What inspired you to create a personal website?

[Daryl Sun]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

When I was a young teen discovering the Internet for the first time, I got amazed by all the cool websites that I discovered and visited. I decided that I wanted something like that, my little space on the Internet where anybody could see the things that I wanted to share.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

• While I learned HTML and CSS, I've forgotten some things, so I have to look them up online to remember how they worked.
• For a long while, I had trouble finding an easy way to build my sites. First, I used Gitlab Pages, then Codeberg Pages, and coded everything by hand, but it became too tedious to update. Then I tried TiddlyWiki, but it wasn't easy editing files on mobile. I've never tried static site generators, because before I could, my laptops died    Only recently did I find omg.lol, which I happily use now.
• Sometimes, I just don't feel like maintaining and updating my sites. I have to mentally kick myself to get going.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I'd like to think it looks more or less the same as now: minimalist and accessible. I do hope it will contain more blog posts and pages.

[robkies]

i really wanted to create a website a few years ago just because i thought it was a cool idea, but i really didn't know where to start. i've seen videos of people talking about how the old web used to be better and stuff, so i looked up on youtube some geocities alternatives, and that's when i found out about neocities. a few years later i tried to make my own website and watched this tutorial that said that sadgrl's layout builder was a good start. a few months later here i am lol

[Kolo]

Can't remember how old I was. Early teens? Maybe 11 or 12 at best? Something like that. I would go over to my friend's house, the only person I was close to that owned a computer (her mother did graphic design iirc) and she showed me a few free website builders. We ended up making tons of small personal websites a la the old glut of Pokemon fansites that permeated the online spaces we were in. We had personal hubsites, but a ton of mini sites for random projects that never went anywhere (often categorizing things we were fans of, though again we were kids and didn't really put that much effort into genuinely trying to track anything). Somehow, a few of these sites have survived into today - I can find one of them still live - which kind of blows my mind.

I just dug up my friend's site. It's still online and features an apology on the frontpage for being a chaotic eleven year old. So I guess we were eleven haha!

So uh. It started as a friend group activity for me. I think out of the people in my circle who made the sites I'm the only one still making them; I think the others are just too busy and don't really have a "reason" to maintain a site comparative to the sheer passion behind the, well, fansites we made as kids. But I haven't been much in contact with them, so who knows?

Nowadays I use my websites as hubs for my writing, art, and worldbuilding. I mean... to a degree that's why I made sites back then, too, with the oldest surviving archive of my worldbuilding site from... 2012. Funny to think I've held onto that for so long! I just really like websites.

My site in five years... I think I'd be happy to see that most of the lore was finally written up and slapped onto pages! I fully expect to keep it online for years to come. I think I've owned the domain for six years, and it's definitely older than that (on a free domain) so here's hoping nothing catastrophic happens and I can maintain it.

[devils]

I wish I had a proper history with ye olde web or even just finding personal websites as a whole, but... it was Hypnospace Outlaw.

[CableCat]

I guess what inspired me was a combination of things. I hated where I was in life despite lying to myself about my feelings, and I'd had another website I made with Wordpress, but it was starting to feel boring and stale and inauthentic. I was sick of social media and it really settled in how much my privacy and data were not respected and were being farmed constantly. I was having a nostalgia moment about how the internet used to eb slower but more fun and less corporatized. I started looking up old angelfire sites and "bad 2000's web design" and somewhere along the way of surfing the web the old school way, I found SadGrl, and the Yesterweb, and Neocities. The fact that neocities was free and SadGrl had a template and tutorials made me want to start over and start from the ground up. I actually wanted to learn the code.

I also had a great idea that the most authentic thing for me is like my house, or my cozy room. My website is supposed to be connected like rooms or areas in a little house. And I can make them however I want rather than pumping out CONTENT for views and likes and junk.

I guess my main challenge has been not knowing CSS or anything beyond basic HTML. It's been a massive learning curve. But I kind of want to build more pages on my site to try new things.

My site 5 years from now? Uuuuuuuhhh It will still be up. Maybe I will alter the layout and do like custom CSS, change fonts, etc. I also want to have my shrines really fleshed out and much nicer looking. Right now, they are just kind of... there. They could be way better and I have visions for them, it's just hard to execute a vision when you don't have the necessary skill set.

[Mela]

I think that for me the idea of making a website came from the limitations and pressure of social media. I used to post my art on Instagram but, no matter how much I practiced and got better, it barely reached anyone. I constantly saw people suddenly gain lots of followers after making low effort short videos about their art with the current popular audio playing in the background (often the same overused memes), but I didn't want to make videos, I just wanted to share my art and maybe talk to some people who liked the same things as me. I felt discouraged, there were some people who regularly liked my art and, sometimes, commented, but all of it didn't seem genuine to me... during that period I saw various videos talking about the spirit of the old web and someone in the comments mentioned Neocities, so I thought "why don't I share my art there?". And so I did, I slowly moved to my website and I feel like I have a lot more freedom on it. I know I still have to learn a lot about HTML and CSS and it's not always easy to make things to look how I want them to, but I think that's part of the fun and once I make it it actually feels rewarding!

[Quinn]

when i was younger i really wanted to make a website without any coding, so i tried out weebly and wix when i was about 11, but you could hardly customize a single thing (not even the fonts and font sizes!!) besides there were always "get premium NOW!!" popups, so i dropped my bland Wix sites and about 2 years later, started finding people's personal websites and made a Neocity a few months later!! i found it quite fun and a short while after creating it, i deleted/stopped using most of my social media accounts (such as Tiktok)

[robkies]

i just thought it was cool lol. many people online were talking about how "the old web was better" or "the old web has so much personality". i tried making one on wix and just forgot about it. the end result wasnt really satisfying, it took me around 1 hour to complete. i then switched to neocities and actually learned some html and css. my website's main purpose is posting my art but really my main goal is expanding it and making it a fun place to explore

[BlazingCobaltX]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?
I saw that post on Tumblr floating around about reclaiming your own online space with Neocities. This was somewhere last year and at that moment I just made an account to claim my URL, nothing else. The current cumulation of shitty policies on both Reddit and Twitter was kind of the last straw; suddenly I realised how little we 'own' the spaces we frequent online. I took to Neocities just last week to make a place where people I've met online can always find me. However, I'm now very much addicted to tinkering with my site.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?
I currently struggle with determining what content I actually want on my site. I am very active on Tumblr and it fulfills most my needs in terms of blogging. Do I want to make a blog here? Do I just want to make megaposts of my interests? Currently I'm looking around at other people's sites for inspiration. I'm also not very good at creative styling.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?
I would like to strike a balance between stuff that is on Tumblr out of convenience (god knows if it will still exist then), and stuff that is on my own site for long-term preservation. I also would like to have a big section for my worldbuilding and OCs.

[TheNothingMonster]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

I was unsure whether I actually needed, let alone wanted a website or not until I discovered Neocities. You could say that I received my inspiration from all the cool sites I found there and wanted to try out making something of my own. Just seeing all of those creative web projects made me think: «Hey, if they can do that, so can I!». It was also a great opportunity to learn HTML, CSS and some JS which would help me start out with programming.

In addition, the more deep I dove into webmastering, the more I realised how much of a important break it was from social media and the packed stress that comes with it. This is also one of the reasons why I keep on going with this project: it's a good change and it allows me to have more freedom to do whatever I want to do.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

From a developmental perspective, I have always struggled with layouts. If I find an idea, I can code it... IF I even manage to find that idea in the first place. A layout doesn't only have to look "nice", it also needs to be functional and readable (well, that is, unless you are going for something more obscure). Even though I can create a "nice" image as an artist, I find it difficult to do the same in a website which requires to be flexible. It is a matter of experience, so I am working on it.

Moreover, one of my current hurdles is how to manage my artwork files. As of now, my site hotlinks my artworks from DeviantArt so as to display them on my site's gallery pages. However, I decided to stop hotlinking and transfer my artworks into my site files for a huge variety of reasons. I have found a couple of methods, but since I have so many files, I would not want to risk testing and move right into something stable, at least for now. I will probably need to make a topic here for suggestions sometime. :P

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

Five years is surely a really long time from now! It is hard to imagine how things could change in the far future, but I can guess that the layout and a couple of, if not all pages will have received a revamp. I also reckon that the content included will be a bit larger, as I am planning to add more pages with a couple of themes outside my art. I might change host sometime too, but Neocities is perfectly fine for now.

[bby]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

i've had personal sites in the past, but i wanted to create a neocities after seeing so many cool websites by others and getting inspired. i wanted a place to play with code like i used to do, and i wanted to learn some new stuff. plus i love taking surveys/quizzes and collecting pixels so what better use of a site than to show off my digital hoard? 

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

well, for one it would have to be storage space (not a problem right now since i am a neocities supporter, but it was at first) and if neocities would go down. currently, it's changing my code slightly to work on neocities after i make it offline. i wish i could just copy paste it without tweaking it. i know i don't have to do too much, but as someone who used to just code within neocities out of laziness, it is annoying sometimes. especially for pic heavy pages like the picrews i've created. 

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

i don't think it'd look too much different from how it is now: a perpetual work in progress. i've got some to dos for my site, so i'd hope to complete some of those by then. i hope neocities is still around by then!

[Bede]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

I was following someone on tumblr for a long while who occasionally talked about its personal Neocities site! I eventually decided to check it out, and was absolutely in awe of what I saw. I had no idea that personal websites were still around beforehand, and I was instantly inspired to look around Neocities some more. I saw people saying that it was easy to get started with HTML, grabbed a few templates and jumped in within the week!

That website, by the way, is still up, if you want to check it out; feelingmachine.moe! Although it was under the URL sugarteara.moe back then. If I recall correctly, I first visited it around May of 2022!

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

I find it difficult to sit down and code whole new pages, but stuff like iFrames helps with that. Plus, I have pages that update over time, like my diary page, and watchlist! So, even if I'm not always coding whole new pages, my site is still active!

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I suppose I'd want for it to have a lot more content! And be less bloated, ehe. (I'll make it more lightweight eventually...) Maybe more aesthetically pleasing, too?

But, ah, I dunno, really! I'm just letting the site be whatever it wants to be! If I give myself a goal, I'll just "too much" all over it, and burn myself out, or discourage myself. I'm happy not taking it all too seriously for now~