smallweb | Small Web September Check-In 3: Communities!

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Small Web September Check-In 3: Communities!

Our third check-in point for Small Web September is at hand!

We're now on the home stretch - but there's still lots of time to play around with your small web project(s), so if you're just joining us, welcome! We hope you enjoy taking part and chatting with everyone in the comments.

The theme of this week's check-in is communities! There are lots of cool groups, forums, mailing lists, and social media movements for or adjacent to the small/indie web - I'm posting in one right now! These can be really excellent places to find like-minded hobbyists, share tips and resources, and take part in challenges and events (again, like this one :D).

So, in the comments, share how you're doing with your small web project(s) and also where you like to spend time talking about the small web, if anywhere! I'm not going to too-rigidly define what counts as a "community", so if you think it counts, mention it here.

As a bonus discussion prompt: what is something you would love to see/join a community for (this one doesn't have to be small web-related!) but you haven't yet found one? Have you ever thought of starting it yourself?

As a reminder, this is the third 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 them, so you can add something at any time – you also don’t need to comment on every one or do them in order! The themes are a loose guide and all discussion is welcome. For our previous check-in post, head on over to Small Web September Check-In 2: Halfway House/Troubleshooting!

There'll be a longer gap than usual between this and our next (and final!) check-in, which will be posted on Tuesday 30th September, the last day of the challenge - so look out for it then!

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I don't know if it's cheating but I would love to see more activity in

allkindsofdolls. I'm the only person who posts there but I know there are other doll collectors/players/enthuisasts on Dreamwidth!

One loosely connected community whose sites I love browsing on the small web are alterhuman sites, especially when it's less about defining terms and more about sharing personal experiences. I guess you could put my paracosm page in the loose constellation of alterhumanity(?) but it's something I enjoy reading about.

Would knitted/crocheted dolls be appropriate for that community? I LOVE making dolls. I don't really do much with them once they're made, though some of them have gone to concerts with me. I certainly have more now than I know what to do with.

Yes, absolutely!!

ooooh yeah I'll join that. I don't get to talk about dolls as much as I'd like.

The alterhuman section of our site is one of the ones I wanted to work on this month, though so far all that's resulted in is a system intro page. Yours looks like it's set up really neatly, I can't wait to read through it!

Ooh! Thanks for mentioning that community. I collect Madame Alexander Alexander-kins and I've wanted to do photoshoots. This gives me more motivation to do that! And, of course, the idea to put them on my site.

I have accomplished it all! I made myself sit down and then spent several hours working through the screen captures and managed to get 1336 files reduced to 134, saving 1202 inodes that I can now use on other files. It is such a long and dull task, which is why I kept putting it off!

I still have two other TV shows that I need to reduce for this particular website but these are the BIG ones so I will have to tackle them just a few at a time when I am ready. Maybe next September...? *grin*

Oh gosh, this reminds me that I desperately need to do this for all the autocaps I've accumulated for various videogame cutscenes and tv shows. It is such a tedious task, you're right! Good job on condensing them down so much!

Thanks... and yes, it is a tedious task and hard on the 'mouse hand/wrist' because it is so repetitive.

and managed to get 1336 files reduced to 134

Almost the magic 1337! 😂 And damn - that is a huge accomplishment! Kudos!

It is such a long and dull task, which is why I kept putting it off!

I can completely understand that. I hope you had some good music or a podcast or something to alleviate the tedium while you worked?

I still have two other TV shows that I need to reduce for this particular website but these are the BIG ones so I will have to tackle them just a few at a time when I am ready. Maybe next September...? *grin*

All being well, I'll see you there ;D Are you planning to do anything with the last week or so in the month, or simply bask in your success (which would be deserved)? xD

Edited 2025-09-22 21:04 (UTC)

Thank you!

If I have time then I will go through and check all the credits are up to date on the actor websites. That may involve creating new credit pages. I really do need to make a new list of all the things I need to do. My current one is well out of date!

Congrats, that's an awesome thing to have finished!

Thanks! I am so pleased I have accomplished something!

I'm sill not sure what I want in this regard... I enjoy the Fandom Coders server a lot, both for discussions and as a place to get help when I need it. I've read some threads on the 32-Bit Café, but didn't really feel enough of a need to make an account and join in... This may just be my general shift towards lurking more, though. I feel more of an urge to make pages on my website talking about whatever it is I want to talk about, but I do enjoy hearing others' thoughts. Dunno.

I feel more of an urge to make pages on my website talking about whatever it is I want to talk about, but I do enjoy hearing others' thoughts. Dunno.

I think that's cool! For one thing, it means it all goes in a space that you control, and it's more likely to be around for the future as well if it's on your own site. And if you decide to add what you've posted to the conversation, you can always link to it. Though I think there's nothing wrong with being more in a 'lurker' mode if that's what you prefer ^^

True. :)

I pushed another update to my Neocities site! I finished copying over and HTMLizing my Final Fantasy XIV "summaries" (they get really long towards the end of it, so aren't really summaries, lol). In the process, I redesigned my menus to simplify them. I also added some landing pages that had been missing.

So now FFBE Season 1 is complete, FFXIV is caught up to date, and I've made good progress on FFXI. Whee! I do need to look into my CSS sometime - someone, I forget who, gave me a tip about using rem instead of em and I haven't implemented that yet.

I'm away from home this week. I do have a computer with me, and I backed up my site to GitHub so I could, if I wanted, work on the site while away. But my computer's setup in an awkward area which makes it unpleasant to use for long periods of time, so I will probably not work on the site until I return home on Thursday.

As for communities: well, I'm in two Final Fantasy communities and have mentioned my Neocities project in both, but otherwise I don't have any small-web related communities.

Goshhhh, the amount of work that has gone into your Final Fantasy documentation, I'm in awe 🥺 Congrats on finishing the FFXIV summaries (and your other progress!)

I think "rem" versus "em" was

le_gaosaur (I remember mostly because I also chipped into that conversation xD). I hope it works for you!

Props for having the foresight to back up your site just in case you wanted to work on it while on the go; at least you have the option! But yeah, that doesn't sound conducive to getting stuck into site work. I'm sure it can wait until next week ^^

I have completed my fic archive!

It's specifically for my Final Fantasy XIV fic, though I might make a companion site for my FF7 fic sometime as well, we'll see. I had a lot of fun putting this site together, although I cannot fully shake the weirdness of not putting the fic on the site. (I can't do it due to host restrictions.)

Regarding communities: I've honestly been really feeling the lack of communities in my specific space for a long time. For a good while the fansite/shrine community had a central hub in Amassment, but that's been dead for years and nothing has managed to return in its place. Shrines -- specifically old-school shrines full of tl;dr meta -- are still my favorite kind of site to make, and it'd be lovely to still have a place to chat about them specifically, but alas...

Oh that's such an interesting idea you brought up! I haven't even really thought about webshrines more than in passing in a long time, but having some kind of central hub with chat or a forum would help people find them, too. I know some people post about working on shrines on the 32-bit forum and discord, but that's not the same thing.

Is that the kind of thing you'd be interested in? I could ask around on 32-bit if you're not active there and see if anyone knows of something along those lines that's being worked on.

I am not active there! Would definitely appreciate any news of a new space for this kind of thing.

I'm making some progress! Still slow, mostly because every time I think I know what I have left to do I find something else that I left unfinished last time I was working on it... oops. (I need to re-organize the art... I need to track down more stories to repost... I need to update my fic hosting/links, I thought I had those but apparently I didn't actually *do* it...

I got distracted making a garden space for folklore links, which wasn't even on my list!

Most of my chatting about small web stuff happens in the 32-Bit Cafe discord and discourse, sometimes here, and then sometimes the subject of making websites comes up in spaces primarily devoted to other things.

Oh, that's a mood - every time I work on my site, I find 2-3 things to add to my 'to-do' list, but at the same time, I'm not really taking anything off that xD (Mainly because my 'to-do' list is composed more of "nice to have" items than essentials, but some of them would be easy enough to tick off if I felt inspired to xD) Still, all of your progress sounds good!

Also, a garden space for folklore links sounds like a great side quest 😄

I am on a trip right now and away from my PC, so I cannot work on anything new this week. However I did start coding more fic pages for future archiving and crossposting before we left. So I count that as a win!

However I did start coding more fic pages for future archiving and crossposting before we left. So I count that as a win!

Absolutely! It sounds like you'll have a much easier time of things when you come to pick it back up. I hope you have fun on your trip!

Thank you so much!! ❤️

Weeeeeee, I got my fic archive, Symphony, up here. I also bought a new server to deploy another archive on, this one will be more public and for femslash ships. After that... I'm going to learn Ruby and ROR so I can add more features to Symphony (which I'm basically just using as a playground right now, LOL.)

As for communities, I mostly talk smallweb on my self-hosted Fediverse account. I love the community on there.

Yaaaaay, it lives!!! It looks fantastic! Congrats on your OTWarchive launching!

The femslash one also sounds very exciting and I wish you the best of luck with that :D

I also like the Fediverse for posting about the small web; there's lots of people there who are interested in it. I'd say that was my main community before this comm came along (in addition to posting on my personal DW).

I checked my progress against my SWS goals a few days ago and I admit that I was hoping to have ticked off more things than I have 😅 But my goals for SWS were pretty varied and my actual progress has been mostly focused on a couple of areas. Still, so far I have completed:

Rearrange my fic and fan poetry so that any 1-work fandoms are categorised under ‘Other’, and archive a few of these works, since they should be relatively chill to tick off ✔️

I did the first part of this and have so far archived two new fics under 'Other', with a third one formatted and ready to go up.

Make a start on at least one new fandom, which can also be a ‘catch-all’ fandom like Yuletide (which I’m planning to treat effectively as a fandom for categorising purposes) or my small fandoms drabbles ✔️

I added the fandom Peter Pan to my archive and archived two new works under that fandom.

I have also made partial progress with:

Finish archiving my Rurouni Kenshin fanworks

I have one work left to go. It's a 7-chapter multichap fic, so I'm putting off all of the fiddly 'jump-to' coding, but I've now archived several more of these and it probably won't be all that onerous.

Clean up and make consistent my use of <strong> and <em> versus <b> and <i> across the site, because I know they’re all over the shop (this will probably involve a lot of find & replace)

I did this for one essay, plus I've made a point of formatting the new fics I add with the right tags, but I still have a lot of old pages to do; I should probably make a checklist.

Even though I haven't completed that many goals (I always tend to aim high with goal-setting), I am pleased that I've made a good amount of forward progress with the basic goal of "archiving more stuff", specifically fic, which I've really been dragging my feet on. I don't know what switch has flipped in my brain, but now I'm most interested in just formatting fic to put up (and it's only a question of which fics I choose for the honour), and since I've been trying to bribe myself into doing that for months and months, I can't say I'm upset xD

On communities: my favourite places to chat about the small web are Mastodon (which was my main source of fic archiving inspiration and community before I found more small web peeps through this comm) and here, where I post (sporadic) updates on my site to my personal blog and also - of course - hang out in this comm. I also enjoy taking part in

marchmetamatterschallenge, which has been pretty good at getting me to make at least some progress on my site via archiving meta, and I can often carry that momentum on to doing other site work as well. Most peeps in the event are archiving to places like AO3 and SquidgeWorld rather than personal sites, but it offers company while I add stuff to my site and has also been a big inspiration for running this event.

Pillowfort also has a good cohort of small web enthusiasts, mostly focused on the Neocities comm, which I don't use much myself because I'm not on Neocities, but I'll reblog something there if I think it's of general interest and it's cool to read what other people are doing with their sites. The Small Web September tag also gets some activity during this event. Technically I also run a comm on Pillowfort myself dedicated to the retro web (for "retro" read anything at least 15 years old, give or take) but I've not been giving it as much love as it deserves 😅

Edited 2025-09-27 22:28 (UTC)

Wow that's cool, you're really entrenched in the small web!

Congrats on your progress! For me, starting the more tedious things like formatting always takes monumental effort, and then soon after I'm obsessed with doing nothing but that. So I totally get the switch-flipping thing!

Thank you so much! <3 You know, I never exactly set out to find different places to connect with small web enthusiasts but I think I've gravitated over time towards the types of blogging/social networking sites where they're likely to be found, because people on Mastodon/DW/Pillowfort are generally looking for something a bit more old-skool and slowed-down from their online experience xD So, there winds up being a relatively high correlation between people who hang out there and people who enjoy the small web.

For me, starting the more tedious things like formatting always takes monumental effort, and then soon after I'm obsessed with doing nothing but that. So I totally get the switch-flipping thing!

You get me! It's funny because before, I was more interested in putting up meta as it felt more fun to dig out from the odd places on the web that I'd published it and collect it all together, and it was nice seeing the list grow, considering that I never thought of myself as someone who wrote much meta, but it turns out I had more than I realised. By comparison, I already knew I had a lot of fic and the thought of tackling that mountain was... uninspiring xD But since I got some momentum going, I've enjoyed chipping away at my fic backlog, and going fandom-by-fandom means I get a sense of completion when I do one, so it's not totally endless xD

Let's see how long I can keep it up 😂

Edited 2025-10-05 21:09 (UTC)

I gathered all my various notes about website to-dos into a masterlist. There are a few bigger projects, but it's mostly editing and adding little things. I've checked off a few of the smaller things (like actually uploading book logs I had already written and formatted lol). I don't think I'm going to be able to get around to the bigger things any time soon, but SWS has once again been such a great push to get things done!

\o/ I'm glad that you've found it helpful for getting some stuff done! Smaller things can still be nice to take care of, so congrats on getting those done, and I hope that you can continue with the momentum post-September ^^ Thank you for being part of the event! <3

Things I managed to do for Small Web September:
- Halloween BK
- Halloween Splash Page
- Christmas Background
- Portfolio 70% done
(I was also working on Yaoi Jam, so that too!)

Things I'm finishing up last minute:
- Halloween Blog Border
- Christmas Blog Border

Things I realized I have to make now:
- General winter design because I'm Canadian

Edited 2025-09-30 23:57 (UTC)

Hi! I found this community before September started but I thought I would not have any time to work on small web projects and I was wrong! I managed to import a total of 10 fics to my own website (only 146 to go ;-;) and I created two shrines: one for one of my fics and one for a favorite fic of mine.
I decided to comment here because I wanted to see if it was possible that some day we can have a specific community post about how to connect with people on places like neocities? My website feels lonely without following anyone, being part of any webrings or circles at all. It's like all the sites I browse are not about any of my interests and it's a little discouraging :(

Amazing, that's great! 👏👏 10 is a very solid number to import - I did 8 this month and that feels like a lot of progress xD (I have similar numbers left to go, but we'll get there! \o/) And congrats on making two shrines as well, that's really impressive!

I decided to comment here because I wanted to see if it was possible that some day we can have a specific community post about how to connect with people on places like neocities? My website feels lonely without following anyone, being part of any webrings or circles at all. It's like all the sites I browse are not about any of my interests and it's a little discouraging :(

Sure, we can do that! What I may do for starters is take the question over to the Neocities comm on Pillowfort and crowdsource some thoughts there, and then use that to start a post here where people can weigh in with more suggestions.

Also, do you mind me asking what your interests are, in case people can suggest anything specific to those areas?

Thank you for replying. I haven't logged in to pillowfort in a while, so I might do that as well.

As for interests, my site in a fannish site mostly, and, while I'm interested in many fandoms, most of my fandoms are not very active or they're active in limited spaces (like Sense8 or Arcane. I guess I'd have more luck with Teen Wolf but so far no luck at all). But I'm looking to follow diverse sites not necessarily in my fandoms. I'm really into language learning (specially Portuguese, Korean and Greek), I like politics and philosophy (I'm a dirty commie, as they say), and I enjoy literature in general. As for aesthetics? I'm really, really into vampires and their whole deal, but I also like looking at cyberpunk stuff and I thoroughly enjoy the combination of both. I also really like video game aesthetics. If someone's really into collage and moodboards, I also like that, no matter the topic.

Also, idk if it helps, but I'm okay with NSFW content, it's not like I'm gonna be on neocities at work, sadly.

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Small Web September Check-In 3: Communities!

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