Nekoweb vs Neocities or.... both? Are we moving? Mirroring?

[devils]

I'm also not fond of Nekoweb's... "vibe", either. I feel like Neocities is at least a bit more subtle & neutral in its presentation. I'm aware this is entirely subjective, personal, and even petty, but at least it's mine 

God, I have to agree. Besides using Cloudflare, being based in Germany (where censorship laws are... strange) and having quite a bit of workplace drama, the vibes are waaaaay off with Nekoweb. I get that having a website is fun and a webhost should reflect that, but its presentation is so unprofessional.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

God, I have to agree. Besides using Cloudflare, being based in Germany (where censorship laws are... strange) and having quite a bit of workplace drama, the vibes are waaaaay off with Nekoweb. I get that having a website is fun and a webhost should reflect that, but its presentation is so unprofessional.

CORRECT. UNPROFESSIONAL. THAT'S THE WORD I'M LOOKING FOR. It's also my main pet peeve with Catbox, which I regrettably have to use for my music files. I understand being informal and adding a little personality to your website, but there's a difference between that and providing a service where you have the user go through your collection of smug suggestive anime waifus flashing their panties on the corner of the screen everytime they want to upload a file.

Now. Nekoweb doesn't go that far. But not everybody likes anime girls and I'd love nerdy people to stop assuming everybody does

pssst if anybody needs a script to get rid of the catbox waifus lemme know

[Marziponder]

I just wanna say that I definitely would be willing to read a guide on this but I don't want to be imposing since I don't know if I'd be able to get around to it for a while!!!

I would also be interested. The way webmasters talk about moving to self-hosting makes it sound easy, but nobody really explains the steps of stepping it up and the migration. A tutorial would really help with seeing how much 'investment' is needed to do this.

I am happy to report that I was able to get to this sooner than expected! Here's my guide:

https://orbitoasis.net/depths/academy/hosting-a-website-on-digitalocean-droplets/

It ended up fairly long, but in exchange it is also fairly comprehensive. Let me know if there's anything particularly unclear about it, anyone who does end up taking a look!

[Lyonid]

I am happy to report that I was able to get to this sooner than expected! Here's my guide:

https://orbitoasis.net/depths/academy/hosting-a-website-on-digitalocean-droplets/

Oh I just destroyed a droplet on DO! Maybe it's worth considering. Thanks for the great guide!!

I also have to say that Neocities has shown me that the aesthetics of the provider have become crucial for me. It's a home for tons of sites, after all, and needs to invoke trust and the urge to create something simultaneously. With Nekoweb, I struggle to feel any of the two because I am not really contributing to a blank slate. It already has a strong identity, and most sites on it have the same spirit. I do adore the little hover boxes and am curious how the project will evolve.

With the indie web, I am craving community. I feel like Neocities is fumbling on nurturing the community by having all these statistics and rankings. I genuinely wish for a host that gives me the sense of belonging while giving me control over my space, and how I want to engage with others. It's still a tough nut to crack for me, and I fear the self-hosting would only feel more isolating, unfortunately. We might need more nekoweb-esque projects, I believe!

[BlazingCobaltX]

I am happy to report that I was able to get to this sooner than expected! Here's my guide:

https://orbitoasis.net/depths/academy/hosting-a-website-on-digitalocean-droplets/

It ended up fairly long, but in exchange it is also fairly comprehensive. Let me know if there's anything particularly unclear about it, anyone who does end up taking a look!

Wow great job! I will read through it and let you know if anything's unclear. And I'd rather have it be long and comprehensive than short and confusing.

[Kalka]

I landed over this toic after browsing the web for a while. I've seen a couple of "Nekoweb is better than Neocities" and I was tempted to move over. I spent half a day looking around, seeing the differences etc etc. But in the end I went down the "I should host myself" route and considered doing it.

I must really say thanks to Marziponder because the guide is well documented and explaiins the things very well. But there was an even more important part that clicked with me.

If you need less than 1 GB storage and you only want to run a static site, you can't beat Neocities et al.

Which made me realize that I'm not a professional coder, developer or anything related. I'm just a web tourist and while self-hosting is interesting, my website is 75 Mo with all pictures and everything. Unless Neocities goes down in flames, I think self hosting would probably be overkill for my case

I'm not dismissing it, because it's a good solution if you're not happy with X or Y provider but I feel like there's no perfect web host and I'm not ready to build my pwn elaborated space just to publish 500 words and 6 pictures to tell my view on a comic-book I've just read.

Also as it was reported higher in this thread, Nekoweb has already a strong identity where Neocities is more of a blank page that you build on. And as bad as soe people say, I enjoy the community feed where I can find new websites to look and other users speaking about their latest updates.

Thanks for all the contributions in this thread, it's very valuable and it helped me decide wether or not I should stay on Neocities, go to Nekoweb or just self-host. The latter is not out of the question but right now, hosting less than 100 Mo with a static website where I use only CSS and HTML, feels a little bit overkill.

I definitely saved Marziponder guide because it's really good ans I'll probably share to a handful of online friends !

[rolypolyphonic]

I started out crossposting on both Neocities and Nekoweb but moved to paid hosting.

One reason was storage concerns (I had not at that point crossed 1GB but I was expecting it because my website is for a multimedia webseries, so lots of images/videos/etc. that I expect to accumulate over time), the other was that I wanted my own domain name. I know you can pay to have a custom domain on both Neocities and Nekoweb but I figured if I was going to pay for things anyway, I might as well find an actual host that I estimated would be cheaper in the long run but also didn't have all the other restrictions like the file types, CORS policies, etc.

This ended up being a great move too because I eventually started using PHP on my website for social features and other game-y/interactive aspects of the story.

I moved to Nearly Free Speech primarily because it was the cheapest option at the time and I have no complaints with its service. Their FAQ emphasising their DIY ethos seems intimidating at first but honestly I already preferred coding on my own device even when I used Neocities/Nekoweb so the lack of an actual onsite editor wasn't really an issue for me. Updating the website is as simple as dragging and dropping files through an SFTP client; not once have I ever actually needed to do any command line stuff. Setting up the domain name was more complicated for me as a beginner than actually updating the website.

I understand not everyone actually has the means to shell out any money especially for those who don't have a method to make online payments, but if you're going to pay for stuff anyway I think NFS is a better investment than either Neocities or Nekoweb both monetarily (unless your website is uber-famous NFS costs literal pennies) and service-wise. Personally, I'd only pay for the former two not for the services per se but as a way of contributing to the cause/community if that is something you value.

[lakes]

I'm staying on neocities for the time being, BUT I am self-hosting a mirror of my site over on I2P (the Invisible Internet Project). You have to know how to use I2P to self-host an eepsite (an I2P-exclusive website) obviously, but once you know how I2P works, it's fairly simple. Java I2P (like Vanilla I2P & I2P+) even come with instructions on how to do it.
While I can't always have my self-hosted option up, it is freeing to know that I don't have to rely on neocities or some other site if enshittification happens. I also don't have to reveal my IP address because I2P already protects that.
That said, if I move the clearnet version of my site, it'll probably be on codeberg pages. Since I'm already hosting the source code on codeberg anyway. I also am considering nekoweb as a third option & exclusively self-hosting as a 4th. But I've heard with nekoweb, you have to join a Discord server to interact with the community and quite frankly, I'd rather not use Discord for indie web projects. Since I think part of it is an escape from social media for me. Ofc, there's social media aspects to neocities & that sometimes bleeds into the community. But I think it finds a nice balance between the 2.

[Cele]

I'm completely out of the loop for everything Neocities and don't really even know what Nekoweb is or why. But the reason why I am out of the loop for multiple years is because I moved to a paid host and made no effort to connect with anyone. Neocities's social media like features (and culture) grew kind of unbearable for me and this Nekoweb doesn't sound better if it revolves around Discord... Sad as it is, there isn't much "old web" on Neocities beyond the surface as the way people interact, speak and react to each other is kind of social media-like, at least from my interactions. But maybe that's just my experience.

[Nicolas]

Both are good. I once wanted to entirely move to nw, but i decided to stay on nc because most of my online friends are there. I also used to mirror my nc to nw, but since i was lazy to mirror (almost) everything after an update i stopped mirroring and changed my index to a very empty page with the text "too lazy to mirror my website here :P" and a link to my actual website, which is hosted on nc.

Spoiler

nc = Neocities
nw = Nekoweb

[close]

[alienhospital]

For those looking to selfhost their sites---since I've seen a few people here mention that----you can do this with an old laptop, a usb drive with debian installed via BalenaEtcher, and then by installing Yunohost on top of debian once that is installed. (You can install it as an operating system, but i do NOT recommend this.) It has the ability to serve static sites as well as host a bunch of other software. You need to know how to port forward if you don't want to use Cloudflare Tunnels (which I do because I don't wanna pay my ISP $20 a month for a static IP.. sorry I guess), but if you do feel comfortable using tunnels, it's pretty easy to figure out, it's designed for beginners and walks you through everything.

I left Neocities long ago, as well as Nekoweb, and my personal sites are now either hosted on a wiki software called Dokuwiki or built myself through ruby on rails. I don't like the... vibe of either of them. So many people I've seen on both call for certain forms of censorship of media, and I don't think that's what the Indie Web should stand for (you can't have Just A Little censorship, folks, we can't reinvent the Hays Code.) I also just, it turns out, really dislike updating each individual page on a static site; I prefer interactive forms that can save my data for me, so I can work quickly as I have ADHD.

I also dislike the social media aspect Neocities has, even if I do appreciate the ability to turn it off. And overall, I just get... nervous using popular things. Not for pretentious reasons, but for "I've been harassed and bullied online so much I don't feel comfortable in certain areas" reasons. A lot of people building sites on them are also very young, which, great! PLEASE get into this stuff at a young age when the corporate world wants people entirely reliant on their web! But also I'll be 25 soon and I don't want my primary viewers to be kids :p (same problem I have with Spacehey) I see social media as having the ability to coordinate harassment campaigns if the wrong person finds something they personally find distasteful, and anything can be spun as evil if you find the right words and get creative enough. Idk.

I feel judged a lot on Neocities and even more so on Nekoweb. Especially for being severely disabled and having no ability to "unplug and enjoy nature~~~" or whatever people emphasize so much. I can't leave my house and the emphasis on "unplugging" rather than cultivating an accepting and positive space for all really bothers me. The idea is great for people who aren't disabled, I get it, but it still leaves out a large portion of the population---those who are more likely to be drawn to the indie web due to more reliance on tech for social stuff!

This is a pretty negative post I know, but this is just why I don't use either anymore, except to keep up with my beloved's site. I think they have a lot of great features and upsides, I spent YEARS on Neocities before I got into web development, and I will always be fond of Neocities and Nekoweb for helping introduce web development, personal websites, and the indie web to a new generation of people--including me! But I've outgrown it.

[Adam]

For those looking to selfhost their sites---since I've seen a few people here mention that-- [...] You need to know how to port forward if you don't want to use Cloudflare Tunnels (which I do because I don't wanna pay my ISP $20 a month for a static IP.. sorry I guess), but if you do feel comfortable using tunnels, it's pretty easy to figure out, it's designed for beginners and walks you through everything.

I never used either Neocities or Nekoweb, so I can't really comment on that portion of this thread, but I do know a bit about self-hosting.

For what it's worth, you don't need a static IP to self-host and you probably don't need CF tunnels either¹. I have neither, myself. I have a custom domain that I pay $6 a year for and a "dynamic dns" client that runs on my local network. The ddns client periodically checks to see what my current IP address is, and if it has changed, it updates my public dns records. Functionally, it works roughly the same as if I had a static IP.

While CF tunnels are easy to set-up, the downside is that CF acts as a "man in the middle" to all of your traffic. They can decrypt and see anything that passes through them, like passwords, pictures, or just personal messages. In theory, they can also alter your content as it passes through They don't do this currently, but it technically enables them to do things like censoring content on the fly.

By avoiding CF's proxies and tunnels and using dynamic dns instead, you can ensure that your visitor's privacy is respected and that they see your content the way you intended. 

¹You do need a public IP address, however. Some ISPs provide this on both IPv4 and IPv6, other's only on IPv6

[alienhospital]

For what it's worth, you don't need a static IP to self-host and you probably don't need CF tunnels either¹..... a "dynamic dns" client that runs on my local network. The ddns client periodically checks to see what my current IP address is, and if it has changed, it updates my public dns records. Functionally, it works roughly the same as if I had a static IP.

While CF tunnels are easy to set-up, the downside is that CF acts as a "man in the middle" to all of your traffic. They can decrypt and see anything that passes through them, like passwords, pictures, or just personal messages. In theory, they can also alter your content as it passes through...

By avoiding CF's proxies and tunnels and using dynamic dns instead, you can ensure that your visitor's privacy is respected and that they see your content the way you intended. 

Cool, or do that then. I was just sharing what I was familiar with. I'm behind CNGAT and was under the impression I cannot self-host under CGNAT.

[Adam]

Cool, or do that then. I was just sharing what I was familiar with. I'm behind CNGAT and was under the impression I cannot self-host under CGNAT.

Ah, CGNAT is a different beast; that means you don't have a public IPv4 address.
You can probably still self-host using an IPv6 address (most ISPs provide them), but if you want IPv4 connectivity, you will need a proxy of some sort (like CF or a diy solution).

You could also self-host via TOR or I2P, but that obviously limits the audience for your site.

CF tunnels are probably your easiest solution, I just like people to know the potential privacy drawbacks, since they're not talked about very often.