cal's image archive

HI EVERYONE, ESP VAST ERROR FANS.

how to actually do html and css

web design in 4 minutes - this is the site that really made HTML and CSS click for me, following along as the author describes what’s he’s doing to the webpage and showing how it changes the presentation (you don’t need the book he shills at the end. i did without)

w3schools introduction to html - takes you through the very basics of creating a website, lesson-by-lesson. big goldmine for code to grab and scaffold off of once you have some basic skills

mozilla’s html guide - also a great beginner’s guide by the people who made mozilla, although i didnt use it as much as w3 schools

brackets.io - this is the program i use to write the files i use for my website. lets you do splitscreen to work with two files at once, gives you a breakdown of all the files in your website’s folder, and will let you autofill commonly-used tags and files in the code. supposedly has a live preview function but it doesnt work that well for me when i’m using a second monitor, which i normally do when coding. just save the file and refresh the page instead. 

(side note: i work in a software external to neocities instead of directly in the neocities editor because 1. local files update with a refresh and neocities has to update the cookies AND download all the website info again once you update, and 2. it effectively gives you a mass undo button if you fuck up because you have your files hosted in multiple places (local and online). yes its kinda annoying to have to manually upload all my files especially bc you cant upload whole folders AND you cant move their locations once uploaded but i prefer it to working directly on the site. if you have a neocities pro subscription ($5/month) you can mount your website directly on your machine as opposed to the neocities dashboard, which basically means you dont have to manually upload the code every time you change something – it’ll update automatically)

codepen - if you prefer something browser-based to work in then try codepen, i used it a little bit at the beginning when trying to troubleshoot some code i didn’t quite understand. you need an account to actually save your work and im not sure if it actually lets you upload folders bc i never signed up lol

premade engines/sites/themes/etc etc

neothemes or eggramen or templaterr - if you wanna get a quick start on a neocities site, you CAN use a theme generator/premade theme. if you go this route i would still heavily recommend trying to learn HTML and CSS, and then go into the guts of your own website to try and pick it apart and change it to your liking

zonelets - a static blogging engine that uses HTML, CSS, and javascript. made for use on neocities but theoretically useable elsewhere. takes about 15 minutes to set up (if you use a default theme, but its pretty customizable if you know what you’re doing) and requires you to 1. write blog posts in html and 2. modify some code in a script file every time you want to upload a post, but it will automatically let you browse posts in order once you get everything uploaded

rarebit - a neocities webcomic template — havent used it yet but looks cool, and seems to operate off of the same principles as zonelets. 

glightbox - this is the lightbox javascript code i use when i want to display a lot of images on one page. i found this code via clicking “inspect element” on a neocities fanpage that the webmaster drew a lot of fanart for. you should click inspect element on neocities pages that you like so you can understand how they do what you like (you can even look at their css by clicking the style.css link you have to include at the top of your page)

plus a couple masterlists/directories:

yesterlinks

ill try to continually update this

https://en.picmix.com/ blingee alternative

http://www.mazeguy.net/smilies.html a collection of smiley faces and pixels

https://www.internetbumperstickers.com/frontbumper/ bumper stickers

https://openings.moe/ anime opening database (contains nsfw/hentai material, 18+)

https://pixelcanvas.io/@-179,-22 online collaborative pixel art

https://excalidraw.com/ another online whiteboard

https://www.my90stv.com/ hosts a bunch of 90s tv, including cartoons

https://kidpix.app/ kidpix in browser

https://wiby.me/ search engine for the old web

https://poolsuite.net/ 90s inspired radio

https://vole.wtf/ a collection of silly games

https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this/ online dithering tool

http://www.blog-switch.com/ a ton of cute effects for blogs

https://www.beepbox.co/ in browser music tool, great for chiptune

https://www.404pagefound.com/ a collection of vintage websites that are still active

http://www.phocks.org/stumble/creepy/ a list of the creepiest wikipedia articles

https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html a virtual map of music genres that you can preview, great for finding new sounds

https://littlealchemy.com/ a game about combining elements

https://play2048.co/ a game about combing numbers

https://www.retrocrush.tv/ free retro anime streaming site

http://elouai.com/candybar5/dress-up-girls.php anime inspired dress up game

https://derpy.tv/ a 24/7 hour livestream of mlp fim

https://tss.asenheim.org/ play pc-98 visual novels in browser

https://anilinks.neocities.org/ collection of anime sites, including personal and fan sites

http://panther.audio/ endless music recommendations based off of your taste

https://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php create your own background noise

https://www.glitter-graphics.com/ old school glitter graphics

https://learn-anything.xyz/ finds the best ways to learn new skills

spacehey: possibly the most well-known recreation of myspace and a much better alternative to friendproject (im xXGEKKO'S_FLESH_GRINDERXx if u want to add me! :D)

nuclearboom: relatively new website that's somewhat of a hybrid between myspace and youtube, its one of my personal favs and it deserves way more attention and support

neocities: website where you can make your own webpage from scratch- already pretty well known by now but putting it here anyways

vistaserv: similar to neocities, but with a more geocities/web 1.0 feel to it- another personal fav :D

dreamwidth: website like the old livejournal layout, still trying to figure out how to navigate it but it looks super neat

blips: recreation of twitter from 2009, its pretty simple and still being worked on- but it has a lot of potential ^_^

bitview: video sharing site that's super faithful to the old youtube layout! (there's also vidlii but honestly i dont recommend it)

There's a real push to keeping the internet weird, open and less corporate-driven -- info on bypassing paywalls, protecting your data, archiving web media and basic coding/tech literacy.

(I found one tutorial on how to make a pop up that detects whether someone has an ad blocker and suggests they install one if they don't! Love that.)

There's also resources on finding the kind of internet that isn't the default experience anymore - alternate search engines I hadn't even heard of, human-made link lists and webrings. (Webrings! Turns out they never went away!)

If any of that sounds interesting to you, by the way - sadgrl.online has a lot of it and is possibly the best thing on the internet????

The "90's web" aesthetic is really fun and nostalgic, but I particularly loved seeing some people bring the better parts of the "modern internet" into it. What if we had weird, eye-searing personal sites BUT with plaintext alternatives for accessibility purposes? CW for flashing lights and unreality triggers?

(Again sadgrl comes in with a lot of resources for making your website accessible.)

Most of all, I'm honestly emotional about all the sites I found that were like, "hi! I'm 14 and this is my website where I talk about stuff I like haha."

It's so good that so many kids and teens who never experienced the "old internet" are still finding stuff like this and making their own weird stuff! Not just because weird websites are more fun, but because these skills are being passed down.