Starting my own webpage

[Bakartridge]

https://bakartridges-site.neocities.org/
It's pretty barebones at the moment but it does properly exist now, I just need to have time where I can properly get started on really adding to it and making it. Not perfect with CSS or HTML but I'll get something done for it. Not planning for it to be some big extravagant thing, but I want it to look like something from the mid-2000s, preferably with some more edgy/angular styles, and content-wise I plan to add a blog and somewhere you can view all my art and stuff I've made, along with all my characters. Posting this here as it's both thematically appropriate and I'd love to get some tips and whatnot from yall since web making is the specialty here.

[xixxii]

nice! a whole website! excited to see what you do with it; 00s-style stuff has a fun funky flavor that i'm quite fond of. so many buttons and gradients...!

some resource links for you !

• the consumer aesthetic research institute has great collections of specific design trends that can be really helpful for general aesthetic inspiration!
• the web design museum has screencaps of old websites along with links to their wayback machine'd pages, and you can sort it by year!
• divergentrays has a fantastic collection of links to old graphics sets, which can be super helpful if you want to build a retro-styled page - either to use or just for reference of what stuff looked like!
• if you want to add a blog super quick, zonelets is a good template option, and if you have a dreamwidth sadgrl has a tutorial on putting your dreamwidth blog on your site!

some tips!

steal! 
meaning, if you like the look of somebody else's page, you can right click and then click "view source" to look at their html and css and see how they did specific things. if something seems especially mysterious, you can always try asking the person who made it how they did it! folks on the indie web are usually pretty happy to help with that sort of thing in my experience. similarly, starting with a site template you like the look of and fiddling around with various pieces of it can be helpful for learning what things do and how you might want stuff to look!

if you're a visual sort of person, it might be helpful to make a drawn sketch of how you want your site to look - as detailed or as vague as suits you! i do this and find it really helps, because once i know how i want something to look or what i want it to do i can just look up how to do all those things. probably this doesn't work for everyone, but figured i'd suggest it since it's super helpful for me!
i attached two of my "sketches" as reference. as you can see, i'm not good at drawing!!! but i still find it helpful. sometimes i go into a lot of detail and make a whole full mockup of exactly how i want it to look and sometimes i just scribble the general concept as a starting point.


there's a loooot of different ways to do art portfolios and character profiles and how people do it varies a lot from person to person, and i don't have either myself. but a ton of folks in the melonland surf club and on the forum here have stuff like that on their sites, and the neocreatives webring is huge and for artists specifically, so hopefully that can be helpful for figuring out how you want to do that part!

[Bakartridge]

nice! a whole website! excited to see what you do with it; 00s-style stuff has a fun funky flavor that i'm quite fond of. so many buttons and gradients...!

some resource links for you !

• the consumer aesthetic research institute has great collections of specific design trends that can be really helpful for general aesthetic inspiration!
• the web design museum has screencaps of old websites along with links to their wayback machine'd pages, and you can sort it by year!
• divergentrays has a fantastic collection of links to old graphics sets, which can be super helpful if you want to build a retro-styled page - either to use or just for reference of what stuff looked like!
• if you want to add a blog super quick, zonelets is a good template option, and if you have a dreamwidth sadgrl has a tutorial on putting your dreamwidth blog on your site!

some tips!

steal! 
meaning, if you like the look of somebody else's page, you can right click and then click "view source" to look at their html and css and see how they did specific things. if something seems especially mysterious, you can always try asking the person who made it how they did it! folks on the indie web are usually pretty happy to help with that sort of thing in my experience. similarly, starting with a site template you like the look of and fiddling around with various pieces of it can be helpful for learning what things do and how you might want stuff to look!

if you're a visual sort of person, it might be helpful to make a drawn sketch of how you want your site to look - as detailed or as vague as suits you! i do this and find it really helps, because once i know how i want something to look or what i want it to do i can just look up how to do all those things. probably this doesn't work for everyone, but figured i'd suggest it since it's super helpful for me!
i attached two of my "sketches" as reference. as you can see, i'm not good at drawing!!! but i still find it helpful. sometimes i go into a lot of detail and make a whole full mockup of exactly how i want it to look and sometimes i just scribble the general concept as a starting point.


there's a loooot of different ways to do art portfolios and character profiles and how people do it varies a lot from person to person, and i don't have either myself. but a ton of folks in the melonland surf club and on the forum here have stuff like that on their sites, and the neocreatives webring is huge and for artists specifically, so hopefully that can be helpful for figuring out how you want to do that part!

Yeah the Web Design Museum gave me some really good ideas for what I want the site to look like when it's completely said and done (though that's gonna be a long-term project, not just something I can do in a weekend), I wanna aim for something like this or this for an overall goal. Not trying to go TOO retro (like geocities, 90s old), but something more modern-ish than that (think web design from like 2003-2012). Haven't heard of sketching it out though that could really help, esp since I already draw and would help to sort of gauge what I want/need out of the site.

I also know some peeps (either friends or people who's sites I REALLY like the look of) who are really good with HTML/CSS so they could potentially help me out with specific things that I want so that's another bonus.

[Bakartridge]

MASSIVELY overhauled my site, I wanted to post about it the other day but the forum was closed
Got the basic design that I wanted down, just have to make custom graphics and whatnot to go for the proper look I'm going for
Added various sections to it like a spot for other links, a section about me, and an archive for all of my art.
https://bakartridges-site.neocities.org/art
There's more I wanna add (like a blog and a page for all of my characters) but the site is coming along nicely now

[brisray]

Getting started is always the hardest part. Personal sites sort of disappeared for a while, or at least became very difficult to find. More people should do it. It's one of the few hobbies that are completely free and the only downside that they get very time consuming. Now I've got more free time than ever, my sites and computerish stuff seem to take up most of my day.

[Bakartridge]

Getting started is always the hardest part. Personal sites sort of disappeared for a while, or at least became very difficult to find. More people should do it. It's one of the few hobbies that are completely free and the only downside that they get very time consuming. Now I've got more free time than ever, my sites and computerish stuff seem to take up most of my day.

For real though, more and more people should make personal sites instead of just having only a social media account. It gives you total control over the content and how your website looks, you're not at the mercy of some algorithm, there's no ads (though that depends on what service you use), and you don't have to worry about some asshole owner screwing things over on a whim. I will admit it does become a bit time consuming, but it's honestly kinda fun to put together your own site, even if it's a lot of searching for "what's the code to do [blank]?", it's still fun.

[Bakartridge]

Also, another site update, added the blog!
https://bakartridges-site.neocities.org/blog
Went with the Dreamwidth method that @xixxii mentioned, I originally planned on making a new site for each entry, but that would be really time consuming and a nightmare to maintain, having an RSS feed works way better and is more convenient.

[Bakartridge]

Been a minute, both out of being occupied with other stuff and getting sick the other week but pretty big update, I gave it some custom art, both a new logo and a custom background I drew myself, I plan to add way more in the future, mainly adding some other graphics to the side of the main area, and making the navigation links buttons. I wanna make it so the buttons change when you hover over em instead of just staying static, so that'll take more effort both in terms of coding and making art, but shouldn't be too hard. The last main thing I need to do is properly making my character pages, I wanna add custom art (instead of just taking a drawing a character features in) and some extra graphics to match the characters in question. I have like 12 characters though so that'll be a big undertaking, but like I said, it shouldn't be too hard.
Linking the page again for the sake of it.
https://bakartridges-site.neocities.org/

[Eunice]

That's a good start. I'm not sure about the colours though. The type is not a lot darker than the background and a tad difficult to read. Otherwise, hooray! Real websites are a million times better than boring social media. (so called)