YOU MUST MAKE A WEBSITE
• Making a website might look scary. It is Not.
At first, I too thought making a website was too much work. It really isn't! It turns out that all you need is
- an HTML file,
- a web hosting service and
- stuff like w3schools HTML and CSS tutorials (TONS of them),
and that's about it!
This page isn't a guide on how to make your website, but it *will* point you towards the resources I found useful while figuring out how to make a website.
• VERY QUICK EXPLANATIONS: HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
HTML is the content of your webpage, the skeleton of it. What shows up in a webpage is what's written in the HTML file!
CSS is the way the HTML is styled; the colour of the background and the letters, the size of elements, the font, all that!
JavaScript, on the other hand, is an actual coding language. It is not an absolute necessity to make a website, so don't worry about it too much :] I still haven't learned shit about it, for real (suffering)
• What do I make a website for? What do I put in there?
CLICK the arrow for some IDEAS!
- Make a page that's only pictures of your pets, or a shrine for them.
- You can make an interactive adventure, linking pages to each other and using little HTML tricks like the one I am using for this section (google the details/summary tags!)
- You can make your own academic site, full of your own essays or articles.
- Make an art gallery,
- or a music page for compiling songs, or reviewing them!
- You can make a blog and infodump eternally, give book reccs and reviews.
- You can just display a thousand virtual pets and adopts you find on other sites.
- Upload entire books in a single html file. Make a wikipedia for your ocs. Make a fake site for a random fictional place (restaurant, hotel, whatever). You can make a thousand fanpages/shrines about your favorite media. You can upload your own webcomic and make it all like a fancy website and shit. I can keep fucking goinfg
• You've convinced me. I want a webbed site. Where do I start?
FIRST OF ALL: Neocities. It is a free web hosting service, and it's the one I use! Honestly, if you're seeing this page, you surely know about it; let's pretend you do not.
When I first started, my website was a black page with red letters and a drawing, and nothing else! It was like that for a month, till i started picking up on how to do things.
Here's what helped me get an idea of how to make things work:
An absolute beginners guide to neocities -- while when you make an account there you get a tutorial page from the site, this one's extra support for that.
Learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and MANY other coding things for free. All the tutorial/reference pages have live testing windows for you to mess with!! helped me a LOT while figuring this stuff out!
Cheatsheets for HTML and CSS, respectively. It includes a JavaScript one too!
Sadgrl's webmastery resources! Also includes the next resource listed here:
Sadgrl's layout builder; not a lot of customization at a first glance, but I've seen wildly different websites all using it as a base, plus it works using CSS Flexbox, so it generates a responsive layout!
(basically, a responsive layout is one that translates well in different sized screens)
At some point, you might want to do things outside the Neocities code editor and get one outside the site. I recommend Brackets, because my old as fuck computer can run that and absolutely nothing else apparently, and it works wonderfully! Though I recommend either turning off the code autocomplete or using it after a good while of already using the Neocities code editor, so you get used to coding on your own.
Turn your text into HTML code! i use this kind of pages for my lengthy blog entries that I don't feel like formatting myself.
COMPRESS YOUR IMAGES.
The heavier an image is, the more your site weighs and the more time your page will spend loading. You don't want that, specially if your site is heavy on graphics. This might help!
Some CSS, JavaScript and Accessibility guides! Worth checking out!
This is a free, interactive book for learning JavaScript! NOTE: It is very intuitive, but JavaScript is HARD!! I still haven't learned much of it, and my website does fine without so don't worry if you end up not doing much with it. It's still useful + the exercises are fun.
And now, accessories!
• Silly stuff for your page :]
Make a virtual pet, copy the code and paste it in your HTML file! You'll get a little guy in your webbed site :]
Music player for your website! As seen here!
JavaScript silly effects for your site :]
Blinkie search engine!
Add a chatbox to your site!!
Infinite gallery of gifs. i've spent hours in there looking at moving pictures and out of them all, the ONLY gif i actually ended up using on my site was a rotating tomato slice. it is still there. trapped.
A widget that gives you a random tarot card!
Sudoku widget!
That's about it!
I don't know how to end this!!! Remember to have fun and google everything you don't know :]