My first post! - The history of my website
Posted on May 22nd, 2024
Hello everyone!
As of writing this, it has been a little over a month since I launched my Neocities website. I want my first post here to be something special, so what better way to spend it than by dedicating it to this very site! Allow me to share with you the history of this website, from its very beginnings as a fleeting idea, to its development process all the way until today. This is a long post, so if you’re short on time, feel free to read the TL;DR at the bottom. Otherwise? Enjoy the ride!
Where did it all start?
For the longest time, I’ve always had the vague idea of owning a website. I liked the idea of having a small, niche corner of the internet where I could host and showcase things I’ve worked on and talk about what I like. Those dreams would remain dreams for a very long time, but beginning in late 2022, a chain of events would start shifting that dream into a reality.
In December 2022, I played a game called Hypnospace Outlaw. This game is an alternate reality 1990’s internet simulator. It is a fascinating game crafted with great fidelity to the era it pays homage to. I loved the game and all, but the important part here is that it gave me a glimpse of what it was like to browse the internet back then, especially in the aspect of people having their own webpages. People had their own little spaces to talk about what’s going on, showcase their work and interests, and just be themselves. No mainstream social media, no corporate clean-looking interfaces, no bland profiles that all look the same. Every page was unique and personal to the user that created it. It reminded me of that wish I had, and imagined myself doing that sort of thing if I got to live in that era.
Hypnospace got me thinking of my website again, and what sort of stuff I would have in it. It collided with another idea I had, which was to rank every game I’ve finished and put them in a list. I figured that if I ever make a website, it would be the perfect place to host that sort of list. It would be a clever way to share a bunch of games I like along with some quick thoughts, and let the world know what my taste in video games is like. With those two ideas in mind, the thought of owning a website slowly took over more and more of my headspace, even if that thought was still small in the grand scheme of things.
Enter Neocities
Some months later (around early summer 2023), I discovered Neocities. I don’t remember exactly how; I read about it from different sources but I can’t remember which came first. I heard about it in the comments section of a few videos about the Hypnospace Outlaw game, I also saw it mentioned in social media when a user showed their site and said that everyone should make a Neocities site, and I also saw it mentioned in a list of free website hosts. After seeing it mentioned a couple of times, I decided to take a look for myself.
After browsing this website for a bit and visiting different pages, it quickly grew on me. It was a really cool experience seeing people’s little worlds that abide by their own rules. There was so much passion and creativity in every corner I visited. It reminded me of Hypnospace, but very real and alive. It scratched that itch on the back of my head where my website idea resided.
It didn’t take much consideration for me to decide that I should make my own Neocities page. Not only did this host look like too much fun to pass, but as mentioned before, it was free! I looked at a video tutorial and it looked pretty easy to manage. With that in mind, it was finally time for me to commit to the idea that I’ve held for so long.
Taking the first steps
I began by sketching out a few ideas. I wrote a general idea of what the website would contain, and drew the layouts of a few pages, notably the home page. I also started a rough draft of the game rankings concept. I did so by taking note of my most played video games in recent memory, and roughly organizing them into different letter ranks, like a tier list.
Apart from just the planning phase, one important hurdle I had to overcome was, well, learning how to make a website. I had no prior experience with HTML or CSS, but being in college for coding stuff (I am familiar with Python for example) I figured I had the mindset and capability to learn a new skill. Before doing any of that though, there was one thing I needed to do, something to mark that I’d be fully committing to the making of this website. And that was actually signing up for Neocities and creating the site!
On July 27th, 2023, iandanielo.neocities.org was created.
Neocities offered a simple tutorial to let you know the bare basics, and it provides you with a template to get started. I fiddled around with it and did something just to not have the basic template be my page. And thus, this was how the website first looked:
I will admit, I was a bit scared to start. Learning something new is always daunting. But after only a little bit of playing around, those worries started to dissipate. I quickly got the hang of it, and I got a hold of new concepts with ease. Something I really liked about it was how different it felt from programming languages, which is something I’ve worked with previously. No error messages, no thinking about the logic or flowchart of a program, no adjusting variables and parameters… And not to say that HTML/CSS is effortless, but it was a different kind of problem solving from what I was used to, and that felt really refreshing. Especially in the context of this website, which is a personal space to talk about my interests, it really felt like I was working on a sandbox or a blank canvas, where you can do what you want without much hassle. Of course, this only applies to simple pages without much functionality (I believe that’s where JS and other advanced stuff comes in), but for my purposes, it’s just what I needed. And if I do find the need for that in the future, well, I’d be happy to learn new skills again :).
Developing this website was a lot of fun. I brought to reality a lot of the ideas I had sketched out, and seeing them come to fruition felt amazing. By far the most ambitious part of my website is the list of games I’ve played. That idea I had of ranking games? I took it and expanded upon it. Not only would this page host my opinion on each game, but I decided it would also catalog nearly every game I’ve ever played. That meant identifying, listing, ranking, and giving an opinion on Every. Single. Game. This was a massive undertaking for me, so I decided to start with a relatively small selection of games, with the plan to slowly add the rest of the games as time goes on. Apart from the list, I also poured a lot of time on other parts of the website, namely the showcase of my favorite games. Things were going well at the time, though as time went on, development started to slow down.
The long pause
If you’ve read the dates on the li’l site updates box, you probably noticed there’s an awfully long gap between when I created the site with the placeholder, and when I actually published all the stuff in it. What happened? Well, multiple things…
For one, college happened. In hindsight, it was probably not the best idea to start work on this massive project just a few weeks before college classes started. In my mind, I thought this website would take a couple of weeks, but the college workload slowly started to impede progress. I still remained motivated and continued working on it, but as time went on, I had less and less willpower to keep going. And around October…
Demotivation happened. College had completely overwhelmed me, and with how little free time I had, I would rather spend it playing games and having fun in the moment. I thought that once the winter break came around, I would regain motivation, but it never came. I still wanted to publish the website one day, so starting the new year I decided to force myself to write a little bit each day. It managed to do it for a while, but I needed a bigger reason to keep going. So, around February, I had the idea to instill a self-imposed deadline. The date I chose? April 15, 2024.
My website is born (for real this time)
With about a month and a half to go, I slowly picked this website back up. Motivation also started to roll back in, very slowly but surely. I kept writing entries for my list of games, I kept writing those mini-essays to talk about my favorite games, and I kept tweaking the web pages. As the deadline approached, I started working even harder to get things finished! While I had to make some changes to my original vision of the site, I was committed to sticking with the deadline. And in the end, it all worked out.
In the late night of April 15, 2024, I finally finished my website and published it to Neocities. Admittedly, a couple of things were rushed, and I had to leave out a few things. But the most important parts of the site were in good shape, and that’s all that mattered to me. And honestly? I’m glad I published this site in this way. I felt a sense of relief, as if a huge weight that’d been dragging me around had been removed. And now, it was the perfect opportunity to keep shaping it up. Summer break was coming up, and with most of the website already done, it was very easy to work on the remaining bits.
It is now the present day. By the time you’re reading this, I’ve already added some new pages and refreshed existing ones to more closely match my original vision of the site. So now, it’s all about writing new content and making new pages! I am more motivated than I’ve ever been to work on my little corner of the internet. I’m on my summer break, so I’m gonna have plenty of time to work on this.
It makes me very happy to finally have my dreams of owning a site come true. The road to here was a rollercoaster but I’m so glad that I can finally show everyone what I’ve been doing. I hope I can continue to expand this site with new content and I hope you enjoy exploring all I have to show. I’m really excited for the future! Thanks for reading :)
TL;DR: I’ve wanted to make a website for a long time. After playing the game Hypnospace Outlaw and discovering Neocities, I was inspired to try and make that dream a reality. I sketched out some ideas and learned HTML. It was really cool and fun! But, it wasn't without its hardships. College took over most of my free time and I started struggling with motivation (that’s why it took me so long to make this site). Despite that, I gently pushed myself to the finish line and here I am now. The website is done! And now, with the burden of publishing it for the first time out of the way, I can continue to have fun by expanding the site with new stuff bit by bit.