Neocities and the Yesterweb - The Second Coming of Tumblr. Led by a massive group of extremist hypocrites that go by neopronouns and full of webrings devoted to "transing the internet".

[osooolemiiio]

Is there any at least relatively normal place on the Internet left? Any neocities alternative?

Bearblog dot dev?
The % of genderspecials on it seems to be pretty low, and the mod pretty chill.

 

[Coolio55]

As the old saying goes, HRT (and femboyshit) devastated nerd communities like crack did to black communties in the 80s, and I don't know if there's a way to undo the damage anymore.
I also miss when nerdy websites did not have to be either jeetified or trannyfied.

There's an entire webring dedicated to "female" webhosts and just to add insult to injury - the image you're supposed to copy to your page is in the troon flag colours.

https://ladiesofthe.link/

I'm still wondering what's going to happen when the hammer finally drops and the tranny retards are all caught on the wrong end of the zeitgeist. Wailing and gnashing of teeth for sure...

 

[Dr. Butt]

old Mac games

How do you even run a review site for old Mac games? All of them get 10/10.

 

[liam dees]

Bearblog dot dev?
The % of genderspecials on it seems to be pretty low, and the mod pretty chill.

All it takes is a brief glimpse into bearblog's documentation to crush our hopes and dreams.
For your own reference.
One only needs to take a quick gander at the "Code of conduct" page to find this:

Bear Blog is a warm, welcoming community. We'd like to keep it that way. While you’re here, we ask that you treat others with kindness and respect.

Here’s what matters most​

• Don’t spread hate or tear people down, especially over things like ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, age, gender, ability, politics, religion, or class.
• Don’t harass, troll, or stir up trouble just for kicks.

Abuses here will result in your blog being suspended.

And a few more things​

Certain posts or the entire blog may be hidden from the discovery feed to keep our shared garden enjoyable for everyone. Kinds of posts that may be hidden include, but are not limited to:

• Excessively shitty or negative posts.
• Passive-aggressive jabs.
• Subtle digs or vague-posting.
• Gratuitous swearing.
• Lying or amplifying falsehoods.
• Low effort posts.
• AI generated content.

And last but not least.

"Free speech”​

Speaking your mind and being yourself is all well and good. But creating a space that is free from harm, harassment, or abuse is even better. When push comes to shove, creating a wholesome space on the internet takes top priority. You still maintain your right to free speech, but Bear Blog doesn't have to provide the platform for it.

This isn’t negotiable: Bear Blog won’t be a megaphone for hurting people. If you can’t keep it civil, you’ll need to find another sandbox.

In other words, these are quite similar to the guidelines you would see on Neocities and explicitly caters to that sort of people.
A shame, because I started a blog on there before doing the right thing and checking the Code of Conduct to ensure I don't get nuked from orbit immediately.

As for a lack of genderspecials, that seems true enough. But at least one major blogger on this platform is gay and talks a fair bit about his gay experience.
This is very easy to find if you use bearblog's "Discovery Feed". Nick Hayes is on the Trending page and he gets a high amount of upvotes on his posts compared to the average blog.
His latest post? "I watch porn."
Here's the blog's first few paragraphs to drive the point home.

That’s probably not the title you were ever expecting from me but I have a point, stay with me.

I don’t personally know any grown gay adult man who doesn’t watch or pay for some form of adult content. Or who hasn’t made their own. I am certain there are all types of men out there who don’t, and haven’t. Do you know what we both share in common, though? Autonomy. Both sets of people get to choose on their own terms what they engage with, or don’t. So long as they aren’t harming anyone else, or themselves. That is a choice that should still be intact, and remain intact.

Obviously we don’t want harm to come to any child but I don’t believe the onus should be on the rest of the world to protect and parent kids that aren’t ours.

I italicized some sentences at my own liberty. I feel they speak for themselves.

That being said. Is this sort of content common on bearblog? I don't think so, This seems to be the only post of its kind (talking about pornography) that Nick made on his own blog. Seems to be an exception.
Anti-AI sentiment on the other hand is very common on the Trending page. It gets the updoots, what can I say.
-
So, in conclusion here are my tips if you want to explore bearblog.dev - ok, it's one tip. Browse by "Most recent". There's just more variety. I even found a Chinese lady's blog where she uses traditional Chinese. I read a book review and have yet to check the other entries. And I saw a haiku some guy wrote about his dog. A travel blog. Someone's guestbook. A Turkish article about Instagram bot farms.
This is my first time experiencing blog culture like this and I think it's pretty cool.

I think I'll keep my blog URL a secret for now. I don't want to get banned anytime soon.

 

[Iodine]

Mainstream websites are dead unless you want to do the goy shuffle with the algorithm. 4chan dead, Reddit doesn’t even need a comment, Neocities a troon heaven.
Is there any at least relatively normal place on the Internet left? Any neocities alternative?

If you have to rely on someone else being the webmaster, it's going to be tough to find something that isn't troonified. Operating and maintaining a social website is a full-time job, which self-selects for the chronically unemployed with power fantasies (i.e. troons and their enablers, sorry Josh). Running your own personal website with a censorship-resistant webhost and domain registrar will always be the most troonproof solution.

I'm going to bet that the reason people don't want to run their own personal blog isn't just cost or "too difficult" (zero code cPanel Wordpress solutions exist), but reaching an audience and interacting with other community members. I believe that a chuddy AT Protocol relay with a self-hosted Leaflet instance (the official instance is run by... you guessed it) is the best solution for those issues. Yes, that's the protocol that Bluesky operates on. Hear me out: it's an open-source protocol, which means it's possible to create a Chudsky relay with no batshit Bluesky trannies by only fetching data from data servers that registered with Chudsky. Unlike Mastodon/ActivityPub/the Fediverse, AT Protocol relays are designed to be large and centralized, so they're not as broken and laggy as kiwifarms.cc. Your blog and account runs on your own data server or parasites off someone else's. You can follow any account on a data server that's connected to the Chudsky relay, and if the relay is taken off the god damn internet, you own your data server, so you can simply move it somewhere else with your account and data intact.

I would run this if I could, but I don't have other people's tax-funded disabilitybux to spend on hosting and don't want to do janny work like removing 'p and banning jeetspammers

There's an entire webring dedicated to "female" webhosts and just to add insult to injury - the image you're supposed to copy to your page is in the troon flag colours.
https://ladiesofthe.link/

Imagine being a true and honest XX female in tech. You spend the pre-2010s fighting people who assume you're in a design, HR or admin role at a tech company because there's no way a female could work with computers. For a blissful moment from 2010-2015, it seems like people are finally starting to understand that women can be good with tech too. Then the 2016 troon frenzy happens and for the rest of your career, people assume you were born a man. Issues that true and honest XX females in tech experience are sidelined by the petty concerns of the much more populous larger programmer sock cabal, but don't you dare do anything that implies they're different from you, or else you're a bigot and deserve to lose your job.

 

[liam dees]

I'm going to bet that the reason people don't want to run their own personal blog isn't just cost or "too difficult" (zero code cPanel Wordpress solutions exist), but reaching an audience and interacting with other community members. I believe that a chuddy AT Protocol relay with a self-hosted Leaflet instance (the official instance is run by... you guessed it) is the best solution for those issues. Yes, that's the protocol that Bluesky operates on. Hear me out: it's an open-source protocol, which means it's possible to create a Chudsky relay with no batshit Bluesky trannies by only fetching data from data servers that registered with Chudsky. Unlike Mastodon/ActivityPub/the Fediverse, AT Protocol relays are designed to be large and centralized, so they're not as broken and laggy as kiwifarms.cc. Your blog and account runs on your own data server or parasites off someone else's. You can follow any account on a data server that's connected to the Chudsky relay, and if the relay is taken off the god damn internet, you own your data server, so you can simply move it somewhere else with your account and data intact.

I would run this if I could, but I don't have other people's tax-funded disabilitybux to spend on hosting and don't want to do janny work like removing 'p and banning jeetspammers

Hosting a site yourself especially a site that has major numbers of traffic everyday will drive you insane. KiwiFarms is the extreme example, but an example nonetheless.

Did you try making your own blog or used something like bearblog (like an older equivalent) to make something like that? What's your experience with old school blogs?

 

[Iodine]

Hosting a site yourself especially a site that has major numbers of traffic everyday will drive you insane. KiwiFarms is the extreme example, but an example nonetheless.

Did you try making your own blog or used something like bearblog (like an older equivalent) to make something like that? What's your experience with old school blogs?

Nope, I have never attempted to run a open registration social platform for cost/moderation/sanity reasons like you said. I have a from-scratch personal website with some blog posts running in the cloud, but it's for work/resume purposes and has my name as the domain so I don't mind that it doesn't have social features. I have never used a social blogging site because I'm a zoomer who doesn't want to have my blog nuked by a sensitive tranny janny for wrongthink. By the time I was old enough to use the unrestricted internet, there were no explicitly free speech and chud-friendly social blogging sites. I don't think they even exist. Substack is the closest I know because it hosts TERF and nationalist blogs, but I'm not surprised if the troon crowd will make noise to get them banned eventually.

Now that I think about it, most of the problem with running a social platform lies with open registration because the traffic and jannying can go out of hand easily when anyone can join and post anything. But if it was scaled back to Kiwis only, where you have to make a request in a thread here to create a blog, sneedblog dot dev would be a lot easier to moderate and cheaper to run.

 

[osooolemiiio]

As for a lack of genderspecials, that seems true enough.

Compared to the amount of them (mostly pimped out by the staff blog, and sometimes in side panel) I see logging into my tumblr throwaway... true enough indeed. (Or tumblr simply thinks that if I lurk on cow pages I must like the suggested shit.)
What I personally liked is that there's no Tumblr/Fb/VK-esque dashboard with algorithms shoving posts in your face, or ads. That's probably also part why it seemed calmer to me.

 

[liam dees]

Compared to the amount of them (mostly pimped out by the staff blog, and sometimes in side panel) I see logging into my tumblr throwaway... true enough indeed. (Or tumblr simply thinks that if I lurk on cow pages I must like the suggested shit.)
What I personally liked is that there's no Tumblr/Fb/VK-esque dashboard with algorithms shoving posts in your face, or ads. That's probably also part why it seemed calmer to me.

Yes the simple interface encourages users to seek content and read what people have to say. So even though I disagree with some of the posts I've read or find them juvenile or amusing, I am happy to let it exist in its own page while I do my own thing. I'm happy to compromise and leave the edgyboy shit to KF and do other stuff on Bearblog.

 

[Inatrous]

Floating by with some more Neocities drama in hand - over the last few days, users have been getting angry over some sites getting manually marked NSFW. Due to how the site's set up, what this means is that any site marked this way will vanish off the update feed and become damn near impossible to find without appending “&is_nsfw=true” to the end of your URL.

More importantly, from my view, this started happening with no warning, no alerts, no recourse, and no clear guidelines on what "NSFW" even is. I first heard of this when a user called Yuutube posted that they seemed to have been forced into NSFW, with no option to appeal and no response to his requests to have it removed.

I took a quick glance, and all I see is a regular edgelord, but you can check out either the site itself or the archive (someone else seemed to have gotten to the site before me, and done a much more thorough job - thanks, whoever you are. ).

This has lead to user unrest and a whole reddit post (with a website!) calling on users to turn their thumbnail images into protest signs, because all of these people are from Tumblr, and their dumbass tactics haven't changed at all.

Those who have decided to cancel their supporter status over the offense are probably going to be the more effective players.

the reddit (archive) and web post (archive)

Spoiler: And after this, expect a strongly worded letter!

Reddit post that goes along with this blog, if you want faster feedback leave a comment here

In recent weeks, multiple NeoCities sites have been manually tagged as 18+, removing them from standard search results without direct notification to their owners. This seems to be in place as a form of content moderation for the site at large, but its implementation leaves much to be desired. As of writing this the only way that a user could know that their site has been struck with this label is that the 18+ tag section is missing in their site settings. Speaking from personal experience this is a section I was unaware existed, and so if it was missing from my user settings I would take a while to realize it’s missing.

There are a couple major problems with this version of content moderation. The largest of which is a lack of appeals process or anyone to make substantial contact with the admin team.

Firstly, it lacks communicating to the user that their site does not meet the NeoCities standard of SFW. In fact it does not communicate anything at all to the user.

Second off, the severity of being tagged with NSFW is ludicrous at present moment. In order to view NSFW sites it isn’t a simple checkbox that you can enable with other sites like X, Reddit, etc. In order to view NSFW content in the search system you need to add “&is_nsfw=true” at the end of the URL. Now this isn’t a big ask for a site where people edit HTML, if and only if this was said anywhere. The only source I was able to find of the existence of this feature was on this blog which is what tipped me off to the feature in the first place. If you were unaware of this feature you would never be able to search for sites that have been tagged NSFW.

With the knowledge of this NSFW search in mind, it brings me right into my third point, the range of NSFW sites. The majority of sites that are in the NSFW search system are hardcore porn, violent, or fairly unpleasant. A lot of the new users who were manually struck with the 18+ tag are nowhere near the type of content typically seen on this side of NeoCities.

And the last, and perhaps most major issue with the current moderation system, is that once you have been stuck with this you will receive no contact from anyone related to NeoCities. There is a common mythos of NeoCities that Kyle Drake is the sole person in charge of running the site, but I have found other sources that claim his partner is most likely involved and perhaps there is another person running the bsky account, regardless this does not entirely matter. My point is that most users that have been struck with the NSFW soft ban have tried to reach out to Kyle Drake or anyone at NeoCities and they haven’t received anything back. This problem goes back even further than the current issue at hand. There has been a bug that has been around for several years, at least, where users have just had their site banned outright for seemingly no reason. Both of these issues are exacerbated by them being permanent sentences and you will never hear back from anyone on the NeoCities team.

To summarize how the current situation needs to change, there needs to be communication from NeoCities administration,

there needs to be a set of explicit standards to which sites are going to be held if there is a soft banning system like this,

there needs to be a notification or some sort of indication that you have been struck with NSFW/18+ tag manually,

and lastly this needs to be something that isn’t permanent.

I see that many sites wish to change their site in order to be acceptable in the eyes of NeoCities, so if it is a one-strike permanent status it is too severe.

I am going to be using this image as my site thumbnail until things change. Below is the code if you would like to do the same, but just including it anywhere on your site will show your support for a better, more fair, NeoCities. I have already revoked my financial support from NeoCities and I suggest you do the same if you agree with anything I have written here.

---

Thumbnail Code​

If you would like to set the protest image as your thumbnail please place the code below anywhere in your header. The image itself is on an external site for your safety, to show that I won’t be able to swap the image with something nefarious. If you use this code the image will not show up for users visiting your site, only the thumbnail bot that operates on neocities, if you would like to include it in such a way so that other can see it make sure to link to the image within your site itself.
<script>if(/screenjesus/i.test(navigator.userAgent)){ document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",()=>{ document.body.style.margin="0"; document.body.innerHTML=` <div style=" position:fixed; inset:0; display:flex; align-itemsenter; justify-contententer; background:#f6f0e6; padding:0 6vmin; z-index:999999; "> <img src="https://i.postimg.cc/3JMMDhVm/ransom-Note.png" style=" width:100%; height:100%; object-fitontain; transform:scale(1.0; "> </div> `; });}</script>

I also found a post mentioning that anything found to be NSFW, and not tagged as such runs the risk of being deleted, just straight up.

Spoiler: So you drew nipples on those tits, now did you, naughty boy.

In your Neocities menu (top right), open the drop-down and click on "settings" (just above "sign out"). It will lead you on a page where there's written "manage site settings" in red.

Click on this and it will lead you to a small group of tabs and one of them is "18+" (between "api" and "bluesky".)

If you have adult content that can fit in the policy, this box should be checked.

While I do enjoy Neocities, I have seen too many posts here saying "my neocities is deleted". And I frankly despise the fact there is no warning or message for users breaking policy or whatever.

I know some people will dunk on NC saying "Nekoweb better !!1!" which is okay, but they're not perfect either.

So, be aware that if your website has content that can potentially fit into this category, make sure you have that box checked. But be warned that you will be moved onto the "18+ neocities feed" where there is less pleasant stuff.

I wish Kyle would send warnings, e-mails or... anything, honestly that says to people "your website has been deleted because of policy breach" or whatever the words are.

Have a nice day, drink water, stretch your back.

PS: hiding the box there isn't intuitive at all but I don't remember if there's a warning about it when you first start your website.

Edit user Boop-Soop seem to confirm :

there isn’t a visible or clear warning urging users to mark their site nsfw upon account creation. I made a new account recently and saw nothing of the sort.

Edit bis : Apparently, if you can't see the 18+ checkbox that means Neocities is already considering your website 18+ and you cannot uncheck it.

(link) (archive)

This also lead me to an interesting site called Suboptimalism, (link) (archive), which has some tidbits on how Neocities and its algorithms work as a site.

※ to be "allowed" to comment, a site must be at least one week old and have been updated at least twice. i have not tested this but from the code, there appears to be a limit of 5 comments per day for users that aren't supporters. this limit may or may not apply only to comments made on other users' sites. there also appears to be a way for admins to manually ban sites from commenting.

special sauce" scores for sites are used in several places on neocities, most notably for sorting sites using the "special sauce" default sort on the browse page. special sauce scores are between 0 and 100, calculated by adding up the following:
-up to 30 points from multiplying follow count by 0.1 (so 300 follows are required to score the maximum in this category)
-up to 20 points from multiplying view count by 0.0001 (so 200,000 views are required to score the maximum in this category)
-20 bonus points if the site has been "featured". as far as i can tell this only applies to the 33 sites viewable here, which for many years were featured on the neocities homepage. the homepage now displays a random sample of the top 1000 sites, however it does not appear to grant them featured status when they appear there, as far as i can tell that can only be done manually using admin tools.
-up to 20 points from multiplying like count by 0.01 (so 2000 likes are required to score the maximum). unsure if it refers to likes given, likes received, or both. i doubt it would be likes given, though, because that would be easy to game (e.g. as occured during the Divsel Incident).
-up to 10 points from multiplying profile comment count by 0.01 (so 1000 are required to score the maximum). again, unsure if it is based on profile comments given, received, or both.
-there is then a 90% penalty for sites that have made more than 500k API calls (probably intended to catch automated sites), or have over 5 blocks with no followers, or have a block-to-follow ratio that is greater than 1 in 17.
-then a 50% penalty for sites that follow under five sites or have under 10 site files
-next a 50% penalty for sites with under 20 comments (unsure if based on comments given, received, or both)
-finally, there is a fairly-complicated multiplier based on how long ago the site was last updated. it favors sites updated recently, especially within the last day.

to appear on global activity page, a site must not be marked as nsfw, must not be shadowbanned, and must have a special sauce score above 2.


updated ※ unless browsing by tag, most sorts on the browse page only show sites above a certain minimum special sauce score. the requirements are as follows:

• special sauce (default): 1
• random: 3
• last updated: 3
• oldest: 0.4
• hits: 5
• views: 5
• tipping enabled: 1

Sad to see a hidden pay-to-play element, here. I remember seeing my views shoot way the hell up when I added a custom URL (supporter only), and while I never used Kyle's retarded twitter-site profile comment thing all that much, if supporter status lets you up your ability to interact with others, then that will have a real effect on your site's ability to climb the ranks, too.

This also explains why the most obnoxious people all seem to be the ones who are high in the special sauce rankings: Those are the ones aggressively follow/comment-farming, like-for-liking, and dishing out supporter status dough to earn the top spot. The algorithm behind it all strongly encourages exactly the kind of social media engagement it was supposed to refute!

Everyone's been advertising Nekoweb in response to the drama, which I still suspect is going to be less stable than Neocities, long term.

In a lot of ways, it highlights how secondary the websites themselves truly are. I'd say it's about the community, but for some of these people, it's more shallow than that. It's even shallower than just being into the aesthetics (I'm artsy enough I could at least understand, if they were). It's about...IDK the ego, the delusion, this waking dream people seem to have that by engaging with these frankly low-tier hosting providers, they're doing something big and important. It's as laughable as it is depressing.

Ironically, moves like this do nothing but drive the more sincere types, like yuutube, away from the platform, while encouraging the crazy Tumblr cat ladies to do what crazy Tumblr cat ladies do best: Brow-beat and moralize from behind their protective coating of identity politics and glitter.

I'm not surprised, in fact, I was anticipating it, but somehow I'm still bummed.

 

[nyblanc]

Ironically, moves like this do nothing but drive the more sincere types, like yuutube, away from the platform, while encouraging the crazy Tumblr cat ladies to do what crazy Tumblr cat ladies do best: Brow-beat and moralize from behind their protective coating of identity politics and glitter.

As a quick correction, it's youtuube, not yuutube. It's also worth noting that he was consistently at the top of the "special sauce" index before this happened.

To me the largest issue with this is that these sites are now being grouped in with blatant pornography and other forsaken material. Even if neocities makes it easier to search for NSFW-tagged sites, these places are still effectively shadowbanned by association and by being buried under a torrent of degenerate shit nobody wants to see. It completely alienates these websites.

I actually think the "social" part of neocities is fine in concept. I see nothing wrong with being able to search for and follow websites, so you can know when they've been updated. The comments are fine too. It's a nice way to give what you're making some visibility. Problem is the system is coopted into some odd microblogging mess, instead of just being a way to organize the websites. Neocities and the like have always been a cargo cult of the "old web" (that was truly never like how they think it was). Problem comes when people fall for it because they wanted a more customizable tumblr profile, and not because they wanted to make a little expressive place for themselves.

 

[the hustler cat]

I actually think the "social" part of neocities is fine in concept. I see nothing wrong with being able to search for and follow websites, so you can know when they've been updated. The comments are fine too. It's a nice way to give what you're making some visibility. Problem is the system is coopted into some odd microblogging mess, instead of just being a way to organize the websites. Neocities and the like have always been a cargo cult of the "old web" (that was truly never like how they think it was). Problem comes when people fall for it because they wanted a more customizable tumblr profile, and not because they wanted to make a little expressive place for themselves.

Initially, I enjoyed the neocities barebones social features as well. I ignored the status update feature and mostly interacted with other people's site updates. However, as @Inatrous mentioned, once the special sauce algorithm started giving you extra points for abusing the social system and gaming it in your favor I began to lose interest. Every once in a while someone appears on neocities and begins to abuse the social side of it, the federi drama being the most notorious example. Recently there's been a new site doing something similar, tabf5. Every time I pop in to check the global activity feed he's talking to people through status posts, farming for interactions and likes. Why he doesn't use his site to do this I'll never understand - it's not even like it's a shit website, but it seems like it serves as a front for social media-like interactions. Even so, it's his choice to act like he's on twitter, but what disappoints me is the fact that neocities encourages this behavior heavily. He easily climbed the ranks by acting like this and is favored by the special sauce algorithm, easily overshooting pages that have been steadily updating for 5+ years but that aren't circlejerking in status updates all the time. It's all so tiresome.

 

[Inatrous]

I think I'm especially ill-tempered over this because this is happening right on the heels of Neocities getting de-listed, then re-listed by Bing. Kyle went and kicked a huge fuss, big enough to get an article on hacker news and a personal reply from the official Duckduckgo account on Bluesky. It was all "their refusal to communicate is so terrible" and, "these sites deserve to be seen" only to then turn around and pull exactly the same shit on his own users.

It's such a perfectly timed bit of hypocrisy that the conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe this was the price to get the dot neocities subdomains back on microsoft's search engine. I don't though.

In reality, I think the site owners just decided to do some pruning to better shape the platform to suit their soy-encrusted views.

It also bothers me because it flies in the face of how the platform presents and advertises itself. Even if Neocities had done no more than send an Email alerting the affected users as to the reason and the cause for account deletion/forced +18 settings, I could excuse it. Creeping behind people's backs and screwing with their user settings instead is such a scumbag move. I regret paying these people money.

I actually think the "social" part of neocities is fine in concept. I see nothing wrong with being able to search for and follow websites, so you can know when they've been updated.

I've said it before, but I wish Neocities had more competition. An ultra customizable blog (basically) for coding hobbyists with social elements attached is not an unmarketable concept, but it wouldn't be super-profitable the way big corpos would want, and all the small scale operators are too gay or retarded not to bungle it one way or another. Neocities and Nekoweb are nearly unique in their setup, and that's a shame.

 

[Artorias Sneed]

Dang. I was perusing Neocities just yesterday, having a fun old time reliving my childhood a bit. I did notice a bizarre amount of faggotry (which is genuinely not time-period accurate despite the way OP has always been lol).

I thought about making a page and posting some of my short stories. Maybe it's not worth it on that platform.

 

[Harvey Danger]

I thought about making a page and posting some of my short stories. Maybe it's not worth it on that platform.

Never let troons dictate what you do. If you like the site and want a free hosting home, go for it. Crunklord posts his games over there.

The downside is they probably aren't going to promote or follow anyone who does a wrongthink, so if you're looking for a good community it may not work out.

 

[That Witch]

Dang. I was perusing Neocities just yesterday, having a fun old time reliving my childhood a bit. I did notice a bizarre amount of faggotry (which is genuinely not time-period accurate despite the way OP has always been lol).

I thought about making a page and posting some of my short stories. Maybe it's not worth it on that platform.

Please do. There need to be more normal fucking people on the indie web. I for one love finding short stories and will bookmark your shit if it's up my alley.

The good news is that if you just keep to yourself and don't paint a target on your back, you should be fine. Most of the screeching comes from teminally online NEETs anyway, or kids. Honestly, the gendies have had their moment and their whole thing seems to be on its way out.

If you really can't stomach Neocities and their psuedo-social media drama, there are some great hosts that are pretty cheap out there that let you dodge that whole bullet altogether. On the downside, though, you won't have that built-in audience that Neocities gives you, and people likely won't find your site unless you're hitting others up, joining webrings, or doing link exchanges.

(Or maybe that's not such a downside after all )

 

[Inatrous]

Dang. I was perusing Neocities just yesterday, having a fun old time reliving my childhood a bit. I did notice a bizarre amount of faggotry (which is genuinely not time-period accurate despite the way OP has always been lol).

I thought about making a page and posting some of my short stories. Maybe it's not worth it on that platform.

Gotta agree with Harvey Danger and That Witch - I was a supporter of NC for a long time, and it would be a lie to say I learned nothing or didn't enjoy it. In the end. I had my own issues with the site that lead me to leave, but your wants and opinions don't need to be the same as mine. If you're aware of it's flaws, and still think it's worth it anyway, there's nothing wrong with that.

While hosting with social media attached isn't really a thing outside of Neocities and Nekoweb, if you feel what NC/NK have to offer aren't your thing after all, and just want a decent place to hold your site, you'll find yourself almost spoiled for choice. While Null's needs are far above what a small time static web admin would ever require, several of the sites he lists on his tier list of internet services also offer managed hosting for a decent price.

Some other recs I've seen for static hosting: (I haven't tried these, so YMMV)

• Infinityfree
• Nearlyfreespeech
• teacake
• leopard
• Github pages

Best of luck.

 

[awoo]

If you really can't stomach Neocities and their psuedo-social media drama, there are some great hosts that are pretty cheap out there that let you dodge that whole bullet altogether. On the downside, though, you won't have that built-in audience that Neocities gives you, and people likely won't find your site unless you're hitting others up, joining webrings, or doing link exchanges.

(Or maybe that's not such a downside after all )

I have a personal github pages blog. No I'm not sharing it here. The blog is more like personal notes on tech autism and writing to entertain myself. It used to be a Jekyll blog, which is already fairly minimal, but then I said fuck it and ripped it all out and replaced it with handmade HTML. It's ugly and barebones but on purpose so I can be a special snowflake! I think it actually stands out way more than a generic WordPress template.

There is a certain charm to this:

 

[That Witch]

I have a personal github pages blog. No I'm not sharing it here. The blog is more like personal notes on tech autism and writing to entertain myself. It used to be a Jekyll blog, which is already fairly minimal, but then I said fuck it and ripped it all out and replaced it with handmade HTML. It's ugly and barebones but on purpose so I can be a special snowflake! I think it actually stands out way more than a generic WordPress template.

I hate Wordpress so much lmao. It was my fatwa on Wordpress that compelled me to become a lot better at webdev (and to finally pick up server-side stuff).
Dunno how much of the interenet is still WP sites, but I remember at one point it was like 40% or something insane like that.
I find old-school blogs to be really charming. And you're right, really, there's no need to over-complicate it, just plan HTML + CSS will get you most of the way there.