKDOWNS! THE POWER OF CHOICE!!

So yeah! You have zero reasons to not use and support ComicFury! It being "smaller" than Webtoons shouldn't stop you! Regain your independence, support smaller platforms, and maybe you'll even find that 'tight-knit community' that we all miss from the days of old! They're out there, you just gotta be willing to use them! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

[captdedeyes]

Friendly reminder that Wix.com is an Israeli-based company (& some website builders to look into instead)

I know the BDS movement is not targeting Wix.com specifically (see here for the companies they're currently boycotting) but since Wix originated in Israel as early as 2006, it would be best to drop them as soon as you can.

And while you're at it, you should leave DeviantArt too, since that company is owned by Wix. I deleted my DA account about a year ago not just because of their generative AI debacle but also because of their affiliation with their parent company. And just last month, DA has since shown their SUPPORT for Israel in the middle of Israel actively genociding the Palestinian people 😬

Anyway, I used to use Wix and I stopped using it around the same time that I left DA, but I never closed my Wix account until now. What WAS nice about Wix was how easy it was to build a site with nothing but a drag-and-drop system without any need to code.

So if you're using Wix for your portfolio, your school projects, or for anything else, then where can you go?

Here are some recommendations that you can look into for website builders that you can start for FREE and are NOT tied to a big, corporate entity (below the cut) 👇👇

Carrd.co

This is what I used to build my link hub and my portfolio, so I have the most experience with this platform.

It's highly customizable with a drag-and-drop arrangement system, but it's not as open-ended as Wix. Still though, it's easy to grasp & set up without requiring any coding knowledge. The most "coding" you may ever have to deal with is markdown formatting (carrd provides an on-screen cheatsheet whenever you're editing text!) and section breaks (which is used to define headers, footers, individual pages, sections of a page, etc.) which are EXTREMELY useful.

There's limits to using this site builder for free (max of 2 websites & a max of 100 elements per site), but even then you can get a lot of mileage out of carrd.

mmm.page

This is a VERY funny & charming website builder. The drag-and-drop system is just as open-ended as Wix, but it encourages you to get messy. Hell, you can make it just as messy as the early internet days, except the way you can arrange elements & images allows for more room for creativity.

Straw.page

This is an extremely simple website builder that you can start from scratch, except it's made to be accessible from your phone. As such, the controls are limited and intentionally simple, but I can see this being a decent website builder to start with if all you have is your phone. The other options above are also accessible from your phone, but this one is by far one of the the simplest website builders available.

Hotglue.me

This is also a very simple & rudimentary website builder that allows you to make a webpage from scratch, except it's not as easy to use on a mobile phone.

At a glance, its features are not as robust or easy to pick up like the previous options, but you can still create objects with a simple double click and drag them around, add text, and insert images or embeds.

Mind you, this launched in the 2010s and has likely stayed that way ever since, which means that it may not have support for mobile phone displays, so whether or not you wanna try your hand at building something on there is completely up to you!

Sadgrl's Layout Editor

sadgrl.online is where I gathered most of these no-code site builders! I highly recommend looking through the webmaster links for more website-building info.

This simple site builder is for use on Neocities, which is a website hosting service that you can start using for free. This is the closest thing to building a site that resembles the early internet days, but the sites you can make are also responsive to mobile devices! This can be a good place to start if this kind of thing is your jam and you have little to no coding experience.

Although I will say, even if it sounds daunting at first, learning how to code in HTML and CSS is one of the most liberating experiences that anyone can have, even if you don't come from a website scripting background. It's like cooking a meal for yourself. So if you want to take that route, then I encourage to you at least try it!

Most of these website builders I reviewed were largely done at a glance, so I'm certainly missing out on how deep they can go.

Oh, and of course as always, Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[riacte]

Anyways I forgot a formula for an excel spreadsheet so naturally I navigated to my OC spreadsheet because I know I had that exact formula there. It’s like how my Wattpad cover making days made me learn how to use Canva and I make annotations on maps in Procreate. (Procreate is seriously not the best but I learned my way around it.) I learned HTML and CSS for writing fic and making a Neocities website for my favourite song. I learned to use inspect element for unreality mock-ups. I learned about overlay and multiply and screen and change hue from my Love Live sprite edit days. All my skills are cobbled together and precariously held like Jenga blocks. Fuck around and find out. This shit has always been so ass

[theneighborhoodwatch]

what are the basic requirements for maintaining the website? like. aside from a basic understanding of how to format and code it

(context)

welcome to welcome home started as a pretty scrappy personal project, and tbh it still is. there's not a whole lot you'll need, but off the top of my head the base requirements would be:

as you've said, at least a Basic understanding of html/css. i did Not have this when i first started welcome to welcome home and It Shows; i learned in real time by playing with the parameters of the template i used. (side note: if whoever ends up getting the site wants to give it a makeover and has the skills to do so, i will Not be opposed to it. bonus points if they find a way to make it more mobile-friendly.)

ability to update all relevant pages within a few days of a given update alongside adding new pages for characters, locations, secrets/walkthroughs, etc.

an email address

access to some kind of external file host (i use filegarden, but any will do.) alternatively, neocities gives you a much larger storage space if you have 5 dollars a month to spare.

[johannestevans]

Do you have any tips or tutorial recommendations for making your own website?

I actually really do like the Wordpress client now I've gotten the hang of it!

I did tell 1000 of my subscribers to kill themselves in an email header by accident, and also battered those poor 1000 people with something like 100 emails in increasingly frantically apologised for errors over the course of the same three days, but that was before I really Got it.

With the above oopsies in mind, if you want to import previous newsletters or posts, for the love of God, do not import your existing newsletter subscribers until after all of your backposts have been imported across. That is the main lesson I have learned.

I had such a vision in mind of a triumphant surprise email going "Hey, look what I did! Surprise! Isn't it sexy?!" and instead everyone got 30 notifications about chapter updates from 2 years ago and an email that said "It's Your Responsibility to Kill Yourself" followed by multiple deranged apologies from me.

So. Don't do that.

Other than that, I'd actually wanted a proper website for quite a few years even before Patreon got so antsy with hiding my content - I tried to set one up a few years back with Wix, and I cannot recommend that less, it's a fucking awful site to use, and it's far less user intuitive than Wordpress.

Part of my issues with Wordpress were actually that a lot of website clients, unless you're building from scratch in HTML/CSS or another code, give you everything in Blocks, and because I remembered like 10 years ago where you didn't have to do that, and you mostly altered everything on the website with like, 10000 options tickboxes and sliders, I was like "wow this is awful". I will admit now, crotchety bastard that I am, that the Blocks system is better and more intuitive once you start to understand it. I just don't always do well thinking of things in three dimensions, so to speak, and I was shooting myself in the foot by going "WELL BACK IN MY DAY--"

Wix doesn't have a very good help section because they want you to talk to their people for help, but most sites for stuff like this do have really robust FAQ and help sections, and obviously, rely on those as much as possible.

At one point I was so upset with my inability to do something that Lorenzo literally came over and told me to leave the apartment (that was the day that I went to Pets at Home and spent a ridiculous amount of money on gifts for the cat), and while I was very grumpy about doing it at the time, taking breaks is crucial, especially if you get as frustrated as I do.

I realise that most of what I have said so far is niche tips for if you're stubborn and mentally ill, so in terms of actual website building, I would say it's important to have an idea of what you want the site to do.

Do you just want a landing page, so that if people search for your name or whatever, that this is the first result? That it links people to your books or your store, your socials? Do you want to have a gallery of work on display, or an archive of writing like I've made? Do you want people to be able to contact you, give tips?

I always wanted a robustly tagged archive with an in-depth tag page like the one I've set up now, and the goal for my Directory of Work on Medium and elsewhere was always that it would later be transferred to my website once it was built.

Then, I have an about page for people who are just curious about who I am and who I look like; commission info and information about booking me for events or inviting me to cons and such; the books I have for sale, publications I've been a part of, interviews and presentations on YouTube; my events calendar with conventions and such; the gallery where I'm showing off both art of my characters and where I'll later show art that I buy for my home and myself, such as the stuff framed in the stairwell or jewellery I buy from makers at markets and such; and then, of course, the subscriber benefits.

All of the above to go my goals which are, in order, to encourage people to read my work and make it easy for them to do so, to pay me money for my existing work or to offer me money for new work, and to show support for other events, artists, friends, and queer creators.

I would definitely advise thinking carefully about how visual or how word-based you want your site to be - I had to look for a recipe blog theme to find one that was stripped back in terms of images. Especially for adult websites, I'd be careful about payment providers and so forth.

Stripe is the default on the site, and I've been very careful about making sure none of my titles or descriptions that the Stripe client will see have words like erotica or adult in them - if someone from Stripe clicks through and sees the site, they might take issue with it, but that's another thing. I do get paid by Stripe through Medium, so I do already use them.

Most payment providers hate any kind of adult content, but are willing to give a tiny bit more wiggle room on erotica, or at least, they just don't notice it in the same way they do Real Porn, but there's nothing I can say other than "be careful and more importantly, be lucky" on that front.

Most of all, I'd say to try to have fun with it and try to enjoy the actual building process if you can - make something pretty and fun to navigate as much as you can, and if you can get some enjoyment out of it, your site users will as well.

[beekeeperspicnic]

Did you have prior experience programming? Why did you pick the engine you picked? Anything you learned about making games that was a surprise?

I didn't have much experience in programming, other than HTML/CSS and dabbling in Flash and JavaScript back in The Day. I have a feeling that someone who actually knows how to program would look at the code of the game with a creeping horror.

I chose to use AGS because it's specifically geared up for making the kind of game I wanted to play, and the programming language it uses which is based on C# kind of vibed with me.

My biggest surprise has probably been that when people say "the last 20 percent takes 80 percent of the time" they're not lying!

[digitaldiariescs]

Day 3: Beginning my first ever personal project

I'm honestly getting a little sick of beginning every post with, 'I continued working through the RWD course on freeCodeCamp', because that's pretty much all I do, every single day. And that's what I did today.

However, I started working on a personal project using HTML/CSS! Something that I realised today, as I started planning this project, is that I genuinely have no idea how to apply the knowledge that I've learned through the course. I know how to follow instructions and prompts, but I have no idea how to actually build a responsive web page. But, I think that's going to change as I start working on this project.

I'm trying to be as creative as possible with this project. I'm really going to challenge myself, and I hope this turns out the way I want it to. The main goal is to not take the easy way out with this project. The only way I'll learn is by facing difficulties.

Recently, I've noticed that I've been really struggling with creativity. I used to be an original thinker, but now, it seems as though I have lost the ability to think outside the box. And that is completely unacceptable in my world. Hopefully, this project will spark my creativity, while developing my coding skills.

With that, I shall take your leave and continue scribbling down all my ideas for this project onto my commonplace journal. Yes, my ideas have a real-world, physical home. I encourage you to keep one as well. It's a great way to build a relationship with yourself- bridge the gap between who you are and who you want to be, your thoughts and your feelings.