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

[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.

[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.

[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~

[finch]

Oh yeah, it's pretty straightforward-- I use variables in the CSS to set the colors for each theme, but at some point I added a fourth color and forgot to add a value for the fourth variable in the light theme. Easy fix, but again, I don't know how long it would have taken me to find it without your comment. Thanks again!