How to feel more authentic on the web?

[VelvetSoul]

Hey everyone, I've been stewing this post over for a while and I don't know exactly how to word everything but I'll do my best. I grew up alongside the web, or at least the bulk of it. I was on the tail end however and back when forums and the like were really popular I was still too young to really "get it" so to speak. I didn't understand how to exactly "fit in" with other users at the time, and unfortunately that remains true to this day. I feel like it's worth mentioning that I do understand these sorts of things aren't social media. Having your own website, posting to a forum, or just exploring the web doesn't require you to "fit in" or anything. Simply having respect for your fellow users and the sites you're using will be enough to get you by in many cases. That's something I love about the "indie-web" or the "decentralized web" or whatever you want to call the modern internet outside of social media. There's no concern about popularity, or follower counts and whatever. However that doesn't mean I don't still feel like I'm on the outside looking in.

I've done my best to immerse myself, for lack of a better word; in the culture of the internet for many years. That being said I still don't understand how to exactly forge an identity for myself the way most do. I have no idea how to even begin to make a signature for a forum. Making a website anything more than the most simple copy + paste + swap some stuff around in the HTML, feels like a massive challenge that I don't even know where to start learning everything. Joining a web ring, or participating in online forum discussions and the like is confusing and a bit horrifying to me currently since I don't really feel like I'm good enough. It's like I know what a modern internet user looks like, I know they have a website and a signature and typically some kind of identifying themes. I try to do all the same stuff but it feels more like a cheap imitation than an authentic experience, and I feel really bad at it. Like an alien on their first day on Earth trying to convince everyone else they belong here.

That might all sound really stupid, but I guess what I'm getting at with all of this is that I'm sorta desperately looking for some guidance on how someone gets back into the web again. How did you all learn how to do everything? Were there tutorials, guides, or videos or something that helped you? Are there specific programs or websites you use for your signatures, blinkies, and other graphics? I get that there's not really any "right way to use the web" but I'm absolutely someone who really does want to fit in within these kinds of spaces, I want to better understand it all and use it more naturally. At the end of the day, I'm looking for any resources that might be helpful to someone like me, someone who's not a total beginner but who doesn't seem to know everything that everyone else does. It's not like I can't make a website, I just can't make a nice one the way I want to because I don't understand enough to do that yet. It's not that I couldn't write up some kind of signature or whatever, but it wouldn't look right; and I'd probably not be happy with it. Hopefully I'm making some kind of sense here.

Regardless thanks for taking the time to read all this, if you've got any advice, websites, or resources you think might help me out; I'm all ears!

[Dan Q]

You've got a few different questions there, but right up-front let's just say: you're not alone; you're in the right place; we're all always learning.

Okay, now on to what you asked:

I feel like it's worth mentioning that I do understand these sorts of things aren't social media.

This is true.

One of the "attractions" of the corporate social media silos is that they make the question of "success" very simple, by reducing everything to little numbers. How many friends? How many new messages? How many posts? How many likes? How many shares? These tickle our endorphin receptors' desire for "number go up!" satisfaction, which serves the social network because it's one of the pillars of what makes them addictive.

But it's not real, of course. Or rather: it's just a simulacrum of what is real - a superficial veneer on the window into life. "Content" is ranked by engagement, so content that is inflammatory or saccharine or that minimises the amount of reading that's required to get a dopamine hit... gets pushed to the top, and creators end up pandering to it because, well: "number go up!"

That being said I still don't understand how to exactly forge an identity for myself the way most do.

Herein lies the challenge. Because once you cut yourself free from the algorithms of the centralised Web, you no longer have a convenient locus of evaluation. You have to make up your own.

For me, that means trusting my gut. Instead of asking what is my identity online, I try to ask how do I feel about my identity online? The way I express myself... does it make me feel fun? Silly? Intelligent? Professional? Friendly? Etc. Then... does that expression match how I want to feel online? For me, I'm pretty big on wanting to feel authentic: like my online identity is a reflection of me "in real life"; your position might be different, and that's fine.

Only once I know what my gut's telling me about how I present myself right now can I start to think about what I'd like to change.

But you're asking both questions about identity/belongingness and about technical skills, soo...

I have no idea how to even begin to make a signature for a forum.

It may vary on other forums, but here it's this page you're looking for. Type something into the "Signature" box (your name, your web address, a sentence about you or what you care about, a quote you like... or indeed anything you can put in a post!) and click "Change Profile". You can always change it later!

Joining a web ring, or participating in online forum discussions and the like is confusing and a bit horrifying to me currently since I don't really feel like I'm good enough.

You absolutely can and should! Your presence as a human does not depend on your amount of experience: just be yourself, show interest in the things you're interested in, and ask questions if you're not sure. It's almost-always fine to say "Xyzzy sounds really interesting; thanks for sharing what you've been doing with it. I don't know anything about Xyzzy; can you tell me how you got started?" In a small friendly community (like this one) you're unlikely to get a response of "hahaha n00b! RTFM luser", instead you'll get a real respose... and by expressing an interest in what somebody else did you'll be one step closer to a genuine human connection!

How did you all learn how to do everything?

I'm probably not the best person to give a helpful answer to this, because my story requires a time machine! But here it is anyway, because maybe there's a lesson or two along the way:

I feel immensely privileged that I got to learn Web technologies "as they came along". I started making Web pages in the mid-1990s, when there was no CSS, no JavaScript, just HTML... and only a couple of dozen tags!... so the learning curve was flatter. Plus, "view source" was more-useful because other people's code was typically hand-written and simplistic, so you could learn from it more-easily ("inspect element" nowadays goes some way to helping pick-apart complex pages, but it's still harder than it used to be).

I learned by reverse-engineering other people's pages. As new technologies came along, I either learned them as-they-arrived or else I discovered them after the fact and reverse-engineered them.

Starting today is harder. If a newcomer learns their technologies at the same cadance I did - HTML first, then JS years later, then CSS years later still - they'll spend the first few years looking at other people's pages and their own and going "oh, I've got a long way to go!".

But here's the things that I think help everybody who wants to carve out a presence on the open Web:

1. Stay curious! Learn to use your your browser's debug tools and try to work out how other people's websites work. I did this just the other month: I was looking at the Categories menu on this page because I wanted to make something similar. Absolutely copy-paste from other people's work, but go the extra mile and try to understand it: remove or duplicate a bit to see what it "does". Mash it up with other things you've copied to see how they interact!

2. Stay playful! Keep experimenting: write Web pages, even if they're just for you. Try things out. What's the ugliest you can make a hyperlink? Is a webpage even usable if you turn it on its side? What happens if you swap the font for text that's selected? I don't know the answers to any of those questions, but I could try to write some HTML + CSS to find out!

3. Stay humble! Remember that you're never "done" learning, and the Web is a moving target. I've been doing Web development for thirty-something years (!!!), professionally for twenty-six, and I still learn new things every single month! Cultivate your Wonder Syndrome, and celebrate every little win ("today I learned to make an email form"; "today I worked out a new way to show an overlay") just as you keep your eyes on the horizon ("maybe next week I'll have the groundwork to start learning how to animate SVGs"; "perhaps Plugh can tell me how they used Xyzzy to do that thing I saw on their site?").

I apologise that my experience isn't too reassuring to somebody starting now. But hopefully there's some broadly-valuable ideas in there somewhere.

[Cele]

Copying is really the core of all coding. If you see something nice, check out the site's source code and see if you can find the part which made it look so nice. Changing that stuff around further and further really teaches you a lot. I always use w3schools.com to see what kinds of things can be made with HTML and CSS. That's how I've always learned, just taking something and trying out different things with it. Something like CSS overflow is a very simple thing yet allows you to make different kinds of features to layouts, for instance.

I also feel like I'm not super good at the "indieweb aesthetic" but then again, I'm just myself so isn't that very authentic? Focus on things you like, maybe fandoms, or values, or colours... If I try to make a website as beautiful as I can, it always turns out green... it's my favourite colour after all! Same with something like webrings, I'd only join ones that have topics I'm passionate about.

I usually make graphics with Clip Studio Paint, but Paint and Gimp 2 are also used when it's something simpler. Ezgif.com is great for gif stuff; here is a guide on how to put gifs into stamps. Images can also look nicer if you put textures/overlays on them. Like my current website's background is just simple one colour, but I think it looks nicer as I added a tile overlay on top of the colour.

I get what you mean about a lot of this generally though: even though I have Clip Studio Paint, I just don't seem to understand how to use it for art. The techniques feel like rocket science. The artists always tell me they watch tutorial videos to learn, but it still seems so difficult...

[HisVirusness]

I'd say, one big thing is to not be too concerned with what other people are doing.  Of course, if you see someone doing something that inspires you, follow the lead, but don't be afraid to do your own thing.  Go your own direction: that's the point of this, it's a long-form public art project.  It'll take you into some fun and interesting places.

If you're feeling imposter syndrome, that's okay; just do it anyway.  No one is ever fully confident when it comes to art, but they do it anyway because it's fun.  Aesthetic and identity typically comes after you start, not before; "looking right" is based solely on if it feels right to you.  In fact, planning everything too tightly ahead of time can have an adverse effect, since it'll start feeling like you're performing and not just being you.

If you're nervous about joining webrings, just join one.  Personally, I'd suggest the Hotline Webring (https://hotlinewebring.club/).  It's easy to set up and join, because everything is more or less automatic once the code is on your site.  It's a good test to see if the vibes are right for you; to see if you actually like having your site be in a webring to begin with.  Maybe you won't, or maybe you'll end up joining six more webrings while also starting your own.  You'll never know until you try.

Looking at your site, one thing I would recommend is compressing or breaking up the cats image on your About page.  That dude is heavy; 6MB is way too dense for a public-facing image on a webpage.  Here's that same image, with the same size, broken down to 56KB: https://hisvirusness.com/images/The-Cats2.png (feel free to download and use, btw).  From a technical standpoint, I'd say that's the most important thing to keep in mind UX-wise: Bloat no es bueno.

[IndigoGolem]

I also feel that my site doesn't fit in visually with those of most people here. As much as i like the asthetic of many of these sites, i also appreciate simpler text-focused stuff. It's easier to write, easier to read, lighter weight, more accessible,..

And it feels authentic to me. It's not flashy but it tries not to be too hard on the eyes, and all the interesting bits are in the text. They're there for anyone who knows English to read, but you have to find it and read it yourself. It won't jump off the page at you. If you meet me in Reality, i think i'm pretty boring and unassuming before you get to know me or get me talking about something i care about. There's stuff here, but people have to dig a little for it. My website is the same way.


If you copy some code to your site (no shame, like Cele said it's the core of coding) and don't like how it looks or feels, don't keep it. Delete it or change it until you do like it. If you're using a layout or theme that someone else made (or even one you made) out of some obligation to fit in and not because you really like the layout or theme, that might bother you for as long as you leave it in your pages. And who is that sort of thing for on your site if not for you⸮ If it's just there for you and you don't like it, you don't have to use it.


Also, i think the idea of fitting in doesn't fit in here as much as in some other spaces. One of the beautiful things about having your own website to put things instead of an account on some social media platform or forum is, it doesn't have to look the same as everyone else's. The Melonland Forum lets you customize your profile page with CSS, but most sites don't. On most sites the only visual difference between your profile and someone else's is a profile picture, maybe a banner, and of course the text. Your website can be as different from anyone else's as you can imagine and code.

So what does fitting in mean when all our sites look and feel different⸮

Fitting in and feeling authentic aren't the same thing, at least not to me. I don't know what it means to fit in in a space like this. I don't think i can tell you exactly how to make your site feel authentic to you. My best guess is to try stuff and see what you like. If you have an idea, write it down and then do your best to implement it. See how it goes. Worst case is it doesn't work and you can learn something from that failure. Best case is you love it and integrate it into your site, and everything is better for it.


Maybe i'm misunderstanding what you want here. Maybe you are just asking what the process is for making a website on the more concrete, mechanical side than the feeling-good-about-it side. I've found it hard to articulate the difference before, and that can make finding help with one side hard when people assume you mean the other.

I started learning HTML from a copy of HTML 4 For Dummies. It's an old book, but most of the information in it still holds up. Now i mostly get coding help from Mozilla Developer Network or W3Schools, or if i know a specific web page that does what i want my own to do, i look at its code. I find basic HTML pretty easy. Some CSS is fine too. Javascript i've yet to need so i haven't learned or used it yet. I don't know how helpful this paragraph is for how long you've been online and doing stuff with the Web.

For graphics, what tools i use depend on what i need. I do a lot of stuff in GIMP. It's primarily a photo editor, but it's also fine for pixel art. Krita is better for higher resolution digital painting. Blender is good when i need a 3D scene or object and i want all the angles and shadows to make sense. I don't yet know a good way to optimize my images. GIMP isn't great for this, so currently my images are just kind of big.

And people here are happy to help. You might not always get a response to your question quickly, but it's often easier than trying to find help on Google and Reddit for specific problems.

[lakes]

to me, being authentic is just crafting stuff the way you want it to be
for example, you might prefer miminalist websites or maximalist ones
or maybe you wanna pictures you like, or drawings, or memes, etc
it doesn't have to be the same as everyone else, but it also doesn't have to be different either
being authentic isn't about that. it's about your own tastes

[arcus]

I've done my best to immerse myself, for lack of a better word; in the culture of the internet for many years. That being said I still don't understand how to exactly forge an identity for myself the way most do.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. To me, you already have one, though it's hard to put into words. I remember you for your intro to Mabinogi and your Vtuber thread, both were well thought out and told a bit about yourself. It is encouraged to write long posts and all, but you don't need to make all your posts high effort.

In my case I go with the flow. I talk about things I like and share resources. It's not something I've sat down about and thought long and hard about. Same with my site, I post what I like there, and even write in Esperanto on my Gemini Capsule (a niche in a niche). Expressing yourself on your site isn't something that's obtrusive nor needs to be curated.

How did you all learn how to do everything? Were there tutorials, guides, or videos or something that helped you?

I kept trying new things. I didn't approach graphics or coding as something I needed to sit down and study. Well, I did a few times with coding, but I never improved when I did.

With coding, I would look at other's code and cheatsheets, write down and draw ideas I had, and then searched around to figure out how to do what I wanted. I later got into editing Tumblr themes then I started making my own with a basic template and then eventually by scratch. Reading articles off of the Mozilla Developer Network helped me a ton with learning things more in depth for specific topics.

Graphics wise, I tried Photoshop CS4 when it was new, and experimented with all the options. I downloaded textures for backgrounds from Deviantart and Pixiv, and would adjust the colours and layer modes until things looked nice.

Are there specific programs or websites you use for your signatures, blinkies, and other graphics?

These days, my icons and banners are all made in Krita. My site's graphics are all drawn in Krita and sometimes edited in AzPainter. I use pngcrush and gifsicle to lower file sizes, and imagemagick to batch resize and convert images. Backgrounds for my banners are generated in Apophysisx7, and sometimes have free to use textures I've found on Deviantart and Pixiv over the years (my current banner uses free to use textures, not an Apophysis render). I used kolourpaint to sprite my favicon.

Most sites I see don't make their own graphics, and instead use stock graphics.

Regardless thanks for taking the time to read all this, if you've got any advice, websites, or resources you think might help me out; I'm all ears!

Coding resources:

• Mozilla Developer Network
• Quickref.ME HTML cheatsheet
• Quickref.ME CSS cheatsheet
• Learn HTML in Y minutes
• Learn CSS in Y minutes
• things i wish i knew as a 15 year old web designer - laika's lonely planet
• 32-bit Cafe's resource list

Graphic resources (note, most of these do not credit the artists that made them) (may contain flashing images, please add a warning to your site if you use any flashing images):

• Spriter's resource
• sadgrl's resources
• Y2K's collections
• Pixel Safari
• Betty's Graphics
• GifCities
• blinkies.cafe blinkie maker

Are you looking to make banners from scratch or in a certain style? I can share more specific resources.

[littlelum]

In my experience, the more I try to "create" or "improve" or "work on" my identity, it feels more fake. However, one thing to keep in mind is not the "what", but the "why". Doing anything out of obligation or trying to fit in only muddles one's identity and makes one feel even more like an outsider.

As for how I learned what I learned, I just tried to do small projects that I thought would be fun and cool. (Emphasis on fun and cool.) Funnily enough, by doing this, I ended up achieving a large majority of things I wanted to do when I was a kid but thought that I would never be good enough to do them. I actually made a bucket list of things I thought that I would never be able to achieve back when I was in 5th or 6th grade. About ten-ish years later I stumbled across the paper that I wrote it all down on. At first, I couldn't bring myself to read through it, since I thought that it would be a reminder of all my "failures" to live up to my expectations. To my surprise, allowing for some technicalities and maybe a loophole or two, I unintentionally fulfilled every single "unobtainable" goal that I never thought that I would be good enough to achieve.

It's not that I couldn't write up some kind of signature or whatever, but it wouldn't look right; and I'd probably not be happy with it.

I totally get what you mean. But from experience, I've tried things that I thought would end up terrible and would feel embarrassed for even trying, but then the end result surprised me and I ended up feeling some sense of pride for what I done. I still struggle with the whole fear of failure thing, but I've has many instances where I can say that it is something that I shouldn't be afraid of. You can always change your signature later if you change your mind.