Smallweb Chatter Post

[kalloway]

Heya, smallweb!

This is an open post to talk about what you're working on, what you'd like to show off, cool resources, things that maybe aren't working so well, etc.

Also please check out previous posts to see what people are up to or if you might be able to help someone out.

Comments

[kalloway]

smallweb, it has been very hot where I live. I have basically been too hot to do much. If it's been awhile and I haven't made a chatter post or you need something, please give me a poke or toss ice cubes at me or whatever.

Once we get past the worst of the heat here, I'm going to put out a call for resources for our pinned post because everyone has been reccing so much good stuff and I'd like to get that all in one place.

[fred_mouse]

Sympathies. Here it is cold and wet and gloomy (and the house is Very Cold because this is not a place that does central heating) and I have no energy to do anything. I am very much a hot weather mouse.

I have not made progress. I have had thoughts about having bitten off too much, and thoughts about how I hate the structure, and so I have put my current plans on hold until I've decided the latter (the former I will care about in the fullness of time)

[kalloway]

Send me your cold! I am perfectly happy in multiple layers of hoodies.

I think figuring out a workable structure is often the hardest part. You'll get there when you get there.

[starfleetbrat]

Are you in Australia? I feel like I have been freezing my ass off the last few weeks lol we don't have heating at all, so have been living under a doona with a hot water bottle.

I've been struggling a little with the structure of my site too, but can't really decide how to change it.

[fred_mouse]

Yes! On the West coast.

Coldest night in 15 years last night; I haven't checked the official values, but I've heard a range of small negative Celsius temps.

[javert]

I just finished making a new, proper index page for my site!

I'm slowly working at making my own layouts from scratch, which is nice. The index I built with grids (which I think I will experiment with again soon) and I also gave flexbox a go with this WIP fanlisting:


The fanlisting is not approved/listed at all yet LOL this is all placeholder text!

Watching it all come together from scratch is genuinely addicting... I have so many things I want to do still! Every time I finish something I think of something else, lol. And sometimes even before that! I need to finish the page I mentioned in the last chatter post... and I want to update my Pokémon fansite at least once this month. o7 o7 o7

[kradeelav]

congrats on the fanshrine! :D i love seeing these so much; the real affection and character in this screenshot preview already is wonderful. the little design details like the rounded corners and the subtle gradient in the back really make it.

(funny thing - I *immediately* thought 'oh i have got to send this to Jon' when seeing this and before i realized what your handle was XD truly, it's a small web!)

[javert]

Thank you so much!! I've been looking at so many shrines/fanlistings/fansites/etc. this last month, I'm glad I can evoke that feeling of getting to experience other people's passion through words & designs in others, too...

(LMAO yes it's meee o7 it is a very small web... I'm trying to get Jon into it but I think it will take me designing an entire fansite for its obscure RL blorbo, which is in the plans >:)c)

[thatjustwontbreak]

This is so badass! Well done! Not my fandom, I don't go here, etc., but I had such a blast clicking around your fansite and the index page looks great.

[javert]

Thank you so much! <3 I'm glad to know it can be enjoyed even by those who aren't fans haha.

[linky]

I told you on blorbo but I really love how your new index looks!! And its so cool to see your progress on the fanlisting, I'm def gonna join. :D Makes me want to work on making my own sometime down the line.

[javert]

Thank you Linky!! <3 I'm hoping I can get the fanlisting set up next month once I'm done dealing with moving hosts & domains...

[rionaleonhart]

I've been working on a Death Note website! It's still incomplete, but I've very nearly got it into a shareable state; I'm excited to reach the point where I can officially put it out into the world!

[javert]

I meant to reply when you posted about it on your journal but forgot; alas I don't know enough about Death Note to enjoy this as much as your other websites, but I'm so glad you're making more! I love that style so much, it's making me want to make little maze-like websites of my own haha.

[rionaleonhart]

I'm delighted to have your support in my ridiculous website projects! If you do end up making maze-like websites of your own, I'd love to explore them; they're something I really miss about the old web.

[groundwiremantaray]

Ooh, this website is so cool! I really like the way you've structured it. Very interesting meta too, it makes me want to reread/rewatch the series ^^

[rionaleonhart]

Thank you so much; this is lovely to hear! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[headstone]

I've recently done some small tweaks to my site, like adding a last.fm scrobble widget to the footer (thanks to luckyzukky for linking me that code) and creating a separate page for my writing links. My next projects for it are to set up a tagging system and tags page—my site is built using Astro and my impression is that tag infrastructure is pretty simple to set up on a blog-style Astro site but we'll see how things go when I work on it in earnest!

[starfleetbrat]

I've been plugging away at my personal site recently. Added a recipe book that I will add some of my most used recipes to. cleaned up my css and streamlined a few things. I had a ton of single use css so I tried to see where I could reuse some classes or change things so I could reuse. I think my stylesheet is a lot better now.

===

Some random resources:

Pixel Speech Bubble Generator - input some text and it generates a pixel speech bubble image you can save and use wherever.
https://pixelspeechbubble.com/

CSS repeating background images
https://css-pattern.com/

pattern ninja - online tool to make a repeating background. has layers and you can use your own images or their free library
https://patterninja.com

[grayestofghosts]

Oh, these are great resources. The pixel speech bubble generator... might need to find a use for that.

[javert]

Thank you so much for the link to that pattern website, this is a game changer!

[izzet_bedtime_yet]

I decided I wanted to make a job-hunting profile that I could link places where I'm pseudonymous, and also something as unlike a LinkedIn profile or an LLM-friendly résumé as I could make it, so I rolled myself a nice old-fashioned homepage. CSS used to be easier, I have to say. But I like how it turned out.

[tre.praze.net]

I've been revamping my fic archive (https://tre.praze.net/fic), and I'm almost done, thank goodness. Built a new masterlist with CSS filters that hide/show fics in certain categories, wrote a new page generation script that now embeds the text of each fic into its individual page plus comments where applicable, and made a nice concise new statistics page to replace the sprawling monstrosity that came before. I'd like to write new fics to add to it as well, but I really seem to be spending most of my free time thinking about my website at the moment.

[javert]

Mez, did I ever tell you that I love your website... It's so cool... I was reading some of your fic last night, I need to leave you comments! (Reread your FF7 forum thread and it's still just as incredible btw.)

Also, every time I read an excerpt of your Braska/Auron stuff, I'm like, man, I really need to play FFX myself...

[tre.praze.net]

waaa thank you!! 💖 Gradually influencing you with my incessant ffxposting haha …

[linky]

I love how your fic archive looks, as well as the redesign for your site in general!! It's so lovely. :D

[tre.praze.net]

:3 thank youu!!

[lumiosecity]

I’ve been noodling around with learning how to use Twine to make interactive fiction games, which has been fun! The difficult part, surprisingly, hasn’t been working with the software itself, but rather a lack of ideas on the writing front, since I’m not used to telling stories this way.

Non-linear narratives and branching paths don’t come naturally to me! It’s way harder to adapt to a new medium than I thought it would be, but I’m enjoying the challenge and it’s been fun to gnaw on in my free time.

[femboy]

I've been having a lot of fun with interactive fiction in recent months too, primarily through Twine and Adventuron. If you ever have any issues with the software or how to implement something for your story, feel free to reach out on the Twine Discord (fastest response time; it's super active in there), the Twine subreddit, or IntFiction! https://intfiction.org/ The community is frighteningly friendly and helpful.

[grayestofghosts]

I've added an Articles I'm Reading page to my linklist site. For the most part I've been trying to organize things into categories but a lot of articles feel very ephemeral and interesting enough to link to but I don't really want them taking space away from more solid/static website resources, was my thought, if that makes sense. I am also thinking of cross-posting my novel-reading comments to the site if I'm going to be keeping track of things I'm reading, and in my continuing embellishment of my shrine against entropy am thinking of posting a gallery of all the microblogging social media posts I have... kind of like a commonplace book or something... haha.

When I get around to it I need to adjust the CSS of the site, and then probably also get around to making a button, but I've been talking about that for like a year at this point.

[axolotls]

handshake! I also want to share my comments from novels I'm reading on my site! My plan was to format it somewhat like a forum thread, especially since I have dates and times for most of my comments already. Good luck with your endeavours!

[grayestofghosts]

I do put a decent amount of my thoughts on my DW but it seems like they get lost? I was thinking of putting them on the Zonelets part of my site and adding them by their date here. The forum thread sounds like an interesting idea.

One thing I really liked that that kind of reminds me of were these iPhone apps that were like private microblogging threads, where you could sort by icon. I had two -- Stenosaur and Written Down, both single-developer projects that just stopped being maintained. I really miss having them, they were really convenient.

[axolotls]

Ohhh, those sound really cool! Something about threads does work well for notes and liveblogging, doesn't it? Sad to hear those stopped being maintained, though.

[axolotls]

Will hopefully finally have time to work on my site in a bit over a month, but in the meantime, I've come up with another page idea LOL. I got frustrated with how hard it was to figure out which Star Trek novels count as part of each series' relaunch continuity, so I want to make a page with a big ol' filterable table (or a nicely-formatted filterable list with little cards for each novel) to make it easier for my future self and whichever soul happens to find it. XD

[thepasteldyke]

I know nothing about Star Trek, but I know there's a lot of media in the franchise, so that sounds like a really good idea! I'm sure there are people who would get use out of that.

[axolotls]

:) I hope so! It's why I'm thinking of putting it on the public fansite I want to make, rather than my own site that I want to keep off Google and co.

[thepasteldyke]

I'm still working on my Takeuchi shrine. The section about his inventions is over a thousand words so far, and I don't think I've remembered all of them. I'm still writing the landing page that has info about Mars Red and Takeuchi.

I've seen that a lot of shrines have names that aren't just the name of the character, so I decided to name this one 'natto', since he uses it as an ingredient in more than one of his inventions.

[linky]

Best of luck with working on your shrine!! I want to work on one myself for Kamen Rider Gotchard sometime soon. I'm excited to see what you make, I love looking through the shrines others make. :D

[thepasteldyke]

Thank you, I need it! There's so much work to do still! xD Oooh I'll look forward to when/if you make one.<3

[cennydd]

Honestly I've been working on other things, some of which might become another site, so I haven't really been doing any coding in the past couple months. I do have a bunch of notes on some Crystal Tokyo head-cannons and the 4th volume of the manga I should make into proper posts and get those up.

I'm also toying with combining everything into one big site so I feel less spread out. Thing is I have two online personas (this one for fandom and another for spirituality stuff). Considering both groups really like to bring the drama, I'm not sure how smart it'd be to have everything in one space like that.

[supermario128]

I've been adding more pages to my website mainly. Right now I'm just adding/organizing game reviews.

I figured out how to have images be the bullet points for lists, and I tried to figure out how to do that with my navbar, but it didn’t look right... I’m shelving that idea for later.

I think after adding all these pages, it would be worth looking more into actually prettying up the site, somehow.

[elyusion]

i don't really have anything to say, i just wanted to ask for permission for something: can i make a poll post asking what's everyone's favorite kind of about-me graphic? blinkies vs stamps vs 88x31 buttons and whatnot?

[kalloway]

Absolutely!

[linky]

Updates have been a little light on my end, I added a new meta essay to my meta page, as well as crossposted a couple fics and updated my links. I'm hoping to start working on my Kamen Rider Gotchard fanshrine too once I get the chance to sit down and mess around on a layout. I just need some sort of idea on how I want it to look first before I begin doing that, since having direction will help.