Small Web September Check-In 1: Links!
Sep. 7th, 2025 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enchantedsleeper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
smallwebWe’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!
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!
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Date: 2025-09-07 09:59 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 02:06 am (UTC)