hi!! im kat 18 any pronouns (thaths my full name)
im trying to learn html and css and making a website for myself in the process
right now it looks pretty simple because i am still starting out but the plan is to gradually upgrade it until it at least looks kinda cool
hi! this whole section is just going to be me rambling about how i made this website and trying to convince you why you should make one too. if youre a neocities user you most likely already know all of these things so you wont really gain much from reading this BUT if you aren't and are even slightly interested in making a website for yourself stick around.
so you may have noticed that the internet is kinda beggining to SUCK FUCKING ASS a lot. most mainstream social media nowadays are ran by complete morons who are way more interested in advertising to you and collecting your user data (your soul basically) rather than giving you a pleasant user experience. how often do you genuinely have fun browsing the internet. like, genuine unadulterated joy and whimsy just from going around and seeing the stuff people's posts and stuff. probably not that much. its just algorithms everywhere these days. you're constantly given regurgitated content to scroll by and forget minutes later. which also makes it awful to try to gain traction with your posts if the algorithm doesn't favor you. not to mention theres little to no customization at all. theyve sucked the fun out of everything man!!
sidenote: to be fair tumblr is kiiiiind of an exception to this. you can customize your own page a fair ammount (at least on desktop) and for a while it wasnt algorithm based instead showing you stuff from the people you follow and that they've reblogged. which sounds great!! you dont have an algorithm to beat so anyone has an equal chance of making posts with engagement. if this sounds too good to be true its because it is. they recently added a for you tab that works like in any other social media. whoops. also the ceo is kind of a fucking lunatic? yeah.
so then what? what do we do?? well id like to refer to this famous quote:
"If it is broke, fix it."
-Thomas Jefferson.
im almost completely sure thomas jefferson said that....
if every website sucks to browse and post in, then make your own!!
nowadays when you think of making a website you most likely think of pages like squarespace or wix or those type of website creators that you usually see being advertised by youtubers and whatnot.
these pages are definitely the easiest way to make a website but they are extremely limited. if you want to make something truly personal to yourself youre probably not going to get what you want from these pages.
also, these are aimed more at big corporations trying to make a presentable enough website as fast and easily as possible. aaaand they usually charge a lot of money for their use.
so what are you just like, completely fucked if you want to make a website? yeah pretty much oh wait no you're not neocities exists
neocities is a hosting site, meaning that it lets you host your webpages on the internet for anyone with a link to access. it doesnt put ads on your webpages nor does it charge you anything (there is a supporter rank you can pay for that gives you more bandwith and storage, but the ammount the normal plan gives you is pretty good already. also, its pretty affordable and its a way to support the neocities team directly, which is cool). the catch about this whole thing is that, as i said: neocities is a hosting site, NOT a web creation site. it doesnt have an involved web creator where you drag and drop stuff into an empty canvas. its all code baby.
wait, fuck. you tricked me! i read all this only for it to turn out to be code stuff!!! isnt that like, numbers and shit? i dont know how to do that!!
yes, i know, calm down. no, really, calm down! stop throwing stuff at me! ow!! stop it!!! it may sound complex but i can assure you its much MUCH more simple than you're probably imagining right now. think about it this way: if neocities hipotetically had a drag and drop editor you would have to spend time learning all the stuff that it could do, right? well its the same here!
the learn page on neocities has a lot of really good resources and tutorials on html and css, which are the main things websites are made with. it also has what i think is the best place to start learning, the neocities html course. at the time of me writing this its pretty short but its a great place to start and get your feet wet. also, it has a cute cartoon cat guiding you along, which is a net positive in my eyes. seriously, i cant recommend enough that you check it out, especially if you're on the fence about the code aspect of this whole thing. at least give it a try.
even if you dont plan on learning to make a website i still think theres value in making a neocities account because if you do you can check out all of the websites hosted on it. its a really great experience browsing all of the fun and interesting stuff people have made.
if you got to this far thanks for reading and i hope that i managed to at the very least get the idea of making a site into your head. now go make an account RIGHT NOW!!!!!!
here is a page i did as a practice while following this html tutorial