What introduced you to Neocities?

[Neonriser]

I feel I've told this story before, but I discovered Neocities in a web search when I got bored (as usual) and thought making a web page would be cool. I checked out the website and explored many of its sites, such as Exopet and Fauxx.

And then I thought "Wow, that's a cool place, I'm going to put a website on there just for fun" and the rest was history.

[Memory]

I couldn't find a topic asking this question, so I decided to create one!

In case you are in the dark about what Neocities is, I suggest you read this. I would have explained it myself, though I reckoned the official info page would certainly be more accurate!

Here's my story with Neocities:

Back in 2020, I found a piece of fan art on DeviantArt which would catch my attention. I searched up the media it was referencing and I soon stumbled across the "Randal's Friends" (Ranfren) project by captainhowdie through the official website. If you have browsed Neocities for a while, you must have seen it somewhere.

Believe it or not, up until this point I had no interaction with static websites and this came as a total surprise! I used to use specific social media sites I liked the most and browsed the web for mainly art-related guides. In short, I was completely unaware of what I had stepped on.

As I engaged with the project, I gradually became a fan myself. I commented on captainhowdie's DeviantArt profile expressing my enthusiasm for the comics, including a side note asking how the website was made. I was lucky enough to receive a reply which went something along the lines of: «I used HTML and Neocities has some great tutorials for beginners». You can pretty much guess what happened afterwards.

This singular random comment had such an important impact on my life. Not only was the discovery of Neocities a fresh change, but also a provision for brand new skills that would help me to grow as an artist. I would have missed out on so many great things if it wasn't for all of this.

How were you introduced to Neocities? Did it made an impact on your experience with the web or life in any way?

My neocities is a huge wip so I haven't shared it yet. But a while back I was looking through the pronouns page of someone who was part of a small online community I was in. They had their neocities in their links, genesisonpawz.neocities.org and thought the concept was pretty cool. I made a profile a few weeks later and I've been learning html and css ever since.

[Oceansandy02]

I saw a youtube video from Luvvstarkei about the dead internet theory and why I should make a website. I then looked in the comments section and people were recommending neocities. I already had some experience with html from school and other resources like codecademy, so that got me convinced to make one on there.

[SleepyCalaban]

One day I randomly discovered cohost and decided to join it because main stream social media wasnt cutting it for me. I then made a few mutuals one of which has their own website on neocities. I then fell into a deep dive of their site and discovered the MelonLand project. I followed that guide and slowly built my site and have been continuing to do so. It has changed drastically since then but I'm happy with the progress I've made and I'm happy I discovered the MelonLand Project and Neocities through that.

[GarbCat]

 I don't recall exactly when I learned about Neocities... It was definitely pre-COVID and I first saw it used as an alternative to Carrd, basically (remember Carrd? lol) so it must've been like 2018. What's really funny is that I've been fighting for my life in the wastelands of tumblr for almost 8 years and never saw *that* post so many people in this thread are referencing. I just saw personal sites in some peoples profiles and were generally being used as like, a more complex, more customizable Carrd. I made a Neocities account around then too as well as a site but it took me years until I got over the initial "ugggh too hard" hurdle that comes from learning html for the first time.

I just never really considered it as a viable place for me, I guess. It wasn't until You've Got Kat's "indie web" youtube video and the discovery of distantskies.neocities.org (a very cool fansite for Crystalis, an NES arpg I was playing at the time) that I started seriously considering Neocities as an option... Then it took me 2 more years to start learning html. oops