What inspired you to create a personal website?

[Memory]

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

I don't really remember HOW I found Neocities, but back in 2022 I found it and made a small website that I would eventually go back to in 2023 to refine.

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

Coming up with layout designs orz. Sometimes I have no ideas, and I get stuck for a bit. I'll eventually come up with something, though.

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'd like to hope its still up by then... My current site is not actually my original site, though I do consider the old one a success (I met a lot of cool people). I imagine I'd have a much different look to my site than how it looks now. I was able to keep the old site's (crtstatic.neocities.org. if anyone remembers it.) layout consistent for over a full year, but I was worse at coding than I am now.

[rnottelovesowls]

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

being sick to death of modern big social media, and how flavorless it all is. not just in the culture, but in its looks; i wanted an online space that had more personality and self-expression capabilities than "black/white background + avatar". i wanted a page that i could edit any time i want, without worrying about whether it's good enough for da algorithm

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

finding the right host for it. at first i used linktree; BOOOOORING. then i tried straw.page; buggy, sluggish, and still has incomplete features. it was then that i discovered bear blog, and it was love at first sight. making my website was as easy as selecting a theme, editing the CSS to my liking, and boom, i have a cute little website that i can be proud of

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 for my site to still be up and active, of course. as for its content... maybe my blog will get a refresh; and my video, music, and photo pages will contain even better work of mine than i currently have on display. i don't foresee myself changing its appearance; i'm pretty happy with how it looks

[Seechain]

My website was born as a way to gather memories from a very specific period of my life, from 2006 to 2012, when I was quite active in my local Otaku-nerd community.

My main challenge was working with a static site. I was very used to PHP includes and had never stopped to think about things like navigation, let alone building a menu in JavaScript.

As for the future, I think I will eventually buy a domain and move everything there. For now, I am happy with the current situation. It has been a nice little adventure.

[honeyontoast]

  What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?
Well the first Neocities site I found was Pokemon Booster Pack, a site that lets you open virtual, classic Pokemon packs. I thought it was awesome, reminded me how fun the "old web" used to be, and then discovered it was hosted on Neocities. Naturally from there I found personal websites, and remembered those used to exist too!

I forgot about it for a year, then one September night after being made redundant I figured eh, why not? and made mine.

  What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?
For me, the biggest challenge is always the design. Technically speaking I'm usually okay. I've used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as part of my job. Sometimes I feel like a technical brain that longs to be creative, but sometimes I struggle with the creative vision. Very much an "in the box" thinker. So I'll have the time, have the desire, but not know what it is I want to do with my 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?
Well, as the previous question answered I struggle with the "look", but more broadly, I think my site will be a diary of blogposts that I can read back over and reminisce, and also have a collection of photos for the same purpose. It has existed for three years, and if you could look at the first version compared to now it's completely different, so the most I can say with certainty is "different".

[schlime9k]

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

Woah no, I don't recall! I remember though in about 4th or 5th grade (so 2014 or 2015) when my teacher handed me this small but thick Dell laptop and taught us all HTML, and I had a lot of fun customising my personal website I made for that class but never actually uploaded to the internet, it's probably lost forever now, but idk maybe life's better that way.

Over the years I would make more websites for classes and I always retained the knowledge on how to make a basic website, not thinking too much of it. Then 2024 - now I've really grown as a person with my own opinions on society, particularly the WWW because that is truly where I spend most of my time / life now, and I think personal websites are important to the culture of the WWW that the creator, Tim Berners-Lee, intended it to be. I won't get too in-detail about that here because it isn't the place for that, maybe another day / another thread...

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?
Inspiration, or what vision I have for each page / each div. It gets really hard to think of creative ways to display things, and my goal for my website is to have no page that looks similar to another. I probably handed the challenges to myself on a silver platter, but I'll face it with courage.

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'd hope for it to be exactly the same, in all honesty (obviously completed where I have all my webpages the way I want it to look at that time). I think if you don't feel the need to change it, that's a sign of it being a good design!

[knifex]

What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website?
I've been. tinkering online for as long as I've had access to it- somewhere out there is my 2011 blog because I wanted to be just like my mom who was an avid blogger. I didnt really stick to it tough, instead just playing with css for my tumblr blog until 2022 when I finally made myself a site to host a bunch of my art and other stuff I collect.

What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site?
My main struggle is that I've been meaning to switch from hosting on neocities to hosting on my own machine. I've been meaning to do it for months, years now even; but I just cant let go of the convinience of being able to log into a website from any device to go edit my stuff.


Imagine your site five years from now ... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?
Hmmmm, I've had a big restyle of my main site in 2025, so I'm guessing I'll do another one by the time 2026 comes to pass.
I'll probably keep the stars background tough- its kind of my brand at this point, lolol.

[sapphire/zack]

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

  i wanted a place i could get a journal up and running mostly, and have an easy-to-access place for people to see an about-me page that wasn't on carrd! i wanted to separate from social media as my main "blogging" places really because it is horrible for my adhd :p i had a site on neocities back in the day but i used a template for it and i wanted my own site built from scratch ( nothin wrong with templates, just not my jam anymore )!!

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

getting it mobile-friendly was  a challenge!! thankfully though there are multiple tutorials out there that help out with that a lot!! tho i worry there's still errors and stuff, but i hope people will communicate that with me if so xD otherwise.. uh.. getting a lightbox to work. thankfully also nekoweb has some widgets made by its users that allow for lightboxes to be made on your site so i can easily format my galleries! < 3

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'd hope i'm still running it!! hopefully iron out the kinks but i quite like how it looks right now honestly :o but who knows!! i want to add some more features tbh but i'm not sure what, i'm thinking of buying my own domain at least too

come visit if you'd like:

[P.B.C.]

My site is solely a The Railway Series fan endeavor, and as such all my answers are, obviously going to revolve around that... So:


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

The vast majority of the fan-community exists on youtube, including other essayists and analysts- and unfortunately, I have such a severe speech impediment that, that was never an option, especially not in the current climate where any and all TTS software is associated with AI... 
While there are small pieces on other social media sites, I could never bring myself to hang out there- I can't take even the thought of anything I write in earnest 'breaching containment'. So, I figured my best option was, to make my own little space on the indie-web instead, and I'm quite happy so far!


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

Most of my issues are ones most people have in writing in general, as I haven't done much of anything that intensive in the way of coding. Still, my biggest challenge has been just sitting down and finishing anything in a timely manner, rather than starting fifty-million things and hopping around forever...


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. I'm not sure if it'll look much different, other than just getting bigger. Maybe by that time, I'll feel comfortable to have a page devoted to my own art alongside my writing, or maybe I'll have finally figured out Trainz/blender animation and have a section devoted to that...

[Indigo]

It was mainly that I was tired from how the art community was changing on social media.

I had been on Instagram for a good while and once I started noticing the shift of artists really feeling the pressure mounted from IG's algorithm (myself included.) and just how they were wanting quantity over quality I had to leave it.

I like making my website that showcases more of who I am and that gives me a chance to express myself through designing, drawing, photoshoping, and coding. It feels more my pace.

And I am exhausted from ads and people wanting to show off as well. It's nice to find community again here too. 

[Dynaknights]

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

I discovered the game Hypnospace Outlaw sometime in 2023 and found out about Neocities, the web revival, and all that jazz after looking it up, which led me to the Neolands Map Project. I thought it was soooo cool and wanted to be a part of it -- especially after clicking through some random Neocities sites on my own -- so I decided to make a shitty basic personal website that's now dead and gone. T'was all downhill from there.

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

I have a weird issue where I freak out over comparing myself to others; it's a serious pain in the ass because I sometimes can't bring myself to even look at my site sometimes due to me feeling so wretchedly inadequate, which fucks over my motivation.

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

I hope it'll be a site I'm happy with someday.