Let's talk about making Shrines!

[fatgrrlz]

Not to be confused with the thread on our favorite shrines :) share your favorites there!

I wanted to make a thread specifically about making shrines! There's a few things I've been wanting to make shrines about, and I created this thread to see what other people think about when it comes to creating your own shrines.

Some questions I've included to start the thread off:

• What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine?
• How do/did you make your shrines - are they simply pages talking about the topic of interest, or do they have their own entire section with specific pages, stylesheets, et. al.?
• What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have?

[keylanbelle]

Yoo i am new to making websites and only in process of making mine so i don't really have any shrine yet... Buuuuutttt... I want to make a penguin shrine!! Yes yes 

What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine? - People who make their own shrines!! I didn't know anything about web shrines b4 i entered oldweb space! I thought that shrines are made only for religious purposes, but here we are, we can make digital shrines about smth that we love, so cool! So i decided that i want to make one too, a penguin shrine.

How do/did you make your shrines? - I am still not sure how do i want my shrine to look like, but i think that i will include pics, some info about real pengus and ofc i will show off my fav penguin characters! And i want to make the page look cold but cute 

What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have? - Hmmm, pictures! Pics are the main thing! And some text about the topic. the rest is optional!

[YoungsterJ4y]

I have a few shrines on my site, all with different purposes and layouts and all that jazz.

Typically, if an interest of mine persists for a while and I have Things to Say about it (or generally just am rotating it in my mind more than usual) I make a page for it! I also use codejams as an excuse to make shrines for things I like >:)

Some of my shrines have their own stylesheets entirely with layouts unlike anything else on my site. My My Chemical Romance shrine is more collage-style, for example. Most of them have the standard stylesheet but with altered colors/backgrounds fonts. In some of them, I just write a lot about what I like about a thing. With the MCR one I just did a collection of photos and albums and such. My Dance Dance Revolution "shrine" is more of just a log on my progress in the game, same with my Project Sekai and Toontown ones.

Nothing's required for a shrine IMO! Typically I find they have some level of unique styling, like a unique background or color palette, but obviously that's not required!! I think the most important part is just making a page that expresses your love or interest for a particular thing in a way only really possible on a website :)

[Nickolox]

oooh a thread about making shrines, awesome!! 
Shrine making is my absolute favourite part of working on my site currently 
I've written 3 so far, and a 4th one is on the way too, it's really big so it might be a while before it's done lollll

What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine?

I love sharing my interests with the world, and I think shrines are a perfect format to do that in, definitely saves my friends from hearing my endless ramblings lmfao
I think it's also a really good way of collecting my thoughts about things, since I tend to be really scatterbrained lol
It's fun to sit down and crank out a 500-1000 word ramble fest about all the things I enjoy about a particular special interest hahaha

How do/did you make your shrines - are they simply pages talking about the topic of interest, or do they have their own entire section with specific pages, stylesheets, et. al.?

Mine are one page big block essays at the moment, separated with headings and sections and the like, though I've thought about splitting them off further, it might be a good idea for organization to do that, especially with how big some of them can get
I like to divide it all into sections, so, a section talking about how I got into that interest, another for talking about what makes me enjoy it, etc.

What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have?

Including pictures is a must if you've got a collection, I've done that on a few of them, the whole world must see my waluigi collection!!!!

Another thing I include in most of my shrines, a collection of old videos! A lot of my shrines are about things I'm super nostalgic over and nothing makes me more nostalgic than pouring over old 2008 Youtube videos I used to watch as a kid, I think it's really cool that these things are still up today, and I love sharing them in the hopes that maybe people will remember them too or get a hint of nostalgia for the old days of the web...
A lot of them are also just, really funny by today's standards, so it always gives me a good chuckle when I find a hidden gem of an oldie that's just, PURE with 2008 energy (emo/rock music + notepad + bandicam + windows movie maker, etc)

[owlhari]

oooh, shrines!! we have quite a few shrines on our site, at varying levels of "completion." they were all created because we have more to say about the topic than a simple "we enjoy this thing!" like we have on our interest or bookshelf pages.

they all have the same stylesheet, with some having tweaked colors to fit the theme of whatever the shrine is about. as much as we admire folks who make custom layouts for every shrine, we like the cohesive-ness of our site too much to change anything too drastically.

they are different from page to page, though! our hades shrine tracks our completion of the game, because the sheer amount of stuff to do is one of the main reasons we like it. our "favorite characters" shrine is a list with little icons of every silly blorbo we adore.

our steam powered giraffe shrine is the most robust, because we have so much to say about the funky robot band. it's almost a mini fansite at this point, with introductions to the characters, quizzes, discussions about our fan theories, and even a hidden page. it has some of our proudest work (fully randomized cover art quiz that checks user input for the song name!) and some of our silliest (mini essay where i devolve into madness over an inconsequential lore theory)

it's just labors of love about the things we adore. and that's pretty neat.

[yungwake0]

What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine?

Basically if I've ever hyperfixated on something it'll get a shrine at some point, or at the very least a blog post. (but blogs aren't the topic here lol) I have plenty of ideas on what to make some shrines about, I just need inspiration and time.

How do/did you make your shrines - are they simply pages talking about the topic of interest, or do they have their own entire section with specific pages, stylesheets, et. al.?

I'm an enjoyer of basic sites (as they're called on Melon's website making tutorial), so none of my pages really follow the same layout. This applies especially to my shrines. I tend to theme my shrines (shameless plug ) based on the thing the shrine is about, for example the style of my Roblox shrine is meant to look like something that could have actually been on the old Roblox website.

What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have?

Information about the thing the shrine is about In all seriousness though I don't feel as if there's any rules to shrine-making, anything is fair game as long as it relates to the subject at hand (and that might even be optional depending on the shrine!).

[DiffydaDude]

I've actually been thinking about this topic recently for something I've been wanting to make on my site.
Recently, I've started replaying the 2nd chapter of Deltarune, and if there's one thing I love, it's how Toby made this world of wires and computers and electricity come to life. It wasnt just a personification of the objects themselves, but a personification of the connections people had with them. You may be thinking "What does this have to do with shrines?  "
Well I wanted to make my website feel more alive, and I wanted to make some shrines. But I wanted these shrines to be more interesting than just something a couple pages away, I wanted it to feel like you'd discovered something. So i came up with this idea where there would be characters walking across the boxes, the pictures, stuff like that, and if you spotted them and clicked them fast enough, you would find a special shrine dedicated to their respective game, with a little altar with artwork and merchandise of the game at the footer, and other interesting doodads throughout the page related to the game in question!
I'd like to put this idea into my page. I think ideas like this would make it feel like you werent just seeing a page, but feeling the lifeblood and ideas and inspirations flow throughout it like an inspirational tributary. Thats one thing i love about the old web revival. Its awesome to see people put passion into their own sites.
But, that is just my 2 cents 

[Kallistero]

Each of my pages has been kind of a project on its own, so I haven't gotten to shrines yet. I do plan on it, though, and my concept of them is as their own mini-sites with information, links to other people's shrines on the same subject, styles specific to that shrine, and even little tools that would help out others in their respective communities. For instance, there are some speedrun-tracking tools that just don't exist on the Web, and I think that they should. Also, maybe I'll have cause-and-effect charts for those more complicated things. A lot of people don't give a show or book a second run-through to catch when things at the beginning are affected by things that happen in the future, or when something in the future is affected solely by a 2-second filler line that evidently slid by its entire community when it was said half the series ago. Also, some series are just big, making it hard to find things. Where & when did character X or Y show up? Were they in this book, in this game, in this comic, have they done cameos & is it clear whether those cameos are canon?    Additionally, maybe a DIY project or 2 that people can do at home, like having a mycology/mushroom shrine with a recipe for making LED-powered mushroom lights.

There's really a lot that can go into a shrine and a lot that it can be. I think that having links to other people's shrines is going to be mandatory for me, though. What inspires one to make the shrine is having a lasting affinity for the source it's dedicated to, the "how" will be by the seat of my pants like the rest of my site (and maybe with some inspiration from Virtual Observer's Pokémon super-shrine/fansite    ), and must-haves for me are links to other shrines (and links to whole fansites) along with something useful or otherwise meaningful for each fan community.

[Bede]

I have a whole list of things I want to make shrines for! I like to make shrines about things that have had a big impact on me in some shape, way, or form. I make whole separate pages and layouts for each shrine! Although, I don't think less of shrines that are just text talking about the subject in question. Whether it's minimalist or maximalist, I think that the only must-have aspect for a shrine is passion!

[wodaro]

I currently have two shrines on my site, one for the video game We Know The Devil and one for my main D&D character/campaign. Both are pretty bare-bones and need to be updated, though I'd say the WKTD shrine is in a mostly finished state, whereas I would like to add a LOT more to my D&D one, with more customization thru CSS as I learn it, more images, more info and even interactive aspects!! I'd really like to have like, an interactive notebook you can flip through that belongs to the character. Also a bunch of other stuff but the list could go for a while lol.

I don't think a shrine needs to have anything specific, but I always love when a shrine has a really unique style separate from the webmaster's main site, personalized to the topic. That's something I'd like to do for my own shrines, make them feel like their own separate mini-sites within a larger piece. I'm just bad at focusing and haven't learned a whole lot about how HTML/CSS work yet. I'll get there eventually!

Shrines are always something I love to see on a person's site tho, it's so much fun to see what other people are interested in. Some other things I'd love to create shrines for one day are:

-EGL fashion
-The anime Revolutionary Girl Utena
-Webcomics I loved as a kid (Paranatural, Cucumber Quest, Homestuck, etc.)

[Sorcer]

I'm glad I found this thread because I think I've been struggling with making shrines. I find I make them too long and more wiki page-like, just infodumping with some images. I'd love to see some great shrines for inspiration! As for OP's questions...

What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine?

I strive to make shrines if I feel I have a unique angle or perspective to give on a certain topic. For example, my page on the Madou Monogatari and Puyo Puyo franchise focuses more on the Compile era, with its specific lore and main character. My other current shrine, for Miis and their games, is much more broad, but I have the raw passion that makes me want to make it anyway. Besides, it's still not something I've already seen done.


How do/did you make your shrines - are they simply pages talking about the topic of interest, or do they have their own entire section with specific pages, stylesheets, et. al.?

At the moment, I'd definitely say they're more just talking about the topic of interest. I tend to format them by answering some simple questions one might have about the topic.

What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have?

I think two must-haves are explaining what the thing is, and why the writer likes them. I feel pretty open to different ways people can express their interest on these pages.

[arsenicCatnip]

WAHOOOOOO WAHOOOOOO WEBSHRINE MENTIONED!!!!!

For me, nothing crazy inspires the creation of a shrine. It's all just stuff I like, though the current main three on my website are about musicians I like, I also intend to make some about videogames, or maybe painters. Mine are really simple, but it's fun to make them anyway.

[pebble]

Oh, I love talking about shrines! It's one of the things that drew me to the indie web to begin with.

- What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine?
My incurable need to ramble about any topics that interest me XD

- How do/did you make your shrines - are they simply pages talking about the topic of interest, or do they have their own entire section with specific pages, stylesheets, et. al.?
Both! I have some smaller shrines that are just a single page giving a brief overview of the topic and maybe some links to places where you can find more info. But I also have bigger shrines that are basically mini websites of their own - with their own home pages, articles, guestbooks, etc. For those ones, I always give them their own stylesheets and try to design them to look and feel like you're stepping into a completely separate world from my main site. For example, in my shrine for The Librarian franchise, I tried to give it the feeling of being in a library; browns/reds for the color palette, background and border images of books on shelves, and old-fashioned looking fonts. For the Finder shrine I'm currently building, I'm giving it a tropical-themed look to match the island setting of the show.

- What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have?
That's one of my favorite things about web shrines - that there are no rules! I've browsed through hundreds of other people's shrines because I love how unique and different each one is. As long as it gets across what the creator wanted to say, it's done its job. :)

[wygolvillage]

All three of the shrines I've made are vastly different in format. The first one I made was a sort of fan wiki for a game I like, the next one was a more traditional "essay about a thing I like" style shrine, and the third one is an "interactive essay" game thing (which I'm actually planning a pretty big update to right now)

I think it really comes down to what I feel like making and what I feel is the best way to communicate the information, but also based on what I think would be interesting to visit and browse.

I usually try to make my shrines have very different appearances to my "main site" because they feel like different zones in a larger "world". I think having them be "separated" also helps me to conceive of them and plan them more thoroughly as whole projects. It's like a site within a site in a way

I think they're a ton of fun to make, and a shrine can be anything as long as it pertains to a specific topic 

[serenefork]

I love looking at everyone's shrines! It really brings a sense of what is important to people and how different things can be enjoyed in different ways, I love how personal it can be.

What inspires/inspired you to create a shrine?

I'm still working on my first shrine, it's dedicated to my cats! Shrines have always seemed like a labor of love to me, so I am inspired by that love. (This shrine is unreleased, I'm working on version 2 of my site still...)

How do/did you make your shrines - are they simply pages talking about the topic of interest, or do they have their own entire section with specific pages, stylesheets, et. al.?

So far my cats' shrine is just one page, but I plan to have some shrines that are their own sections, it really depends on the topic for me.

What do you think are some must-have aspects a shrine should have?

A shrine must have love, everything else is optional mix-and-match to me. I really enjoy shrines that feature a lot of pictures, but I don't think they're necessary. You have to put something on the webpage but as long as it's made with love it doesn't really matter what it is you put there!