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I've been quite inspired recently by finding a ton of cool personal websites and wikis and thought I would share my views on how freeing it is to make your own: https://ritualdust.com/craft/make-yourself-a-website/

Ritual dust

Write your own folklore
Ritual dust
Devine Lu Linvega
Very nice article.

I don't like this phrasing: "Don’t bother looking into static site builders or deployment services until just uploading your files on your server is too much work."

[until just] is tough.

Don’t bother looking into static site builders until your website has grown enough that manually uploading your files becomes too much work.
Lizbeth
that's a good point thanks 😀
Alexander Cobleigh
+1 on excising "just", makes tutorials & similar resources so much more welcoming :tealheart: (also excellent article!!!)
Lizbeth
totally agree, I still catch myself using it in those contexts, thanks for pointing that out :3
Lizbeth
I might go over it in a couple of days and add more resources and definitions to make it even more accessible to newcomers, I feel that we are privileged of having worked with the web early in our lives and it might not be so obvious how to start working with it now ~
Devine Lu Linvega
we've known the web when it was simple, some people who never experienced it can't even picture it.

Lizbeth reshared this.

Lizbeth
exactly, it must look and feel really overwhelming now with everything being an "app" and cloud hosting and all that stuff
Lizbeth
looking up "simple web hosting" returns pretty abysmal results, most are super complex cPanel typo hosts, the others ones are like "first step: create github account" 🤦‍♀️
Alexander Cobleigh
i'd say https://glitch.com is pretty accessible 😀

Glitch: The friendly community where everyone builds the web

Simple, powerful, free tools to create and use millions of apps.
glitch.com
Lizbeth
oh nice!
Kristian
Unfortunately, when the web was simple, it also was pretty unreachable to a load of people with less skills and training. We failed to make it accessible while keeping it simple. 😔

@ritualdust@cblgh
@Lizbeth @Alexander Cobleigh
Lizbeth
yeah, hopefully, that can change with this kind of revival, I've been learning and applying a lot of new accessibility things recently ~
Vertigo #$FF
As someone who frequently abuses the word "simply," I can vouch that "simply" is another word that needs exorcism. It's tough when you've been indoctrinated through years of glossy ad copy, though.

My technique, assuming that I even remember to follow it, is to try and write the page as you normally, informally would. Let it sit for a day or two. Then, do a search for words like "is", "simply", etc. 9 times out of 10, the sentences they appear in can be phrased better without them.
Lizbeth
that's a good approach, i'll try to keep that in mind 😀
lee
yours is very beautiful !
Lizbeth
thanks! I'm very fond of it, the same way I would be of a rock collection or an old book ~
dokoissho
have you looked at Gemini? That was quite a rabbit hole.
Lizbeth
barely, i know it's there waiting for me to fall into it haha
dokoissho
In terms of what you describe in your article about web sites, it checks all the boxes.
Lizbeth
i’ll be sure to go have a little trip there then!
rozina
i got into the personal website rabbit hole about a year ago and i haven't looked back since. to be honest, the modern web is overrated and gentrified to the core where you have to accept cookies for everything ever as well as dealing with a load of bloat.

i'm glad i got into this rabbit hole, but i wish i was around in the 90's (2001 baby here, now 20 years old) so that i could have experienced the early days of the web instead of experiencing it through second hand nostalgia.
Lizbeth
glad you went there, it is really bad indeed, I work as a software engineer making some of these apps for a company and it's draining my life force haha, it's so bad also how capitalism pushed everyone to become a "personal brand" and try to sell something. If there's resources or websites that helped you get into it without that previous knowledge feel free to share, I'd really like to make it as accessible as possible to new people 😀
rozina
it sure is bad, and i don't really fancy becoming a personal brand, not to mention monetising hobbies because capitalism.

one of the things that helped me get into it was this essay: https://neustadt.fr/essays/the-small-web/ as well as browsing the brutalist websites website for design inspiration and reading books about net.art (specifically internet art by rachel greene)

Rediscovering the Small Web - Neustadt.fr

Most websites today are built like commercial products by professionals and marketers, optimised to draw the largest audience, generate engagement and 'convert'.
neustadt.fr
Julien Deswaef
Hey, I was 20 in the 90ies. And I was lucky to have a computer and internet at home.

The closest thing I find today of the experience of the 90ies web is to go on the #Tor hidden network. And look for websites there. They take a while to load. And you don't know what you're gonna get. The way to navigate is to hop from one website to another (no good search engine on the dark web) and hope to find a good page that lists to a load of other good sites.
#tor
Lizbeth
added to the list of places to explore :3
Kit Sunny
I was around for the late 90s web and I think it's really easy to think too fondly on it. Things could feel pretty bloated then, too, because most average users didn't have high-speed access. Sites had less interactivity, but there were plenty of web 'zines (Gothic.net was my favorite then). Digital cameras didn't exist, so even a picture of yourself was a bit of a feat. Probably the nicest part was that lynx worked with everything.
rozina
ah i think nostalgia of any kind makes you see the past with rose coloured glasses
Kit Sunny
A little bit, yes. There's a super valid criticism that "the capitalist Web" has fundamentally gone the wrong way and that "browser as an applications platform" has sacrificed openness, community, accessibility, and many other things. We should want to take those things back. But we should also remember that the 90s Web required technological skill to be a part of, which was itself also undemocratic, and that bloat always scales to what technology will endure.
Devine Lu Linvega
16 years old me without any computer classes/prior knowledge figured out my way through geocities, and put stuff online. I wonder what the equivalent of that is today, and if could have figured it out.
Shepherdess Sophia
during my time it was having a tumblr blog and learning code by tweaking the themes others have coded
Lizbeth
yeah I remember that too, it was quite fun 😀
Pixel Oliver ☀️
awesome! adding it to https://www.are.na/pixel-oliver/for-simple-and-personal-web-dev

https://solarpunk.cool/zines/web-zine-01/introduction.html
and
https://pages.virtualgoodsdealer.com/articles/2020/11/16/simple-website-tutorial-part-one/

are some similar guides

Making A Simple Static Website: Part One, Why Code Your Own Website?

This is the first part of a multi-part series on creating your own static website for complete beginners. First, we will discuss why you may want to code your own website.
ada.wrong (pages.virtualgoodsdealer.com)
JoYo
heh, i remember stealing a javascript that dimmed most of the page until the user moused over the section of the page they wanted to see. totally terrible UX but I was so proud of that. now I settled for having a single user instance on the fedi, still just as proud but for new reasons.
Lizbeth
hahaha, tbh there's room for weird non-practical stuff too, I like to have an experience while visiting websites too 😀
Pixel Oliver ☀️
reminds me of https://opensecret.kw-berlin.de/

or like,, most of 2014 tumblr themes XD
Lizbeth
that's wild
Lizbeth
ohh those guides are good! adding them on there :3
Spencer
I love this! I currently have a somewhat fractured homepage—there's the static site I'm working to build, and the WordPress blog that I've lived on for 10+ years. I like the idea of consolidating down into a much simpler website, but all the blog backlog is hard to grapple with.
ChiaChatter
I had completely forgotten about webrings...
Sparkwood and 21
I love all of those things. Am about to set up my own.
Alexander Cobleigh
another great tool that came to mind is https://neocities.org, feels very much on the same vibe as yr article 😀

Neocities

Free web hosting and tools that allow anyone to create a website. Join our community today!
Neocities | neocities.org
Lizbeth
yes! thanks, I've been stumbling upon more and more websites made with this 😀

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