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

[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.

[finch]

Being social is hard!

I have one section with buttons on my site, but for the most part you're right that buttons don't necessarily make sense. If I'm putting a quote or an annotation, it's much more straightforward to use a text link.

[le_gaosaure]

Thank you, this makes me feel less alone x')

[enchantedsleeper]

That surprises and saddens me to learn that people would rather not link at all if they can't put a graphic element on it >.> I suppose they might not feel like it would fit neatly into their layout, but... in no way should having a button be some kind of requirement for the small/indie web 😅 (I don't have one for my site, though I've thought about making one). Accessibility-wise, it also strikes me as not the best because isn't descriptive link text supposed to be an accessibility rule of thumb? And you can't have descriptive link text without... text...

[le_gaosaure]

Well, mayyyyyybe they wouldn't actually go through with it, I never actually put my foot down about this, but I've seen multiple people post things along the lines of "if you don't have a button how am I supposed to link to you?" or "one of the first things you need when you make a website is a 88x31 button" and I want to tear my hair out a little bit because no, this has nothing to do with making a website, please x')

(Also 88x31 as a standard format needs to die. It made sense when the average screen resolution was around 1024x768, but now we'd need something around twice as big to get the same IRL size in displayed centimeters and no one seems to take that into account T_T)

And yeah, accessibility! I don't even have accessibility needs on the web and the buttons walls are already feeling inaccessible to me x') I don't even want to imagine what it's like to navigate through that with a screenreader =S

[ravensilversea]

Ngl, if someone's that committed to having all their links in a button wall, it's relatively easy to style a link as a button with CSS, and you don't even have to go and add alt-text for it because screen readers (should) read the text displayed in the button. For linking with site buttons, I use the "alt=" attribute to identify them as "[site name's] Site Button" for screen readers.

Unfortunately, the flaw of accessibility is its reliance on the individual webmasters to care enough to make their sites as accessible as possible. I think it's important and do my best to make my site as accessible as possible within the scope of my abilities, even if it's a right pain to recode things as I discover new accessibility tricks. But at the same time, having alt-text for my decorations helps me keep track of them tbh 😅

[le_gaosaure]

Good point about it being easy to emulate with CSS! Counterpoint being that many folks don't know how to use CSS and I don't know what's the Venn diagram of "buttons fan" and "what's CSS?" ^^"""

As a hobbyist webmaster, accessibility sure is endless learning x') I'd need to recode my fic archive one day, but I'll keep that for after I finish uploading my backlog to the craft archive... =')