Small Web September Kick-Off/Check-In 1: Goals!

[enchantedsleeper]

Somehow it's September already and the kick-off point for Small Web September has arrived! \o/

As a reminder, this is the first of five ‘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.

This first post will be for introducing yourself and your project(s) and talking about what you’re planning to do during the month. Of course, there’s no obligation to stick to what you’ve set down and no-one will be checking up xD But it can be a nice thought exercise! You’re free to make the goal(s) as broad or as specific as you like – it’s totally up to you.

There’s no set format for this check-in, but here’s one you can use if you’d like (just copy-paste and replace the placeholders with your own answers in the comments):

<strong>Name:</strong> (Username, nickname, whatever you like to go by)
<strong>Project(s):</strong> (Share a link to your project(s) if you’d like to, and/or describe what you’re making or would like to make!)
<strong>What are you hoping to work on for SWS?</strong> (This can be as general as “add to my site”, or as specific as “archive X fanworks” or “implement a responsive layout”. You could even include ‘bonus goals’ – more ambitious things you’d like to get to if you have time!)

Also, if anyone would like to answer it, here’s a discussion starter: What interests you about the small/indie web, and how did you learn about or get into it?

Comments

[enchantedsleeper]

Name: enchantedsleeper
Project(s): I'm planning to work on my personal fanworks archive, enchantedsleeper.space, during SWS!
What are you hoping to work on for SWS? I've previously set goals around archiving a set number of fanworks, but I think my main goals for SWS will be:

• Make my fic pages more readable with things like bigger margins and a nicer layout - right now they're just a big chunk of text. I plan on looking at how other fic archives I like have handled their fic pages to get some inspiration. If I can get to it, I'd even like to implement a 'night mode' toggle and/or a font size selector.


• Sort out whatever is going on with my fanart page (I formatted it one way, then decided I liked the previous formatting better but now I can't find the tutorial for the original way...)


• Finish archiving at least one more fandom (haven't decided yet if this will be an older fandom like POTC or a newer one so that I have some current content on there. I'd quite like to add all my Yuletide works or all my drabbles, and I'm going to count that as a "fandom")

Bonus goal if I can manage it: I'd like to implement comments (at least one friend has these set up, so, there is a way!). But I also have a bunch of to-dos for my site in a list, so, if I tackle any of these during the event, it will be good progress.

[pebbleinalake]

I'm not sure if it's compatible with your website host, but Ayano from Neocities developed a comment section for static web pages. I used it on some of my fanfics. (example here if you want to see what it looks like) It uses css and javascript files, basic html to insert it into your page, and it uses a google spreadsheet for the database, so you can easily delete spam comments from one central location and get email alerts when new comments are added. I can link you to Ayano's tutorial page if it's something you're interested in trying out.

I like it because it allows me full control over the comment section and the ability to customize it however. Also, unlike all the third part hosted options, I don't have to worry about it being shut down on me.

[enchantedsleeper]

Oh, thank you for the recommendation!! Yes, I'd be very open to trying it out! Please do send the tutorial link my way ^^

The one person I know who has comments set up on their personal fic archive is gekidasa (example here if you scroll down to the bottom), and I remember them posting about what they used on Mastodon, but I'm not sure whether I saved the posts, or how easy it would be to implement myself, so it's good to have options xD

[pebbleinalake]

No problem! Here's the link to the tutorial page. I know some people who installed it on their sites have gotten very creative with customizing it.

Ooh, I love that fanfic archive you linked!! It looks so clean and professional, and the ability to filter by tags is something I've been trying to crack for a while. I keep promising myself I'm going to redo my entire fanfic page, but I need to get much better at coding first.

[tempural]

Oh, I LOVE that your site has stuff dating back to 2005! I want to see if I can find stuff from then too now... it's really fun to see how our tastes evolve (or sometimes don't change :P still into yugioh since the first mcdonalds toys came out...)

Really happy to see more people archiving their art and writing too! I think one of the little tips I remembered about fic readability, is that about 1000px wide is generally the most comfortable to read? So I try to use that for most of my writing, and even have that set up as a skin on ao3 haha.

re: night mode, I saw recently that you can have night mode without using any css or javascript? It's just a line in the head that sees if the browser is in night mode, and automatically adjusts the colors: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72922557/light-dark-mode-in-html-without-css-only-html

It's really cool, I kinda want to make a site without CSS cuz I like that lightweight look :D

I use htmlcommentbox for my comments/guestbooks cuz it was the first thing I found, but seeing the other options that pebble_in_a_lake and gekisada have seem even better! Cuz you have control over the database. While the site I'm using holds all the data away from me... I do want to try some other comment methods too!

[enchantedsleeper]

Hey, thank you very much indeed! :D Creating a personal fanworks archive is what prompted me to put my earliest fanworks somewhere except the depths of my FF.net profile for the first time. They're not very mature, but plenty of people liked them at the time and that's what makes me proud of my earliest forays into fandom - the fact that I was part of a community. It's nice to look back on.

I'm definitely still very enthusiastic about some of my earliest fandoms! Hey, Yu-Gi-Oh high five :D o/\o

I think one of the little tips I remembered about fic readability, is that about 1000px wide is generally the most comfortable to read? So I try to use that for most of my writing, and even have that set up as a skin on ao3 haha.

Oooh, thanks for the tip! I'll definitely try and put that into practice for my layouts! One thing that I've found challenging is making the layout work equally well across desktop and mobile, since I've so far just been playing around with margin width, but bigger margins makes the content very narrow on mobile if you go too far. But I think that adjusting the actual text width and making that responsive would probably work much better.

re: night mode, I saw recently that you can have night mode without using any css or javascript?

Ooooh, thank you so much for the rec! I'll have to try it out! I feel you on CSS; HTML is my beloved and is where I feel most comfortable xD I like having everything inline where I can see it. It took me several goes to really understand CSS because it just didn't lodge in my brain properly ^^;