for the webmaster who doesn't want offbeat design

[div]

During the early days of the yesterweb era, it had been a long time since anyone had seen a website that defied the conventions of design. We had forgotten what it was like to look at different looking websites, and we said, "Hey, I remember that! I want to make something like that!" It was and is beautiful.

I feel like for many of us, this isn't a new feeling anymore. We've been unlocked for a while now. And speaking for myself at least, I've come back to a point where I don't necessarily think every site has to be about "HEY LOOK AT THIS RADICAL DESIGN YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE."

But in the small web community, I still feel the pressure of, "My site doesn't look offbeat enough, people are going to say its boring, I guess I should spend a couple hours browsing oldweb resources and find some stuff to cram in there." When what I really want to do is just focus on my writing.

I think one of the most unfortunate things about the small web is that having grown out of the ashes of yesterweb, there is a tendency for everyone to have IDEALOGY, IDEALOGY, IDEALOGY oozing out from every pore of their existence. The black and white casting of an absolutist is put on everything. Blinking GIF from the 90s? "Morally righteous website, brother." SVG Icons. "Sister, that shit is harshing my mellow, get that out of here."

For me the independent web should be about making things yourself and have less highly specific rules about what the thing you're supposed to make should be.

I hope someone out there found this useful.

Make whatever you want whether they like it or not. Make whatever you want and feel free to not have self important manifesto about it.

[Paprika]

I'm reaching the one year anniversary with my NeoCities soon and it's something that bothered me for a while. When I arrived on NeoCities I had tons of ideas and I wanted a "super unique cool website" and I had the realization that at my current level of knowledge, it'd be hard to have a super cool main page and everything that goes around.

Until February this year I had a rather big complex because I'm still using sadgrl.online template that I customised and tweaked to my needs but there's so many websites with whacky and colorful designs that made me think I should give up at trying making a website. It wasn't easy and I often found myself browsing those sites thinking "awww that'd be so cool if I could do it on my website..." and having a big sigh while watching my own website and code.

Not gonna say it was a struggle but I often felt bad for having a rather simple/bland template when some people have drag-boxes, super funny borders and huge creativity. But in the end I kept going and thought that I should be proud of myself since one year ago I didn't knew anything about HTML, CSS or Javascript and yet, here I am.

It is not perfect, it is not visually unique but it is sincere, honest coding with my own little hands. There was times I wanted to slam my head on the desk for not finding the error in my HTML and other times I danced around because my attempt at making a CSS class worked better than I expected.

I 100% agree with you that websites don't have to be unique or absolutely special, as long as you are proud with what you do, then it's the most important. Visuals are a thing, content is another. The point of that web renewal is that anyone can do anything, and it's definitely not a contest or a competition. You do you and I do me, we can walk and in hand even if you do a super responsive cool wiggly template when my template is just 3 black under a navbar. That's 100% fine. There are no grades, no prize, no winners.

Have fun making websites. Have fun changing, building them. No need to overdo yourself, no need to be the top "most unique blog template ever 111!11" index, no need to be recognized. Everyone is welcome with their skill level, fun is the key word here. DOn't try to compare yourself, the real life already does it enough, no need to bring it in the web. Catch a break, use that basic template if you like. Mess around with code or leave it be, it's up to you. It's okay to use common templates, it's okay to look like a blog you've already seen somewhere else. If you like your own website then your goal is achieved, I can guarantee you that someone else will browse your site and marvel at it, thinking "wow cool design, I like it !".

Take care, stay hydrated.

[Melooon]

One thing I'd note is that neocities is a limited version of what creative and artful websites can be; and if you're judging indie homepages and offbeat design based on what's on neocities and the former yw bubble, you are really missing out on what offbeat design can be ^^

Neocities has many wonderful sites, but the general culture there is quite narrow  When you get outside that into spaces like https://thehtml.review/03/ things get exciting!

Id like to see this forum as being a fusion point where NC culture and the wider art web culture can meet ^^

[DiffydaDude]

During the early days of the yesterweb era, it had been a long time since anyone had seen a website that defied the conventions of design. We had forgotten what it was like to look at different looking websites, and we said, "Hey, I remember that! I want to make something like that!" It was and is beautiful.

I feel like for many of us, this isn't a new feeling anymore. We've been unlocked for a while now. And speaking for myself at least, I've come back to a point where I don't necessarily think every site has to be about "HEY LOOK AT THIS RADICAL DESIGN YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE."

But in the small web community, I still feel the pressure of, "My site doesn't look offbeat enough, people are going to say its boring, I guess I should spend a couple hours browsing oldweb resources and find some stuff to cram in there." When what I really want to do is just focus on my writing.

I think one of the most unfortunate things about the small web is that having grown out of the ashes of yesterweb, there is a tendency for everyone to have IDEALOGY, IDEALOGY, IDEALOGY oozing out from every pore of their existence. The black and white casting of an absolutist is put on everything. Blinking GIF from the 90s? "Morally righteous website, brother." SVG Icons. "Sister, that shit is harshing my mellow, get that out of here."

For me the independent web should be about making things yourself and have less highly specific rules about what the thing you're supposed to make should be.

I hope someone out there found this useful.

Make whatever you want whether they like it or not. Make whatever you want and feel free to not have self important manifesto about it.

Yeah this is kinda what I think too. I dont think every site needs to adhere to some kind of 'code' involving things like pirating stuff and using linux or whatever. When I first got into the web revival, i started following some of the privacy focused websites, and at first i got pretty positive results, my computer was faster, and I was happy with what I accomplished. But the more I delved into it, getting what people called "true privacy" felt more and more like an uphill battle. First it was "just use adblockers", then it was "use a proxy", then it went to "remove the board on your pc that allows it to be remotely accessed", and then to "self hosting your own servers", and it was all for the goal of "stopping the evil politicians and policemen from putting you in 1984", and i tried to care about that, but i realized that i couldnt really get invested in that, or even really believe in that manifesto, and what i really i wanted to do was have fun online again, so i stopped trying to go that route and instead i did my own thing. What im saying is that the web revival shouldnt be something systemic and congregated, it should be people all doing their own thing and having fun in their own ways.

[div]

you are really missing out on what offbeat design can be ^^

I'll look at the link you pointed to, and I agree that once I branched out away from neocities-centric communities, I felt significant amount of liberation from the mindset they have.

But I guess what I'm getting at more is that I am not and have never been a designer first. I'm a hobbyist programmer and a writer. I had fun playing with what you can do with layouts again and it felt like I hadn't done it since I was a kid. But at the end of the day, there is a limit to how much my websites are going emphasize design. I want to write. I want to program. I want my content to be at the forefront of the site and I don't think that has to be a crime.

Whether its using sad girl's layout or some static site generator theme from github, I don't think people like the person above should feel ashamed of wanting to do other things with websites besides design layouts.

My latest blog is straight up built using documentation builder and material design spec. haha. Of course I injected some overriding CSS to spice it up, but it's not as much changes as you would think. And I'm at a point where I don't care what people think about that. My blog looks like tech documentation and I love that. If you have a good eye and have seen it before, you will ask, "Wait... have I seen this before?" but not be sure because I've hacked it just enough.

[div]

https://thehtml.review/03/

incredible!

although it somewhat makes me motion sick ngl, 

and while its incredibly cool, I personally can't focus on the content at all because of how disorienting it is, which is exactly the opposite of what I want on my site.

[Melooon]

although it somewhat makes me motion sick ngl,

That's understandable! (It's super impressive but not the easiest to read) It's a virtual magazine though, so each of the links in the wheel is a different site that maybe you'd enjoy!

I also wanted to note that I'm at a web craft workshop at the moment and I was looking at your site with a few of the artists here and we all agreed your site is cool how it is. I don't think you need to feel even a hint of not fitting in or belonging because of the more minimal approach. Even if it's not intentional for the design/mood to be the focus, it's totally present in your choices. Your focus is on the text and I think the colour aspect brings that out ^^

There is always a conflict between the technology mindset and the arts mindset - particularly in the open source community you get this kind of technological puritanism that I find boring; in arts, you'll also find ideologies creep in and it can suck the fun away. I agree both can be a real pain when they get heavy-handed It's about finding the balance you're comfortable with, while still forcing yourself out of your comfort bubble every so often ^^

[Memory]

And even if you'd go with HTML 4.01 and no CSS / no scripting, you still have infinite design options. People's tastes are too different to satisfy them all at once. But yeah, what's a beautiful design worth if there's nothing of substance to show...

[div]

I think the colour aspect brings that out ^^

So you're looking at the neocities page from when I was trying to do different.   

These are my newer sites,

https://divsel.com
https://board.divsel.com

What you're looking at there: the board design is something the other developer on the project made. I modified it to add in several of my newer features, but its his original design. Then I decided to make a blog to go with this and I modified that documentation theme to be a blog that matches the design of the other site in enough ways that they appear to go together.

This is the one that I worry many people in the small web will see and not appreciate because it it hackery of corporate design decisions. You could maybe consider that art in a Dada kind of way but yeah. The content is the art on those sites.

you'll also find ideologies creep in and it can suck the fun away.

I agree. I was a kid during the geocities era so I remember what it was like to have tech people look down on your creations. They've opened up a bit, but many of them haven't.

Trying to be in between them is kind of hard.

[Semper]

I'm definitely not immune to "offbeat" designs, and I was obsessed with them when I first joined Neocities. Compared to what I was used to seeing, which was social media platforms or plain white portfolio sites, these websites were magical to me. Although, my limited skills and design sense at the start of my coding journey left me feeling similarly insecure about my very plain and empty site. But, as I explored more websites I started to figure out what I actually liked in a design, which was it just having stuff I could actually look through AND that it didn't give me motion sickness.

My website design is pretty plain because I like a nice clear centre article with space around it that'll give my eyes rest points away from the text. I don't like too many flashing gifs, and I abhor a moving background.

It's helped that I've started learning about responsive design and accessibility, and having both these things as the foundation to my site design has made me feel a lot less insecure about what I'm doing. Also, since adding more writing and art to my site, which has been facilitated by having cleaner and easier to read code thanks to my endeavours to make my site more accessible, I'm not pressed by the look of it. It works for me because it's made for me, and it becomes more and more for me with every new page I add to it.

Also, like, templates are fine. Standard and limited designs are fine, and even better if they are responsive and accessible in my opinion. It really is about what you put into your website that matters in the end. Also templates can always be customized later on to suit the webmaster's aesthetic.

[arcus]

You might be interested in this webring, most of the sites are minimalist, with some being personal wikis: https://webring.xxiivv.com/

As for myself, I've been lurking Neocities since its early days, so this never really bugged me. The aesthetic focused sites were always there, but a fair few people used it simply as an alternative to Geocities, and hosted various guides on it, since there were a lack of decent free web hosts when Geocities died. These days, Rentry seems more popular for such sites.

While I do care about aesthetics, my priorities with my current site are making it lightweight, useful, screen reader friendly, and compatible with older machines. With less "useful" pages leaning more into design.

[shevek]

I think discussions like these are super interesting because even within NC and other web revival spaces we seem to have these bubbles that make us have different experiences or think one thing is more common than the other

In my case I think the offbeat sites stuck out more in the very fresh beginning obviously because well, they clashed the most with what I was used to seeing online, but the more I looked around and the more I entered the space, I found the offbeat sites to actually be super rare? They're an eye catcher and tend to show up on top because of visits or followers, but the large majority seems to really have the usual 3 grid design, sadness website builder etc.
And I am honestly not here to shit on it - I've read blog posts by others in the space in the past who were weirdly offended by how samesies every site looked and how almost every page is a variation of the same sadness template, and I found that a bit off. I think you can ask for more diversity in templates and help resources without shaming the people who try their best.

So I honestly think anyone who wants to have a plain, easy, accessible design is in good company. I'd say that's the majority. Especially since in the past couple months, there is more of a vocal presence of people who advocate for accessibility in the web revival space, and more people who love unorthodox browsers wanting to see more options for people to design your website the way they need them to be via their own browser settings without completely breaking it.

I'd even go so far as to say that having the barebones, 3-grid, flexbox, default font, darkmode toggle site with no JS and barely any CSS, which can be modified by the browser of the person who browses your site is the cool and most enlightened thing to do right now (but that may also be a bubble thing!). I'd say offbeat designs and eyecatcher sites had their moment, but now we are injecting bigger social critiques into design again, and the special sites are falling short of being accommodating to literally everyone who could stumble upon them. Sites like that (which mine belongs to I am afraid) are seen as imposing a strict design onto the people browsing it and can be seen as overbearing, controlling, imposing my ideals - kinda in a "who is the webmaster to decide what I am looking at? I should have my font, my font size and the text boxes arranged how I set it in my browser, because that's my machine!". It's seen as more accommodating, kind etc. if you offer people a way to browse your site on their own terms. I understand this view, but personally stick to not making myself or my online presence palatable to literally anyone to fit into their needs, which I think is also fair, since that's simply the two ends of the spectrum.

[Kallistero]

One thing I'd note is that neocities is a limited version of what creative and artful websites can be; and if you're judging indie homepages and offbeat design based on what's on neocities and the former yw bubble, you are really missing out on what offbeat design can be ^^

Neocities has many wonderful sites, but the general culture there is quite narrow  When you get outside that into spaces like https://thehtml.review/03/ things get exciting!

Id like to see this forum as being a fusion point where NC culture and the wider art web culture can meet ^^

I've had similar thoughts of the Neocities design culture! It seems to take a type of inventor's mindset to deviate away from the shapes & formats that are in the box. There's a lot of experimentation to be had with colors, geometry, motion, sound, filters, formatting, directionality, so many things that... require learning esoteric knowledge of the tech, along with the patience to deal with the many failures that come with experimenting. 

For the sake of a corner of the Web that the people have truly made their own, it's healthy to have individuals tinkering with the experience itself, but there doesn't seem to be the right set of forces for that motion to have momentum right now. After starting the Neocities page on my profile here, I'd gone through a lot of other Neocities sites seeking inspiration and lamented that I haven't seen many other sites doing much with shape, hue, and movement. It's not something you see much on the Web, period, probably because by the time the technologies for it were well-supported, the skills were already largely being funneled into the most mainstream of corporate Web design. 

Anyway, Neocities as an entry point doesn't seem to have a clear way upward in terms of spreading one's creative wings. To be fair, nowhere really does. What's thought of as creative Web design is different for you & I than what it seems to mean for much of the Web. If you look for a guide on creative Web design, it paradoxically puts you on rails. Neocities seems to have its own microcosm of this. You see the sites there, and it can set this artificial boundary on what one might think is possible. Then, when someone builds with the presumption of those boundaries, it can reinforce that invisible creative boundary for the next onlooker.

As an artistic space, having webcraft be more seen as a medium for creative visions seems like its own puzzle!