What inspired you to create a personal website?

[basophie]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

for me, i wanted somewhere to share my art with people and a way to store it if i ever wanna look back on it but social media gives me PANIC like full blown anxiety attacks whenever i post, so having a personal website was kind of away to push myself to share my creations with the world but on a more controlled space that i can assure no haters are gonna cross me randomly and where i don't need to worry about following guidelines or posting whenever or whatever for algorithms and i can let myself just vibe! i also found on the process that i really enjoy web-crafting and CSS and making sites look pretty!

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

CONSISTENCY WITH MYSELF. i am not a consistent person! im the type of guy who will spends 6 days in a row sitting on my computer pouring myself into a hobby and then miss a day and not do it again ITS A STRUGGLE!! but ive been trying to space out myself and reassure myself that im in control of my own space and that there is no need to rush anything. theres also anxiety of what if people just are mean to me or whatever? that comes with existing XD

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

this is a hard oneeeee but i hope i have a lot more content and pages finished and that i have a bunch of art and writing done just piling and piling there for people to read LOL ! i wanna pour myself out into the woooordl!!!!!!!!

[Capybara]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?
  What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?
  Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

1. I made sites on Geocities and Freewebs when I was a teenager, they just didn't last. Then when social media kicked in, I was in company with less people who had personal sites unless they were professional or portfolios. Then the enshittification kicked in for the later half of the 2010s. I found some Neocities sites in 2022, and some inspired me to follow suit so I started tinkering after work. Then when DeviantART introduced AI on their site, it was my last straw and I decided to set up shop for real as my digital house.

2. Coding issues, and generally posting things without thinking. I also was stuck in Neopets code standards and almost refused to update to "modern" methods like external CSS for years until I realized how difficult it is to go without it.

3. My site will turn three in the fall. In two more years, I hope to buy a domain, and maybe even move hosts. But I have no plans to leave Neocities.

[Gizmo]

I wasn't alive / online during the early 2000s; but I've always loved how authentic personal websites are, especially the ones coded from scratch. It's just so exciting to have a virtual place that I can say I made and that I can do whatever I want with. As for challenges, the main challenge is keeping everything updated properly; it's a pure HTML blog with virtually no formatting, so the coding itself is very easy and I can mostly copy / paste and just change the text for each article; but it's easy to make mistakes when linking to it from other parts of the site, and sometimes I accidentally forget to add new stuff to the "All" page and / or forget to refresh the "Last Updated" date on the main page. 5 years from now, I imagine it's still essentially going to look the same, just with a lot more content as I finish more books / TV shows / movies etc and add more articles.

[Yoylecake420]

There was a Tumblr thread that showed links to Indieweb sites like Neocities. I have sinced join the personal web and made both a Neocities and Nekoweb website.

[cmdr_nova]

What inspired me to make and maintain a website?

At first, it was just because I wanted a place to write, that was larger than a snippet of a post on Twitter. But I think I shut it down, and put it away over and over again ... until the beginning of last year. I had a Wordpress site, but I was sort of missing being able to fully edit everything, with my bare hands. And then big tech and billionaires accelerated their process of making everything terrible, much worse, and began invading our privacy in ways nobody could have ever imagined they would: Through algorithmic theft that scrapes the entire internet.

Of course, Twitter is bad, Threads is run by a jerk with no morals, and Bluesky is just a corporate-backed Twitter clone that's pretending to be open source. And, while I do love Mastodon, I've come to the realization that the best thing you can do for yourself, especially in times of authoritarian techno-fascism, is to have your own website. Keep it on your hdd, back it up, update it, maintain it, write on it. And even if the US government forces all personal websites offline ... for some reason, you still have it. You can put it up on frikken ... TOR if you want.

That's the beauty of making and owning your own site. It cannot be destroyed.

... you know, as long as you take proper precautions 

[Nott]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

Hm, my memory is pretty bad so I can't remember the exact order of events but I learned Neocities existed for some time and sometimes would look at websites in my free time but I didn't actually process I could make one for a long while...I stumbled upon Melonland inbetween that time and was scrolling through the Webring for it and then one link lead to another....then lead to ten....and then I realized that I really could actually make a site so I decided to make one in 3 days and not sleep <3  I didn't finish all of the site in that time but I did the parts I thought were the most important.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site? 

I'm not someone with a lot of energy to spare and my mental state and motivation can be Very Unpredictable. So I haven't been able to consistently update it. Plus my code is uh- well spaghetti feels like an understatement...and I'm not really sure what direction to take it.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

Hm well I just said im not sure what direction to take it but I'd like to hope I finished at least the webpages I plan right now by that time heh

[theadr]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

I started my own website because I'm sick of social media. ever since I was I kid I never liked posting on social media whether it was my snapchat stories, Instagram, TikTok or anything else. I just felt that it was too revealing (idkk).
 A youtube video by stargirl lee came up on my YouTube recommended called "you should make a personal website and join the indie web ^_^". i loved the video and visited her website and many others. after spending hours going from website to website I decided to make my own.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

The main challenge I've faced in making my own website is that I don't know what I'm doing. I know nothing about coding and started learning a few weeks ago. I'm getting a hang of html but css is not as easy.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I want to keep this site up as long as possible. I want the website to look to be a reflection of who I am and was. I want to have so many blog posts about things I enjoy. I would also like to have interactive elements to my website. I love fashion and would love to have a digital version of my wardrobe.

[mightytuniek]

What inspired me: Definitely just the need to express myself and experiment.

What challenges did i come through: coming up with what to write for my essays/articles. I have some in mind but it took me a long time to figure it out.

What do i think that my site will look like in 5 years: Considering my hyperfixating mind, i hope that i will still be doing this. But aside from that i'm thinking about adding personal content, maybe drawing, but primarly essays. I don't need to straighten out my style because the website grows naturally. that's what i really wanted to do going into the small web.

[Tehrinny]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

I've made a number of personal websites in the past. They were some of my favorites to make honestly. When I got back into webcrafting, seeing that there's a resurgance of it, and communities involved, it was natural to start making a personal website as a starting point.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

I own a lot of domains lol. So it's hard for me to figure out where to put what content. I just rebought my first domain from 2002 last night and I want to do something with it. So I might have to move some of my content from my personal site elsewhere now. n-n;

As for maintaining, if it's a static site, it's not much of a problem. It's just a matter of keeping the link list clean. Bigger sites that involve coded backends, databases, or anything that can corrupt or have issues as there's php/mysql updates can be a big problem.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I would like my personal site to have a lot more interesting content, more artwork. I might move a lot of the webcrafting nostalgia elsewhere and just maintain the site I've been working on as a personal site that gets a few updates here and there. As in, it stays a static website with new things being updated more simply with the art gallery (which is really easy to maintain since I just upload art into folders and boom, it's updated. I love simple code. <3)

[Paprika]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

Deep down ? Honestly ?

FRUSTRATION.

After giving up on my comic-book website in 2020, I moved back to Tumblr, hoping I'd build an audience to share stuff. I built a little something but when I looked for customizing, I wanted to burst in rage because they made it so hard to customize anything and the cool theme needed to be paid for. I'm not against paying but nothing was fitting exactly what I wanted. One day while browsing I stumbled upon a repost of someone talking about "NeoCities" and got me quite curious. I wasn't believeing it at the beginning because a site without ads or anything sounded impossible in such an era where you're bound to make a saoftware update in your car and locked into an account for your video-games. Determined that I could make my own website, I gave it a try and today I'm still at it.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site ?

Updating my code. I used a lot of <center> and <font> stuff for a good while and after struggling about some HTML, I discovered that some tags were deprecated and I had been using it since the beginning which almost made me want to give up. In the end it's okay to use<center> to be honest, it just sound a bite rude to say "your HTML is garbage, you still use <center> !!!!". So yeah, hands down it's keeping up to date with deprecated tags and stuff. Learning CSS was difficult for me.


Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

Pffft that one is easy, I'll still have the same website but I'll have more cringe stuff in it which is good. Unless Neocities is blown to bits within a few years I just know it'll still be my project running like it is today. Probably a bit fancier, better-looking but the stuff published will remain and I'll still have a ton of fun with it !

[aroceu]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

i've loved the mere idea of owning a personal website since i was 11 and trying out geocities for the first time  it feels like such a dynamic form of creativity and authenticity, with the same amount of purposeful decision-making as much as any other art form. i've always placed a lot of value on my own uniqueness and drive to come up with ideas and make new things, so making websites is just a part of that. i'm also very much technologically-minded (i love being on my laptop), as well as being passionate about crafting personal spaces in my real life as well. a personal website is a lot of things to me: a product of my creativity, my home, and me. it's been like that since geocities too - i've just gotten a lot better and creative with it.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

learning and techniques... haha. i don't like learning how to code via reading, only doing. i know there's a lot of tutorials for a lot of stuff that i probably could've gotten the amount of knowledge i have now a lot sooner and easier if i bothered reading. but i'm also not that type of person, unfortunately. and i don't have the attention span for it.

still, i do think my own creativity has made this a lot less inconvenient than this may seem, though at my own relatively slow pace. i only like looking up tutorials/techniques if i have an idea in mind and want to know how to implement it; my own stubbornness will make me go through the mundane process of reading how to code certain things if i know i want it to be part of the end product. additionally, if i just admire someone or a website for long enough, i'll keep up with the new things they implement, and try to figure out how to do them myself as well. more than anything, though, i think the inspect element/viewing source codes has been the biggest help in my reluctance to properly learn how to code anything - instead, i just read and tweak code for years and years until the intuitive logic has lodged itself in my brain.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

my current (main) site is constructed to be relatively static in terms of design and function, and i like to think it'll stay that way since it's kind of an 'introduction' to who i am: minimalist, but with a lot hidden underneath. i have a lot of projects under it already, but i hope that five years from now i have even more projects i can link to and show off and reward visitors for exploring. the amalgamation of all of my websites is a smorgasbord of my personality, i think - exemplary of my maze-like thinking and love for being curious about the unknown, a whole web of journeys and experiences you can find the more you click through. i'm only so old and i know there will be a lot more in my life and understanding of myself to show off and add to my websites :)

[crazyroostereye]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?
Many Things! The Idea of having a website of my own was always something I wanted. Even had an early CV page, vary boring but something I can slap on a CV. But that never really fulfilled my Creativity.
For a long time I was in that Web 2 bubble, where I was thinking that making a Website isn't worth it, or It has to be a Codding Masterpiece written in the newest Fancy JS Framework and at the brink of Tech.
Slowly over the last Years, with my drift into the FOSS Community and now the Web Revival and Indie Web Communities I finally put on my Creativity hat again and Started working on my Own page.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?
There weren't many challenges I have faced yet, I haven't been running my Page that long. Coding and Hosting Is something I had been doing for almost a Decade now to certain extends. So no Issues there

The most difficult challenge I had, was actually finding what to put on my Page. I am by now measure a Creative Person. My Enjoyment primarily comes from Hosting Software and Optimizing Systems, Sys Admin tasks. So deciding what my Website should be was the hardest thing honestly and also sticking with the Design through Development.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

Most likely my Website will look entirely Different, as I had a new way of Designing it, or I found a new System to base it around. The Current one, when retired, will probably continue to exist on a Subdomain or hidden behind some Pages. But the Homepage most likely will change.

[SleepyCalaban]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

My friend DoomVega when I first discovered their site on Cohost. I had been wanting my own website for a looong time just so I could put whatever I wanted on my own space without feeling like "left out" in a sense. With social media I love the concept of making friends through it and posting my genuine interests and genuine random things but finding people with those interests was always difficult so it felt like yelling into a void. But then I discovered Cohost and then my friend's website. After discovering their website and exploring it I found Melonland and began my journey.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

Coding... I literally went straight into the deep end from not knowing any code to teaching myself as much html and css as I can/could. I've Personally still barely touched Javascript but I at least have a tiny bit of that on there now.

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I would love for it to look different but realistically I see it still looking generally the same just with more pages added maybe. Maybe some taken away who knows! If I do get the energy though I'd probably go for a full revamp at some point. :D

[Karvellers]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?

Well I was disillusioned with the internet I was accustomed to and saw people suggest space hey and neo cities, so I made accounts on both sites but was intimidated by learning html, but after a while I took a leap and made my site with some templates. I wanted a private place to myself and a reset from the modern internet

What challenges have you faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

I still am intimidated with my website and its a uphill battle with it but also the isolation, I went from tiktok and twitter straight to this with no buffer so it feels lonely the withdrawal from being overly connected

Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I think it would be my nook in the internet, I will have a couple of e-friends maybe be a part of a webring or two

[Monoki]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?
When my wife and I were dating, we had a little story we wanted to make. Initially, we were hoping to make it an animated series. Then we decided to do a comic instead because that was a lot more feasible. We still haven't actually gotten around to making it.
So after many years of this idea sitting on the backburner, I kinda wanted to put it on a website or wiki where I could post the lore and worldbuilding of it at least. I was kind of toying with a TTRPG thing at the time and figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a lore-site. Or at the very least a place to share the ideas I have in case we do nothing with it.

Initially I was gonna go with wordpress. But I ran across a video or two of people mentioning neocities and building your website from scratch and how it's better than using a website builder.
I once tried dabbling with HTML coding in my teens, but never really fully ran with it at the time. So this time I figured I'd try my hand at it again.
my first neocities site, cosmic-kits.com, was ultimately what came with that endeavor. then I created a more personal one for me specifically and not just a lorebook.
What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?

I think getting started and wrapping my head around the way html and css work was especially challenging in the beginning. I had a bit of an idea from my teenage attempt, but i had also forgotten quite a bit. So I had to spend time studying W3Schooled and dissecting other sites with the inspect tool. I've tried a bit of my hand with Javascript too though I could work more on that if i'm honest.

Maintaining a site's challenge comes more from actually finishing pages that i need. Sometimes I wind up redesigning the homepage a third time even though i've got other pages that could be cleaned up haha.
Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?

I'm not even really sure because I have a bunch of different Ideas about what i would like it to look like lol.

I do like the idea of making my site kind of fun, like a game. there's one site that kind of has an old PC game feel to it that is really cool. I'd do that but it means taking time to build the assets for it. I'll get around to it eventually .

I kind of like the "Frutiger Aero" Look.

Maybe I'll just have to sit down and plan out how to make it look.

Edit: one of the funny things about this is i've attempted making personal websites with website builders before but for some reason theyd always end up being abandoned projects. Coding my entire site from scratch on the other hand has helped me be way more consistent at it for some reason. Maybe the webbuilders are too convoluted for my brain.