Small Web September Check-In 2: Recs and Resources

[enchantedsleeper]

Our second Small Web September check-in point is here!

How is everyone getting on so far with their SWS-ing (hat tip to lovesgaze for making SWS into a verb 😂). Is the code (or blogging, modding, documentation, etc.) behaving as it should? Have you discovered any cool new tricks or come across any great sites you’d like to share?

The theme of this check-in is recs and resources! There are lots of great guides, tutorials and examples out there to help with our small webbing. So, I thought we could share some of our favourites in the comments - along with what you’ve been up to since our last check-in, if you feel like sharing it!

Here’s some examples of things you could share:

• ‘How to code X feature/design element’ tutorials
• Cool templates or layouts
• Gif, blinkie, button or banner-maker tools or websites
• Directories, webrings or blogrolls for anything small web-related
• Communities (like this one! – but they can be anywhere, not just on Dreamwidth) for small web support, resources or discussion
• Inspiring examples of sites, blogs, or other small web projects that you’ve come across
• Any round-ups of links like these or anything else you’ve found helpful!

A bonus discussion-starter (optional, so no pressure to answer this!): What has been the most useful small web resource you’ve found so far? Or, is there a resource that you really wish existed, but doesn’t?

As a reminder, this is the second of five ‘check-in’/comment points that will be published during the event – you can check out the schedule and dates for these posts in the event intro post. There’s no cut-off point for leaving comments on these, 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, but all discussion is welcome.

For the previous check-in/goals post, check out: Small Web September Kick-Off/Check-In 1: Goals

Comments

[picori]

Oh, Readable CSS looks so neat! Definitely keeping it in mind for future sites as well. Thanks for linking it! (And those cute adoptable moths! ^^)

[rionaleonhart]

This made me smile; thank you so much! It's been such a blast to work on.

[kalloway]

You're welcome! I'm definitely keeping on that whole project now. (Mofs!)

[beetmint]

SWS progress:
juggling between making sure longer journal entries for neocities are covered under (details)(summary) (in brackets, not parentheses) and trying to find a good template for a gallery page. The fanfiction portion has been me looking through old flash drives and email chains and mostly just finding drafts and outlines so I’ve got a lot I need to work on with that department. Plus there’s the factor of finding stuff from high school and going “wow, I’m not even in that fandom anymore, that’s a throwback.”

In terms of actual coding I tend to stick to templates because a lot of my actual HTML coding skills are more or less just me googling to get what I want and using w3schools when it goes wrong. I’m attempting to ensure most of the templates I use are responsive mostly because I code with whatever I have available which is between my phone which I used for the first site or computer. These ones I had bookmarked.

• https://webmastering.neocities.org/
  Web resource for a lot of templates and tutorials.


• https://eggramen.neocities.org/
  Another site with templates.


• https://repth.neocities.org/theme
  -Repth is another good one in terms of responsive layouts.

-https://nenrikido.neocities.org/code/
-Site with nice templates and a tutorial on pushing the website through the neocities CLI, which I’m hoping to do before I link my site because right now on neocities it’s kind of a mess.
-https://goblin-heart.net/sadgrl/projects/layout-builder/
This site is the one I initially built my site on pre revamp when I was into another fandom, but the site itself offers more than just the layout builder.

If I find more I’ll add to this comment.

[linky]

Congrats on accomplishing your SWS goals!! :D I really like your site! I've bookmarked it since the last check in post. I really love all the LoZ pages.

This is a great list of links too!

[linky]

Oooh that Readable CSS looks great! This could really be useful for future sites. :D

[linky]

Ooh that fic hub layout is really nice! :D I really like the color scheme too. And best of luck with the rest of your SWS project!

[alaterdate]

I see! I hadn't heard of this at all before, it's interesting. I definitely like the idea of acknowledging the less than stellar things that still scratched our id

[picori]

Thank you!!! <333 I like your site as well!! The colors on it are so nice and easy on the eyes, which I love, and I loved reading through your Zelda fics that you have on there—your wording paints such evocative pictures of the scenes themselves! And I'm glad you found the links helpful! :D

[picori]

This is such an interesting website—I absolutely love this idea, and your execution of it is so wonderfully neat and organized! Wow!

[muttthecowcat]

Thanks for the resources and congrats on finishing already!!

[muttthecowcat]

SWS progress: I have updated the CSS on my main site!! I mainly added semantic tags instead of the divs that I made up originally. I thought wrapper was a semantic tag as well, but apparently not? Anyway, my next goal is to redo my fashion site CSS - it really needs a lot of work

For resources: I felt like the semantics page on W3Schools was really lacking so here are a few articles on semantics which basically all go over the same thing:
1) freecodecamp.org
2) web.dev
3) codecademy.com

I wish there was a source that went over common div names that are apparently not semantic but that web devs are taught to use - like wrapper for instance. It's probably out there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. I feel like it's one of those things you really miss out on if you're self taught

[hojarasca]

It’s a lot easier to keep things neat and organized if you have the computer do all of the organizing for you ;) .

[picori]

Thank you!!!! :D

[lumiosecity]

I haven’t done much work at all on my site, on account of being sick. It’s not easy to code from bed— my laptop is a hefty thing, so it stays put on my desk.

Despite that, I do have some updates:

1. I finally settled on a name for my site, spiralbound! I carry around a spiral-bound notebook everywhere I go to scribble ideas in on the fly, and I’d like my website to be a digital equivalent; something full of projects and ideas that’s constantly being added to and evolving.

2. It’s nothing fancy because it was done from mobile, but I nixed the Welcome to Neocities page and added my own “check back soon” statement to the index.

As for resources, I’d like to recommend Photopea for making graphics— it’s a Photoshop clone that runs entirely in browser and is very useful for all kinds of editing projects.

If you want something that isn’t dependent on a browser to run, Krita is free, open source, and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux— very helpful, considering that I’m running a Linux machine!

[matsushima]

bluedreaming posted a little more about the "personal canon" concept here - and the idea that the less savory stuff might still have an impact on us started with one of my creative writing profs, who wrote "Damn Harry Potter…" in the margins of one of my assignments: apparently Writers of a Certain Age (I'm 35) do dialogue tags in a way that she can trace back to JKR's sloppy use of adverbs. (Obviously, the problems with the books and author go deeper than that but that was what made me start thinking about influences in that way.)

[silvercat17]

I... haven't done anything yet. I *meant* to work on it on Friday during my TV night but all my files were on the other laptop. I've now put them into dropbox. And I got input on something for rainbowlists that I needed opinions on before I changed it.

As far as resources:
- https://coolors.co/ and https://paletton.com/ for color schemes
- https://thenounproject.com/ for icons

[linky]

Thank you so much for such kind words about both my site and my fics!! <3 <3 That means a lot to me to hear. :D

[lassarina]

I don't have any idea where the last week went but I have yet to work on my SWS project. Fortunately my dayjob project seems to have calmed down so hopefully I can focus on it now.

[innumerablewounds]

Oh yeah I'm on Linux too and I've really been putting Krita through its paces on whether or not it can be a graphics editor or if it's just an illustration program. I'm surprised at how well its worked! I remember seeing the suggestion around when I was googling, but I was pretty skeptical. My only complaint is that the text tool is... so bad right now. I've heard that fixing that is their current priority, though.

(Also, there's an unofficial Linux wrapper for Photopea on Flathub if you want it to be usable without a web browser open (though it's still Electron) https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.vikdevelop.photopea_app .)

Spiralbound is a really cute name too, good luck!!

[got_quiet]

I'm looking forward to the population of your bird shrine!

[resurrectfeeling]

Haven't made a lot of progress as I accidentally destroyed my main laptop, and finally just got a replacement today. RIP! But looking forward to coding more. I did end up updating the about, submit, and directory pages of B5A so that's something at least. I did some work on my other small web projects, and I'm about to begin coding a new homepage for my personal site because the one it has now is dreadfully boring. I seem to still have a block when it comes to working on B5A specifically :/

Favorite resources:

-Web Design Museum: For inspiration. I love looking at old web design trends here.
-This Google Drive of old computer graphics has been very fun and useful.
-Horror Gif Necronomicon, a bunch of horror/halloween gifs
-Code to have a custom image fall over your site

[peasina]

I haven’t had time to work on mine yet but I’m here to bask in the resources 😁

[tempural]

ayyy lmao NICE UPDATES!!! Astro seems to be looking good for the tagging system you got going on.

Haven't seen a listing of site hostings, but would like to see that too. I prefer listings over rings cuz I like to open 50 tabs of links at once rather than browse one by one lol.

(i gotta remind myself to replace the link to vscode in my neocities deployment thingy with VScodium heehe)

[ghislaine]

Inspiring examples of sites, blogs, or other small web projects that you’ve come across
http://www.matermetis.com/
This site serves as a muse for me in how it combines the author's original art, photography, writing, and dolls, in a very individualistic way, which is much along the lines of what I want to do.

What has been the most useful small web resource you’ve found so far?
The struggle for me has been finding a good WYSIWYG editor for my Mac. The two I have liked the most are Sea Monkey and BBEdit. I really like BBEdit a lot, but the features I like are part of the subscription package. Sea Monkey allows me to easily flip back and forth between the browser preview and the code, so I can easily add my own code or make adjustments to what it's generating. Sea Monkey is free, too.

Or, is there a resource that you really wish existed, but doesn’t? Sigh... Moyra's Web Jewels! Does anyone else remember or know of that graphics site, and the many beautiful sites like it, from the late 90's-early 00's? I have manage to glean some of her layouts from old sites still using them and have been thinking of creating a link list or gallery to compile the sites where her work still exists.