Small Web September Check-In 1: Links!

[enchantedsleeper]

We’ve reached the first check-in point for Small Web September! How is everyone doing so far? Whether you’re just getting warmed up or are already ticking off goals (or maybe you just found this and want to join – welcome!), come and share your progress in the comments of this check-in.

The theme of this week’s check-in is links! Earlier this year, I came across Coy (osteophage)’s link compilation in praise of links, which led me down a rabbit hole of reading various essays about the importance of hyperlinking and being a good steward of the web. This includes not making your own site into an effective dead end, but sending people on to interesting destinations via links that you’ve included there.

I’ve always been a lover of curating cool webpages and sites, but it struck me that I wasn’t actually doing much of this on my own little website – now, it’s a personal fanworks archive, so you could argue that linking out to random pages is a bit out of step with the purpose of it. However, it broadened my thinking about where I could start adding more links: from archiving rec lists to linking out to gifts that other fans had made for me over the years.

So, the discussion starter for this check-in is: how do you link, and to what? Do you have a link hub or set of interesting finds? Would you like to do more with links?

As a bonus: share some of your favourite interesting links (this can be anything from thought-provoking essays to just cool stuff! They don't need to be explicitly small-web-themed, although that's great too).

And of course, let us know how your Small Web September project(s) is/are going!

As a reminder, this is the first of four ‘check-in’/comment points that will be published during the event – you can check out the schedule and dates of these posts over on the event intro. There’s no cut-off point for commenting on these, so you can add something at any time – you also don’t need to comment on them all or do them in order! The themes are a loose guide, but all discussion is welcome.

For the previous kick-off/goals post, check out: Small Web September: Kick-Off & Goals!

Comments

[axolotls]

I'm in the phase of settling in now that I have more free time, and have mainly focused my small web efforts this week on summarising some discussion that was had about decentralisation so that it can be used for a project some people want to work on.

In terms of links, I'm still mulling over what to do with them when the time comes! I have a lot of useful resources in my bookmarks that probably should be made more publicly accessible. I've toyed with the idea of self-hosting something like linkding, or maybe just have tag filtering via CSS and checkboxes. I think with texts that involve a lot of self-referencing, like the summary I'm writing currently, I want to find some way of including links to make reading it easier, which feels sort of on topic? XD As for external links, I want to find a good visual representation of citations essentially, since I sometimes want to link things without always embedding them in the text in a natural way.

[e_k_braveman]

Funnily enough, most of the stuff I got done is related to linking! I made an 88x31 button for my website, partially because it's cool and partially because I applied for a couple of webrings, which don't necessarily require that you have a button, but I'd feel awkward being one of the few without one. XD I used ezgif to put the individual frames together, because Krita didn't have an option to just export an animated GIF. Or at least my version didn't. :T Here it is btw!

As for linking in general, I already had some outgoing links set up before I even got to this stage, just out of courtesy. The page template I used, the background image and even an r/nosleep story that inspired a certain character are all linked. Ok actually, that last one isn't linked in the Characters page, I should probably add it. Also, this just reminded me that another character's bio links to the Wikipedia page of a historical figure lol.

In the planning stages for the website, I was actually thinking of having a separate page just for my inspirations/influences, 'cause there's definitely some niche ones I'd like to share with more people. Or even recommending non-fiction I've read to in order to have more grounded worldbuilding. It's definitely an idea for further down the line, since I should focus more on the actual art I'm making downstream of those influences, but I'm keeping at the back of my mind.

On another note, I did do one thing that's not actually linked to links (sorry, I had to), namely that I finally put my website code on Github. I won't share that since it has my real name on it, but I will share the Deploy to Neocities tutorial I used to have the updates I push to that repository automatically be reflected in the website. It saves you a lot of tedium.

[biteshelter]

One of the first things I got done was moving my art resource links to a new section on my link page. My plan is to add more sections, but I haven't decided which links to share yet. I also added the pages I've been working on to the site navigation bar. Something I'd like to start soon is an about page, where I want to put buttons linked to other small web sites. I have a design sketch but I need to code it.

Speaking of buttons, I made some for linking back to here! I put one on my homepage for what I'm currently up to, and another on my links page as an alt-web community.



Other than that, I fixed heading levels across my site, chose a font for the headings, and started drafting the first page of a new hobby/interests section. I've got sketches for a new index page in addition to the about page, and plans for updating the static site generator. I want to clean my code up some more before trying to add new stuff, though.

[overmore]

Ah, links. The way we share things on the internet. I feel a lot of people on indie web love links as a way to share stuff in general, sites, resources etc, which is quite nice. I do like looking through them from time to time, though I mostly like looking for site links rather than anything resource-related or anything else. I already spend a lot of time doing things like that in real life, so online it's not my thing.

I have my own little link page that mostly has fandom-related links, some resource links that i really just use a lot when looking for stuff and at the end some random links to thinks I like that don't fit either categories. Call it a personal bookmark page except it's shared with everyone online.

I am actually not too fond of big links pages, it distracts me too much. Too much going on, I will get lost and forget what I was doing in the first place. It's a nightmare for an ADHD person which is why I do tend to just not do it unless I have to. Even bookmark navigation on PC is a struggle. I'm a person who doesn't like too much stuff going on on my screen and a lot of open windows with different links are one of the things that are not good for me lol. I keep mine mainly cause I know fandom nowadays is shit, it's hard to find events that aren't anti run and won't harass you for what you like outside of the event, so having links to events like that is important to me to show people that, it's still not all horrible. We're still doing something. Hand in there buddy!

Links can be fun, but in moderation cause it gets too much at some point.

[althea_valara]

I have finished copying over Season 1 from ffbe_script to my local repository; I haven't pushed it live on Neocities yet because I'm going through and proofreading them after a random look at one page HORRIFIED me with the amount of typos I found in a small section. I also want to write a primer for the last chapter, partially because a LOT happens in the season, and partially because my page directory has a blank page there.

To facilitate the copying/file massaging, I wrote a Python script that handled most of the HTML. I just didn't include a line in the script for doing the headers, but since the headers are in all caps, it was relatively painless to go through the files manually and put <h3> tags in around capitalized lines.

I had told some of my friends that I was working on my site and they said "you need a Github", heh. I do have an account or three there but don't think I have backed up my site there yet, so I'll see about doing that.

Links, huh? I have a brief tutorial squirreled away on my site for how I did the menu links; in a nutshell, the menu itself is written in YAML and then Jekyll magic turns it into HTML (Jekyll is a static site generator tool; I know others here are using a different but similar generator but I've forgotten the name. I heard of Jekyll first, so that's what I went with).

Most of my other internal links are hand-coded. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some Jekyll magic I could do to build those links, but eh, it's not a LOT of links so I don't mind coding them myself.

I... had not thought about linking OUT to other sites. I should probably, at least, link to the FFXIV wikis as they were a big help when working on my Main Scenario Quest "summaries". There's other resources I will probably use while building the site, and I should link to those, too. I hadn't considered a webring. I'm not sure if my site would be appropriate for one? As a reminder, my site is at https://altheavalara.neocities.org and I'm making fan scripts of ongoing Final Fantasy games.

[biteshelter]

What a cool button! I'm surprised you weren't able to export the GIF from Krita, but I honestly have no idea how the animation features work or how long they've been around.

I like the idea of having a separate page for your inspirations. Seeing what influences someone else's creativity is always really interesting. I try to keep links to what inspires specific things I make, but I hadn't thought about making a broader inspiration page.

[e_k_braveman]

Thanks! I think your buttons are super cute too :3

And ok I looked up the Krita thing and apparently I just was looking at the wrong settings. >_< It can indeed export gifs on its own. Which is good for future me, but embarrassing for past me. In my defense the option says "export to video" and I thought it can't be that because... it's not a video format! lol

[e_k_braveman]

Mind if I use one of those on my own site? :3

[biteshelter]

Feel free!

[thatjustwontbreak]

Thanks for posting the menu links tutorial! I'd never heard of Jekyll before.

[althea_valara]

You're welcome! The beauty of Jekyll and other static site generators is that they allow you to strip out repetitive coding so that you only need to change that code in ONE place, rather than on all pages that will use the code. Jekyll is really nice in that it processes not just HTML files but other markup languages as well. I'm running it on a Windows 11 machine, which is NOT my favorite development setting (that would be some flavor of Linux) but it works fine for me. If you decide to go with Jekyll or another static site generator, I hope you find it as useful as I have!

[finch]

I decided that the best way to make my links interesting was to take a digital garden-esque approach to them. In practice this means that most of my links are spread across my site, rather than corralled on a single page of links. Writing links are on the writing page, magic links are on the magic page, and so on. When I have a bunch of links on a topic, that usually means I have some thoughts on that subject too, so I start trying to put them together with quotes and my own thoughts into a more interesting, complex page.

So far this month I have found an actual webhost, reorganized and uploaded my files, updated my site and link pages a fair bit, and started working on the pages for my major writing project. It's not a ton of obvious progress, but I think it covers everything I need to move onto more complex things.

[cennydd]

I got a lot done last week. Which is good cause I've got my mom visiting this week so I suspect I won't have much time to work on my site. One of those things is a links page. Most of my links go there but I do have a few scattered elsewhere whenever relevant.

One of the resources I found this week is this site that makes CSS gradients. I used it to design the backgrounds for this and this.

[axolotls]

Looks really cool! I like the way you've done that split, with several links pages! :D

(That said, the actual link colour has pretty bad contrast with the grey background... I can sorta read the links if I squint, but I know other people, particularly those with vision issues, may struggle even more with them, so it might be a good idea to change the shade a bit so that visitors can read the link text easier. ^^ I find this site to be useful to check if the contrast passes the web accessibility guidelines and fiddle with the colours a bit, though I think it's fine to aim for just AA compliance rather than necessarily AAA on all fronts. If you decide to do this, from my own fiddling with your colours, I think you'd have to lighten the background a bit to get good contrast without making the link colour super dark (and thus harder to distinguish from normal text, although you've got underlines to help, which are good practice for links!).)

[finch]

I stared at this comment for several minutes like a loon because I have the links showing as a bright sky blue alongside white text and a dark grey background, and I'm not sure how lightening the grey would make a lightish blue more readable.

And then I remembered I'd made a light version of the css at some point for people who'd set it to prefer light mode, and wondered if I managed to wonk up something in the light version of the css, and sure enough I think I see the problem will fix it tomorrow. Thank you for letting me know because otherwise I have no idea how long it would have been before I noticed.

[finch]

Ooooh I love a good gradient! Thank you for sharing.

[le_gaosaure]

Progress is nope x')

Links... Well, for two of the four sites I mentioned in my intro, it's basically built-in: my craft archive includes a link to the pattern used on each project's page, because it's dang useful and I want to both be able to myself find it again and help others grab it; my fan archives directory is, well, a directory, so it's a bunch of links by nature. For my upcoming fan exchange, linking is less of a priority because the site aims to be a resource for a specific project that's limited in time, though it will eventually link to the creations made for the event (if the creators agree to it, I made that opt-in).

For my fic archive, though, links are... kinda weirdly handled, honestly. At first I had great ambitions of finding other people with similar archives and be friends and link to them on the "links" page I do have, but it's kinda flopped because uh... I'm not that social I guess? I have a few links there, notably to the fanfic webring and to my directory, but I actually have more links on my "about" page because I linked to every person who contributed something to my writing. These are not very small web, all in all, but it's still links ^^

One other thing I should probably mention is that I really don't like the very concept of using buttons to link to stuff. At best you can get the site's name and/or a general vibe out of a tiny picture, but that's not super helpful to know what you're getting into, so I'd rather use text for my links, and describe what it is and why it's on my page.

I still made buttons for most of my sites because I know many people will just not link to your site if they can't use a button, which saddens me.

[tarlanx]

I've been so busy with other things this week I haven't even started on this :(

[linky]

Been so busy offline and drained of energy I haven't been able to work on my site yet. T_T Though I am hoping to work on archiving some recent fics this week.

In terms of cool links: I recently found some nice buttons and templates from the site Yatagarasu!

I also discovered these responsive layout bases which I want to use to help make my Gotchard shrine. And I'll always link 32 Bit Cafe's Resources List for the Personal Web as well whenever there is a chance to do so. It's an eternal favorite of mine.

And lastly I also recently discovered Ytoo! which is styled after old school Yahoo and has a lot of fun links.

[linky]

Ooh these buttons are lovely! May I use one of them to link back to the community?

[enchantedsleeper]

Don't worry - neither have I, yet 😂 I did have ambitions of getting some things done over the weekend - I was planning to just HTML tag some fics for easy archiving later - and I was so tired on Saturday evening that I didn't feel like it xD (Okay, I did also get sidetracked with nominations for Festivids). Then on Sunday it took me all day just to get to this post, let alone anything for my site xD

You're in good company, but I hope you can find the time and space to make progress later! 💜

[axolotls]

Oh whoops, I didn't realise there was a dark theme! No worries, hope you can find something that reads well for both themes while looking how you want it to~

[supermario128]

I’ve just been plugging away at small changes I wanted to do for my personal website, although I finally finished an article that I want to put up on it as well. Part of doing the article also involved figuring out a way to display content warnings; we’ll see if I like it enough or if I want to change it again.

I have a links page for general stuff (like programs/extensions I use, essays that I find interesting, etc.), but I also just link a lot in general in whatever I write (to provide a source for what I am saying, to be clearer about what I mean, to give context, et cetera, et cetera). I’ve been trying to be more mindful of making links accessible, mainly by removing the target="_blank" attribute that I was wont to use before and adding titles to be clearer about where the link is heading. I’ve also been switching to using footnotes and having a section dedicated to source links to be clearer as well with my linking.

Oh, I also used a tutorial on how to append icons after links from CSS { In Real Life }. (Although I personally went with a[rel~="external"] to select external links.)

Something that I want to eventually do is write the descriptions for the links on the Links page myself; so far I’ve just been quoting descriptions from the websites themselves. I also just feel like I can better organize that page, but I’m not quite sure how to do it yet...

[biteshelter]

Thank you, and of course! I'm glad people find them useful.

[tarlanx]

This was one of the very few weekends where I was away on Sunday - and needed to get things prepared on Saturday. I'm still hoping I will get at least these 6 episodes sorted before the end of September :)

I am always so excited about Festivids. I cannot make fanvids to save my life - and admire the hell out of those who can! - but I do love looking at all the creations :)