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

[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...

[finch]

Can I ask how you ended up deciding to do the content warnings? Usually I just put it in a paragraph at the beginning of an article or post if I think I need them, but I'm curious if other people are more systematic about it.

[supermario128]

That’s kind of the way I have it, honestly. With the article, I have the warning between my first and second headings with a CSS class to put an exclamation point in front of it with a red background (I’d link it here but I haven’t uploaded the changes yet to Neocities).

However, I’m considering if a better system is the one I already have with my fanfics, where I put my AO3-like warnings and “tags” under a details, so people are given the option to look or not look at them. This is probably the way to go if you have a long list of warnings so it doesn’t take up much space unless you open it up (or, if you’d prefer it to be already opened and then people have the option to close it, I know that’s also an option with details).

If a content warning tends to apply to a majority of the pages, I’d prefer putting that as a blanket warning on the home/about/disclaimers/whatever-makes-most-sense page.

Sorry if this weren’t the most helpful; I’m still figuring it out myself.