I am new to making sites and I want some tips to improve.

[Icey!]

I have only made my Neocities account a few months ago but I have been inactive on my site. The holidays are coming up and I wanna take advantage of that to work on my artistic skills (including coding).
What are some tips for Website making?

[aoeu]

While I haven't made a webpage in a few years, I do have a few pieces of advice that I can give you if you're just starting out with building your own personal webpage.

1) Understand what you want to have in your webpage. This is infinitely better than just going around aimlessly without any set vision in mind.

2) After you learn the basics of HTML and CSS, just jump into the waters and start programming. You won't be able to learn another language by reading one or two guides and the same can be said about learning to build webpages. It's always better for you to actually do _something_ than nothing at all, even if it's just some fun side-project/idea that you came up with a few minutes ago.

3) Take inspiration from other websites and don't be afraid to look into the HTML/CSS that they're using. You might learn a thing or two and/or get inspired to experiment around with certain effects and whatnot.

[Melooon]

Good question! Aoeu is pretty much right, content is king and you'll have much more fun if you have content to post about. When I started my content was collections and past projects that I had sitting around, that gave me a whole wealth of stuff to post without much effort. Then as time went on I started to make new content whitch is much more work.

As for art; remember art is magic, and fun is magic, your are conjuring things into reality, make sure your having fun doing it!

+++ ALSO reposing this from Discord, its a guide I wrote for people interested in upping their website game: +++

For HTML and CSS, W3 schools is the best learning site, but also snoop the source of sites, steal bits you like and re-work them. You’ll find a lot of rules about how you SHOULD do web design, be sure to break them at every opportunity but learn them first. Design is the most important bit, you can have crappy HTML and a cool design and it will still be cool. By design, I mean the layout, but also the mood and vibe.

Don’t worry about Javascript until you’re good at HTML and CSS, do a programming fundamentals tutorial from Youtube. Then pick a simple project like a name generator and try that, then do more complex things. Don’t overdo Javascript, if your site can’t work with JS turned off then you have overdone the JS! Use Stack-Overflow for help! Also this is a great book to read to get more advanced with JS

AND this is also a good book to get better at programming in general https://lamngoctam.github.i:ha:assets/books/The%20Pragmatic%20Programmer.pdf

When you’re happy with all that, you can try doing 3D stuff, it helps if you know how to 3D model so learn the basics of Blender first, then use X3D, Three.js, Javascript and/or learn Unity (that means learning C#). You can ALSO add 2D web games without knowing how to program using something like Construct.

(If you wanna do web-services like the search engine Im working on.. do a computer science degree :omg:k: But really, learn Node.js, Linux terminal, Databases (SQL,Mongo), Java/C++ and common software design patterns.)

Don’t judge your site too harshly against other sites, remember some (like mine) were made slowly over many years by people with too much free time… And remember that the technologies are just tools, they will allow you to make what you want, but you have to find your creative inspiration yourself. The only advice I can give is never follow trends, find things that make you excited to be alive.

Hopefully that answers your questions and helps you on your way! You can always get help here or on other forums/discords

[Nightdrift]

aoeu and Melon both have great answers that I resonate with. I'll throw a few other thoughts for your consideration as you move forward with your site building.

- Looking at other people's sites for inspiration can be very helpful -- not just for deciding what kind of a site you want to create, or how you might want your site to look...but as a quick way to really understand just how customizable every aspect of your page can potentially be, and what crazy things you can achieve with a tiny bit of code.

- As aoeu and Melon have said, it is helpful to know what you want to get out of your site -- even the smallest idea can provide a big roadmap. Some helpful questions I often ask myself: Is there a particular theme or topic you are aiming for, or a style of site you are passionate about building? Is there an audience you are targeting, or is this less of a priority for you? Is your site something you want to leave alone for long periods of time, or a site that you foresee yourself often updating or changing on a whim? I think this often affects how one ends up building or structuring their directories and pages.

- The beauty of a hand-coded website is that you really are in complete control of its contents. If you get tired of any part of it, it is very easy to simply remove it from your site... Heck, you even have the freedom to even blast your own site to the ground and start from scratch!

- Deeply generic/boring/obvious actual tip, but based on all the horror stories I've read of webmasters whose sites were blasted off the face of the earth; Save Backups Of Your Work (it's good practice of course, and Neocities makes it easy, but I also think it's fun to keep old copies of your work.)

- I might be more laid-back about this as a complete hobbyist, but a lot of my sites are built from a LOT of cobbled code... and sometimes the code is still a mess because hey, it works enough for now (even if "works" means it is literally hanging together with the code equivalent of duct tape). Going back to the first point, looking at how others approach certain problems can really open your mind up to crazy possibilities. IMO, if the code is enough to make your site work and it makes you happy, then you've done a good job. Over time you might become more interested in keeping cleaner and efficient code, and that is good too -- you can always go back and tinker, which goes back to the point about having a lot of creative control.

With all that said, I'm looking forward to hearing what you might hope to make out of your site : )

[Icey!]

Man, I got a lot of feedback! It has been fun reading your replies. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do next with the first page.
Thank you