In the 90s, when the web was the wild west frontier online, sites were simple, static, and hand-coded. Among the class of '95, my friend was quickly becoming a web junkie, learning HTML in high school and drawing detailed artwork in MS Paint. Somehow, I was otherwise clueless about the web outside of basic surfing. I was lucky to get a Windows 95 PC for college in 1997. But I remember the simple sites from that era, many of them on GeoCities. Now I'm enjoying some nostalgia and new growth through Neocities.
Ever since I fully realized the importance of the internet in the early aughts, I've had a recurring twinge of regret that I missed the wonderful chance to learn HTML at the beginning. This has always seemed strange to me since my friend was so into it and I seemed to be at the right place at the right time.
That said, I did take to blogging fairly early on. Through it, I've dabbled in learning HTML over the years; it comes in handy. I think I started by simply copy/pasting scripts into Blogger widgets. Then I'd learn to change a single thing like hexadecimal for a certain color.
#FF8000 is still my favorite shade of orange.
Blogging and learning HTML and CSS all come together at Neocities, where custom hand-coded websites and works of art thrive today. It's like a new GeoCities. Nice! The service even has a follower paradigm and activity feed, so it's kind of a social network where your actual full blog is your own timeline/profile.
I joined last week and took some time to learn and play with the code. I'm experimenting with a custom blog, though I started with some free templates to help me reverse-engineer while often visiting W3Schools, where I also have a Space to tinker with code.
It's been fun!
One of the layouts I used is from sadgrl but my current layout is from Zonelets. I prefer the 3-column setup, but I also love the simplicity of a single column with navbar. I plan to keep at least one Neocities blog on the side for fun. But it's also kind of a backup in case, one day, WordPress becomes unviable.
My site is: jasonmcfadden.neocities.org
Creative Expression
Neocities is about fun, freedom, and flexibility with the web. It's about creativity and expression. I sometimes lament how social media or restrictive CMS themes have de-personalized the web. For example, as much as I like RSS readers and the WordPress Reader to streamline my intake of web content, it sanitizes and strips away the individual touches of a commercial site or personal blog.
Coding Ability
Neocities also promotes custom coding and direct knowledge and practice of implementing HTML, the basic building blocks of the web itself. As mentioned, this is a skill I've long yearned for and have, at times, started to officially pursue. In fact, my bucket list still has, “Become certified in HTML and CSS.” I might also add Javascript as needed. W3Schools has been my main source so far.
Who knows, maybe my “retirement job” will be as a front-end web developer. I at least would enjoy creating theme templates for others to use and tweak.
Content Ownership
Lastly, Neocities is about owning and controlling your own content in the most direct way. You don't just write your blog post, you code it. And you not only code the post, you code the entire website from scratch! You can keep all the HTML files on your local drive, backing them up. I love that! You can take your entire blog and host it anywhere since you have the native files.
So for now, Neocities is like my web playground. But I think it will become the means through which I eventually break free from website builders and CMS generally. If I become proficient enough, I'd really like to handle all my own blog content (though I'll likely never self-host).
If you haven't done so already, you should give Neocities a try.
PS - Big shout-out to Aywren at Aywren's Nook for inspiration and help with Neocities and coding stuff. Thanks!