Just finished my first indie web personal site and I'm really happy with it!

[batgal]

It is here! 

I spent about 2 months total working on it (with a month off in between for the holidays, haha). Working on this really made me feel very nostalgic for my young internet days messing with Neopets and Myspace.

The only thing not working right now is my Guestbook because the Chattable web servers apparently began being DDOS'd literally the day before I put my site fully public, which is... unfortunate, but I'm just biding my time for now since I already had it all set up, hoping it gets worked out sooner than later...

If anyone has any recommendations on alternatives for guestbooks that I can plug directly into my site and customize to the same degree as Chattable, I'd be appreciative!

I'm also looking for similar sites/creators to link trade with and active webrings to join--I sent a bunch of applications, but it seemed like a lot of rings my page fit into may be inactive--so if you have any leads there, please let me know!

Up next on my webdev to do list: the homepage for my indie game in development... 

[BB_ROOK]

It is very nice! Love the way you coded it and the feel. What tools did you use?

[HisVirusness]

You have Bio Freaks for the N64?  Nice.

[batgal]

It is very nice! Love the way you coded it and the feel. What tools did you use?

Thank you!! 

I designed the initial layout and assets for the BG/content boxes/header buttons/etc in Photoshop first. The 3D assets (like the cartridges on my retro game collection) I made using free 3D models of the base cartridges I found on Sketchfab, then edited the textures to have the labels of the games I physically owned, using scans from The Cover Project. I animated/lit the 3D assets myself and exported them into gif form.

Then I used a free basic 3 column layout I found online to build my base up and then just progressively kept plugging things in until it behaved how I wanted it to. The blog section of my site is based on Zonelets, but I heavily modified it so that the CSS matches my site perfectly and took out things I didn't want/need for my site specifically.

My approach to coding anything has always been "bruteforce things until they work," so the site code is literally a mishmash of me googling things, finding free code other people provided that I could modify, watching/reading tutorials, observing how the code on other sites functioned and just messing around with things until it worked the way I wanted. It took me two months of a LOT of trial and error to get it how I wanted but I think all in all it was worth it!

I built the site its' self just on NeoCities--I wanted to get something like Dreamweaver like I used to make my homepage back in my teens but it doesn't seem like there's a modern alternative...? Or maybe there is and I just didn't look hard enough haha.

You have Bio Freaks for the N64?  Nice.

YESSS I was so stoked when I found it haha! It's such a fever dream of a game but I played it sooooo much as a kid so when I saw it I knew I had to have it.

[CosmicRot]

Your website is super awesome! I really love the vibe. I'm in the process of completely breaking my website down from the ground up cause I wanna entirely restyle it 😭😭 in the sake of being as accessibility friendly as I can I ended up making mine a bit too clean I think.. I dunno'.

but yeah love your site's vibe and the art! <3 Really cool.

also for site building yeah idk the best way to go about it, I personally just use VScodium so I can see live updates as I'm editing code, but other than being able to see more tabs at once once and the life update/easy preview options it's not much different than editing in a thing like neocities I think.. I want to one day figure out how 11ty and other static site generator things work cause editing those in vscodium would be a life saver so I wouldn't have to edit and re-paste code that's used repeatedly, but man I'm a bit too dense for all of that I think xD I have a similar brute force way about coding but even after a year on and off trying 11ty fries my brain so I did an annoying alternative of javascript which, I'd like a lot, if not for the fact it then forces me to upload all the code-snippets as if they are there own individual pages and those then pop up on neocities profiles as if they are individual pages and auuggh it's so frustrating.

Anyway, keep up the great work on your site :))

[batgal]

Your website is super awesome! I really love the vibe. I'm in the process of completely breaking my website down from the ground up cause I wanna entirely restyle it 😭😭 in the sake of being as accessibility friendly as I can I ended up making mine a bit too clean I think.. I dunno'.

Thank you so much!!

I was as indulgent with the design as possible because I've been looking at a lot of authentic old internet stuff for research purposes lately and I wanted to channel some of that chaotic energy into my own homepage LOL I didn't think too much about accessibility at all in favor of aesthetics which, in retrospect, probably was a blind spot I should have paid more attention to... 

FWIW, I think what you have on your website now looks really cool too, not plain at all! Eager to see how you decide to redesign it! 

I'll also check out 11ty and see if that's something that will work better for me as I add more pages to the site in the future! Although a part of me wants to just see if I can get an old copy of Dreamweaver to work on my PC at this point... 

(Also I swiped your Mouthwashing stamp because I didn't have one yet  )