building community on the indie web - neocities guide part 2
neocities is a free hosting website that lets you build your own html website from scratch, with total creative control. neocities is part of the indie web, but certainly not all of it!
If you're looking to get started with the nitty gritty of neocities, i recommend checking out my neocities guide part 1 :) part 2 is focused on forming a community & making connections.
why join neocities/the indie web?
by building your own site, you have the freedom to make whatever cool shit you want. no limits, no censors, no masters. just you and your website. connect with people or just tend to your own virtual garden, the choice is completely yours.
okay. you have a site. now what?
do you want to build & foster a free web community? here's some things you can do or add to your site to start making connections
create a button for your page
making a button for your site is a great way to connect with other indie web users! site buttons are usually 88x31 pixels and should be easily located on your site.
many users create collections of site buttons, or web neighborhoods. this is an easy way for you to remember & share your favorite sites! remember, we're not working with an algorithm here.
join a web ring (or clique)!
web rings were created in the 90s, before google, as a way for websites to link to one and other. web rings are often themed so you can find like-minded people with ease, but they don't need to be!
once you join a web ring, you add a snippet of code to your site so when people "hop along" the web ring they'll discover your page.
brisray's webring list has an enormous list of mostly active web rings you can check out. here are some examples!
west of weird: gravity falls webring
starting in the 2000s, pixel clubs are a great way for people to create & share art with each other. pixel clubs tend to follow a theme & provide base art for each user to customize however they want. for example, in the afternoon tea pixel club each user creates a unique tea cup.
participate in one of 32-bit cafe's web events!
32-bit cafe is a community of web-hobbyists enthusiast about making the web fun again. they periodic events challenging participants to create a site page following a certain a theme or guidelines, like their new years eve event or 2024 halloween.
create adoptables, pixels & a toy box
one popular thing that people will do is create adoptable pixel art that others can add to their page! people will often put all of the adoptables that they've collected into a "toy box."
(protip: etiquette requires you to hyperlink back to the original source site whenever you add new graphics to your toybox. it's just polite!)
create web graphics (and a "for you" graphics page)
when browsing personal sites, you'll often see "graphics for you" pages! these pages are full of graphics/fun stuff that you can add to your own site for free. yes, free baby! just link back to the og or give credit when requested.
making a page for graphics is cool! making graphics is cool!! indulge your creativity! share fun stuff! some things you can create:
dive into geocities and rescue old graphics
last thing to remember kids... always avoid hotlinking! (hotlinking is when you add images to your site using a link instead of downloading it and uploading to your own website)
as always, say hi to me on neocities!! :)
