How do you stay invested in your own website ?

[EdenInTheGardens]

Hello everyone !  Simple question : how do you stay invested in your own website and web crafting in general ? I have some issues with it personally, like I lack imagination or something, I feel like I need a lot of energy just to update my website and because i've been busy with getting a job and just life generally, it's a bit difficult to get back into it, I still find it really fun but I just don't know where to begin anymore !  so ! Any advice ? How do you stay focused ?

[wygolvillage]

Outlines outlines outlines! Whenever I make a project I outline all the graphics, assets, functionality, etc I need to make and break stuff down into chunks. I usually do graphics first because it takes the longest, so it kind of sunk-cost-fallcies me into finishing what I've started, since I already drew all those tiny graphics, found the perfect audio, etc. And having a checklist to cross things off of really makes me feel productive even if something isn't up on my site yet. I get really excited seeing how much I've gotten done even if it's just one gif or image in that day.

As for getting ideas... I think about things I care about or that interest me, and ask myself how I can represent it interestingly on my site and what can set it apart. I really like to make things that I personally would like to experience. It keeps me invested in my website because I like playing with the toys I've made, basically. I think it comes down to a philosophy of making a page or project that I'm excited to visit, vs one that I'm excited to show other people. If that makes sense.

[brisray]

I find my interest in my own sites varies. I'm always writing notes about what I want to do but sometimes settling down and doing the pages just does not interest me. Last month I wrote or edited to varying degrees 30+ pages. This month I'm finding it diffficult to focus on the sites.

What sometimes helps is that I invite people to email me and ask for more information. It would be nice if more people gave me more information I could use and I just add a few notes to, but it rarely works out like that.

What I do get though is enough to get me interested enough to do a little bit of research and make a page. Someone recently asked about two locations in Bristol and why they couldn't find them on modern maps. Well, one survived slum clearance in the 1930s but completely demolished in the 1970s and the other was an early example of purpose built flats (apartments) and not some grand, majestic house that I first thought it was.

Then someone asked about an old postcard they had, a nice woman from here gave me some information about webrings, and this morning someone asked me about the price of "commoner" food in 18th century England. At the time the average wage was 18d per day and that had to pay for everything.

Don't sweat it if you don't feel like writing something, or want to mess around with the guts of a site at the moment. It will come back to you. Definitely don't worry about a lack of imagination. I've got the imagination and artistic talent of a brick, but I do all right. I just happen to like reading and writing which is often enough.

[Bone-A Lisa]

I know how you feel...    For me, I have come to terms that (what I assume is) my ADHD causes my interests in my hobbies to rotate. There will be months I'm deep dived into Blender, or my website, or something completely  different like Warhammer 40k or video games and thinking about absolutely nothing else. Because I know that's how I operate, I've tried to orient my hobbies in a way that I can leave them for several months, knowing ill come back and hop back into it.

To encourage myself to come back, i also try and setup my hobbies to overlap them. I.E. making a web-shrine for Oldschool Runescape, which I am currently working on. I also have a note taking system setup (Obsidian) with pages for all of my projects that allow me to quickly jot ideas down when they come to me. This way when the mood does strike me again, I can hop right into creation without having to struggle through the idea phase.

So ultimately I know that there will probably be a few months where I don't touch my site, but I also know when I come back around to it I'll have some good ideas. I try not to put too much structure around it either, because if there is too much prerequisite, I'll never feel like I have the energy to overcome that initial hurdle of getting everything prepped. I like just having a simple idea and running with it.

For my website what I'll do is pull an idea off the list (like that OSRS page for example), block out the most basic structure of the page, then outline the points I want to hit. Then I'll search online for some of the assets I want to use and download them ahead of time. From there I fill out the content and add the flare and decoration in tandem to prevent myself from getting bored of either. It might take a few days of small work sessions, or I might even leave it for a week or two, but because I've kind of written down and downloaded a lot of what i wanted to use, it makes it easy to pick back up!

[EdenInTheGardens]

Outlines outlines outlines! Whenever I make a project I outline all the graphics, assets, functionality, etc I need to make and break stuff down into chunks. I usually do graphics first because it takes the longest, so it kind of sunk-cost-fallcies me into finishing what I've started, since I already drew all those tiny graphics, found the perfect audio, etc. And having a checklist to cross things off of really makes me feel productive even if something isn't up on my site yet. I get really excited seeing how much I've gotten done even if it's just one gif or image in that day.

OK that's actually really smart and organized, I have, no clue how to outline a website project but maybe I should try it out cause I do have the issue of just going in blind and hoping things work out !! Do you ever get stuck at the outlining phase though, if so what do you do to get unstuck ? Because I feel like when I do try and be organized I get stuck at that level

What I do get though is enough to get me interested enough to do a little bit of research and make a page. Someone recently asked about two locations in Bristol and why they couldn't find them on modern maps. Well, one survived slum clearance in the 1930s but completely demolished in the 1970s and the other was an early example of purpose built flats (apartments) and not some grand, majestic house that I first thought it was.

I checked out your website and all the cool facts and things to learn are genuinely fascinating, I think maybe I overthink too much what i want and don't want on my website when really I could add anything I want !

To encourage myself to come back, i also try and setup my hobbies to overlap them. I.E. making a web-shrine for Oldschool Runescape, which I am currently working on. I also have a note taking system setup (Obsidian) with pages for all of my projects that allow me to quickly jot ideas down when they come to me. This way when the mood does strike me again, I can hop right into creation without having to struggle through the idea phase.

Honestly I may try to make a shrine for something I'm currently obsessed with then ! I think the good thing with shrines is they're very much self-sufficient (not the right word I think oops), where they don't have to connect perfectly to the website as a whole and they're very much their own lil pocket project :]


Thank you so much to everyone for the great advice and for taking the time to help me !  You're all very kind

[BlazingCobaltX]

Whether it is work or hobby, my first step is usually to start with whatever is easiest to me. For work, this is outlining my document and writing citations. For webpages, I just start with making a manuscript of sorts for what I would like to share. Once the full text of the page is written, I look for a fitting webpage design. So in my case, the content of the page informs its design, and I am okay with that because if I do the reverse, I will get stuck at some point.

So pick what's easiest for you to do, and then develop your workflow from there.

[wygolvillage]

I rarely get stuck at the outline phase. I usually begin writing it when I already have a solid idea of what I want to make. For example for my dressup game I was like, alright, I'll need a background, shirts, pants, etc, and it will be controlled with click and drag... And THEN I started listing all the shirts I wanted to draw, the pants, accessories, and so on and made it into a checklist.

I guess I kind of write up an "elevator pitch" before I write any actual outline, but often it's in my head rather than in a doc lol. A few paragraphs describing what the page should look like, what the contents are, what features it should have.

[candycanearter07]

I'm currently going thru that too kinda, being worried I'm not doing my website right and stuff or if my site is too bland
anxiety sucks

but Id say probably like make it really easy to write down ideas? Also, make pages for prototypes, don't bother with making it look fancy and just use placeholders or reuse images, but JUST MAKE IT WORK. You don't even have to finish it (do try to make the site not crash and stuff obviously). And for general "productivity tips", just work on it for a few minutes a day? It's a lot easier to commit to, and at least you're doing something for your site. Also, I personally love the pomodoro method when I have to work on something.

[nuclearblues]

my input here is a little bit flawed considering I've started and then scrapped at least 3 personal sites, but I think the most important thing to keep in mind is to always stay experimental. it's incredibly difficult, but try not to compare your work to others'. it doesn't benefit you and only really serves to cause an anxiety spiral about it "not looking good enough". if you have a fun idea, try to make it work! it doesn't matter how long it takes or if you think someone else could do it better; the spirit of creativity lies entirely in your ability to try. if you spend all your time comparing your work to what *could* be, it will never end up being. I stay invested by always trying to better myself and approaching it from the perspective of learning. we are all students of the world, we are all at different levels of skill, and we all have something to contribute.

it's also worth noting that if you do start to feel burned out, you can always take a break. there is absolutely no pressure to maintain constant updates. that's kind of the beautiful thing about the web separate from social media. your pace is entirely up to you.

[Paprika]

different topics. I talk about both comixq, gamebooks and synthwave. I have other categories hidden for now but taking form out of viewers. When I'm bored about one topic, I just go to the next and continue. Works good so far. I'm not just balck and white I'll talk about whatever I want since it's MY own website. Be free !

[Kallistero]

Hey, this topic sounds a lot like this other topic on how to stay motivated in the first place!    This thread has gone in a bit of a different direction, though, in more of an ideas direction than a motivation perspective.

I'll say that I stand by what I said last year in that thread, that you should be allowed to let motivation come & go as inspiration strikes you. It's yours to complete now or to suspend until you come out with the update that you want!

However, I do so often get the motivation to work on it but experience a sort of writer's block. Sometimes, you know of what you'll want next but can't close in on the way you want to do it. You can make something that, at minimum, works, but that's no guarantee that you'll want that version to be live on your site. For that, I've started keeping pages that I use as workbenches, a little workshop of things I'm still making. I keep these work-in-progress pages & applications on another site of mine while I work on them, and they'll be pushed to the sites they're meant for whenever they're ready! That way, I can just start making it, without any worries about whether it'll be broken or if there's a bad link or if the presentation is otherwise not to my liking. 

Of course, this dovetails better with the methodology that nuclearblues above and I have used, which is to experiment! Personally, I tend to NOT plan out much about the experience of a page, carrying out much of the detail by the seat of my pants. The initial vision almost never totally lines up with what winds up being presented, and I can wind up with a page that I didn't even imagine until after work on it already began! I also don't have to plan my vision based on what I feel capable of or based on what I've seen any other sites do, because I create by discovering what can be done. I'll be working toward something and then wonder "oh, but what if it could do THIS?" and then find that it actually does something unexpected, which I then wind up using. It takes longer and there are a lot more mistakes to be made, but if you can bear with it, you wind up with something that's totally yours along with a deep understanding of the process. Doing this over & over is where the pages on my Neocities site came from, and looking back on it, I'm happy with the result.

So yes, you CAN use initial planning to know from the beginning what your site will be, but that's an option instead of an imperative. You could also just slap things down on a Web page and then discover enough that you make something new. Doing it badly is a step toward doing it well, so in any creative pursuit, you get further by making something badly than by making nothing at all!