smallweb | Recent Entries

Welcome to

smallweb, a place on DW to discuss all things smallweb.

What is the smallweb/small web? It's people, not companies, and individual websites and small services. It's connections without algorithms and can be informative, quirky, cool, or just there.

If you have a Neocities site, a fediverse account, or, uh, a Dreamwidth journal, congrats, you're already doing the small web thing.

This community is for chatting about small web stuff, showing off websites/personal archives/fan shrines/projects, etc. It might not always be lively, but maybe every now and then we'll bust out the vintage gifs.

( The Three Community Guidelines )

( Cool Links )

enchantedsleeper

Hey, everyone! How's it going?

I've been meaning to pop back up and make this post for weeks now, and then wound up leaving it to the last possible second anyway 😅 My year has been extra busy even by my own standards thanks to a new job I started in February, and even though I've been thinking all year about how I want to make sure I still run Small Web September, I knew it would take a bit of doing this year as I just haven't had a lot of energy for hobby stuff (case in point: I haven't touched my fanworks archive all year! Maybe this will give me the impetus I've been needing to dust it off).

And while I know that SWS doesn't *have* to run - or to be run by me - I really like running it and contributing to the small web initiative in this way. So, here's me giving it my best shot 💪 I'm on holiday for the next week and so I'm planning to pre-write many of the check-in posts to save myself some time later in the month. (At least, that's the goal...!)

If you're going "Wait, what is Small Web September? I'm not familiar", this post has a more detailed explanation! The short version is that it's a month-long small/indie web event run during the month of September, and it's open to anyone and everyone who'd like to take part.

Last year I kicked off the event during the last Sunday in August to keep the check-ins on a weekly frequency, but this year I've decided we'll kick off on Tuesday 1st September with the other three check-in posts falling on a Sunday as usual. So, here's a rough schedule of timings and discussion topics:

Tuesday 1st September: Welcome, kick-off and goals for the month
Sunday 6th September: Check-in 1 - Site structure and navigation (thank you to

althea_valara for this super topic suggestion!)
Sunday 13th September: Check-in 2 - Halfway point/Recs & resources
Sunday 20th September: Check-in 3 - Graphics, design & themes
Sunday 27th September: Check-in 4 - Wrap-up (topic suggestions welcome!)
Sunday 4th October, or thereabouts: Retrospective & feedback

...Er, Dreamwidth managed to eat part of my post as I published this, so I'm rewriting this part. *facepalm* I hope you'll join me along the way! Tuesday's kick-off post will be the more fleshed-out announcement with full event details that I usually publish before we get going, since I just wanted to get this up and let everyone know what the plan is.

See you on Tuesday, and if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!

Current Mood: determined

althea_valara

September is in just a few days...

Last year,

enchantedsleeper ran Smallweb September. I, for one, really enjoyed it. I'm going to be working on my sites during September for

communal_creators, and I would LOVE to "double-dip" and report progress here, too.

So... is there any interest in a casual challenge for September?

enchantedsleeper and

kalloway, if neither of you have the bandwidth to host, I'd be happy to.

toothpastepancake

Hi! I self hosted Neocities. It is for femslash/yuri fans and is on an application basis (but I'm not picky, though depending on how many applicants I get I may have to be eventually. If you'd like a place to put your static site that gives ya 20gb of storage and the ability to embed JS, check out FemslashCity! The catch is no custom domain names can be used because I don't have a proxy, nor is there CLI usage available.

This project was hard! There was no documentation whatsoever, but I saw someone propose a dockerization in a pull request and I jumped and now well here we are. I work p well with docker as well as Ruby on Rails which Neocities is written in so with that file and the knowlegde of rails I learned while hosting otwarchive it was... not easy by any means but not impossible either.

Anyway!!! Yay! I admittedly did this while intoxicated so I don't remember much but if I can retrace my steps I do plan on making a guide for others.

arimamary

I revamped the fic archive on my website with Coyote's Archive of Your Own. It's mobile-friendly, uses filters without JavaScript for extra accessibility, and has light mode and dark mode. Sixteen fics outside of AO3 for your reading pleasure.

( Read more... )

📚 Read Fic Here <<

Current Mood: accomplished

pengilly

When surfing (ancient) personal websites, there are few cooler feelings than clicking a link, crossing your fingers...and seeing that it still works!

(Yes, this happened to me this evening. It was a link to a car dealership site the webmaster bought a replacement Toyota Celica from in 2001, but still! Little victories still count!)

...Now I want to paste that sleek, modern site in the Wayback Machine, and take it back to 2001...

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Still Feel by half•alive

le_gaosaure

As the title says, Neocities is currently down. They posted on Bluesky:

"We're working on the DNS outage. It's not technical - someone is trying to legally attack us and Namecheap took down the domain. More details later."

(The Bluesky post.)

Update: see third comment for more info!

Update the second: it's back up!

althea_valara

Does anyone use a guest book on their smallweb site?

This recent Tumblr post has me thinking about fandom interactions. Currently, I've put a LOT of work into my Neocities site but I have no way of knowing if people are enjoying said site, or finding it useful, other than to look at my stats every now and then.

Hence thinking about adding a guest book. While doing some web searching, I found atabook which looks nice, and it certainly would be easier than building something myself. I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on guest books in general, and what solutions you use if you do use a guest book.

Current Mood: curious

flareonfury

Not sure if anyone can help... but...

So I recently (a few months ago) tried to create my own prompt generator similar to this one: Doctor Who Pairing Generator & X-Men Movieverse Pairing Generator (full list of other generators)) because I have several challenge communities (

xmen100

mcu100

dc100) that I'd like to create for them (and whoever else would like to use them).

Now as far as I can tell from inspecting the code on the above generator, I think I have all the html correct, but it doesn't seem to work HERE & HERE (for threesomes) so I'm wondering if it's because it has JavaScript in it? Does anyone know a work around?

( Read more... )

5/24/26 Edit @ 7pm: Thank you answered by

finch - it wasn't working because of missing a commas in the lists! XD

kalloway

What's going on,

smallweb? Big projects, little tweaks, sidelined by [the universe], something else?

Share all the things!

rionaleonhart

I've occasionally mentioned my fan websites on

smallweb check-in posts, but, now that I've got five of the things, I thought I might make an actual community post about them!

My websites are:

- Balamb Garden, about Final Fantasy VIII
- Silent Hill, about Silent Hill 2
- Kira's Tokyo, about Death Note
- Hope's Peak Academy, about Danganronpa
- The Website That Goes Wrong, about Mischief Theatre's Goes Wrong productions (e.g. The Play That Goes Wrong and The Goes Wrong Show)

For a long time, I thought I wasn't capable of making a website; I know very little about web design, and I couldn't work out how to structure it. And then I remembered a type of website I'd spend hours happily browsing when I was a kid at the turn of the millennium: websites that were designed to feel like you were exploring a physical space. Although these websites were structurally complex, they were often very visually simple, meaning I'd probably be able to create one even with my limited HTML skills.

When I gave it a go, I had a lot of fun making a website in this style! And... then I made four more, so it's possible I had too much fun.

If you take a look at any of my sites, I hope you enjoy them! And I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who has thoughts about 'exploring a physical space'/'choose-your-own-adventure' website design. Do you remember websites in this style; do you have one yourself; have you ever considered building one; is there anything you particularly like to see from this type of website, or any advice you'd give to someone who's interested in creating a website in this style?

elyusion

So I only know how to use HTML and CSS (and other common computer functions someone who has been using one for 20 years would know), but is there a way for me to make an imageboard (like a booru if you know what that is) that won't make my head spin? I don't really mind learning a bit of another language if the base is all there and I'm just editing things, but the readme for Tinyboard scared me (°□°;) I really like pictures, and it'd be kinda cool if there was a place where my friend could upload pictures she finds too since we mostly have similar taste.

thedumbopt_imist

oh some retro socials i like are bliish and hjonk

theyre cool icl

thedumbopt_imist

I js saw this place n it seems really cool!!!
i like small web n old internet stuffs icl

kalloway

Busy busy...

What have you been working on and how are things going? Found any cool resources to share? Or just want to say hi?

kalloway

Beware the Ides of March, they're probably what's causing that alignment issue.

What have you been working on and how are things going? Found any cool resources to share? Or just want to say hi?

kalloway

Whaaat?! It's March already?!

What have you been working on and how are things going? Found any cool resources to share? Or just want to say hi?

kalloway

What have you been working on and how are things going? Found any cool resources to share? Or just want to say hi?

What are you doing on half-price chocolate day?

kalloway

What have you been working on and how are things going? Found any cool resources to share? Or just want to say hi?

It's February! Any plans for the short month?

ceu

I made a template for media/fic recs (depending on what you're looking for) that allows users to select if filters are inclusive or exclusive, and filters automatically for results. It uses Javascript, so if you want to do advanced customizations you might need a little bit of familiarity there. But you don't have to if your needs are pretty similar to the default settings, and I explain (pretty thoroughly, I like to think) how to use the code in the documentation: https://fan.kingdra.net/recs/

Installation is done directly through the live previews, and also available on Github: https://github.com/aroceu/recs-template

Image preview:

This code is usable on Neocities, Nekoweb, and anything similar!

A while back, I also wrote up CSS to make fics downloaded from AO3 as HTML files look prettier. If anyone is importing their fics from AO3 to Neocities/Nekoweb/wherever as HTML files and want to make them look nicer than the default styling, you might be interested: https://fan.kingdra.net/ao3css/

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions, run into any bugs, whatever! ♥

kalloway

What have you been working on and how are things going? Found any cool resources to share? Or just want to say hi?

Profile

All Things Small Web

August 2026

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Page Summary

kalloway - Welcome to the SmallWeb!
enchantedsleeper - Small Web September, anyone?
althea_valara - Smallweb September?
toothpastepancake - NEOCITIES. FOR YURI
arimamary - Fic Archive V2 (Filters, Mobile-friendly, No JS)
pengilly - One less rotten link this evening
le_gaosaure - Neocities is currently down
althea_valara - Guest Books?
flareonfury - Question > Prompt Generator (Answered)
kalloway - Hey there, Smallweb! Chatter post time!
rionaleonhart - Designing Websites For Exploration
elyusion - Imageboards for the Layman
thedumbopt_imist - (no subject)
thedumbopt_imist - (no subject)
kalloway - Hey There, Smallweb! Let's Chatter!
kalloway - Hey There, Smallweb! Let's Chatter!
kalloway - Hey there, Smallweb! Let's Chatter!
kalloway - Hey there, Smallweb! Chatter post time!
kalloway - Hey there, Smallweb!
ceu - Fannish webpage templates
kalloway - How's it going, Smallweb?

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Style: Cloudy Days for Ciel by carisma_sensei

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All Things Small Web

Recent Entries

Sticky: Welcome to the SmallWeb!

Small Web September, anyone?

Smallweb September?

NEOCITIES. FOR YURI

Fic Archive V2 (Filters, Mobile-friendly, No JS)

One less rotten link this evening

Neocities is currently down

Guest Books?

Question > Prompt Generator (Answered)

Hey there, Smallweb! Chatter post time!

Designing Websites For Exploration

Imageboards for the Layman

(no subject)

(no subject)

Hey There, Smallweb! Let's Chatter!

Hey There, Smallweb! Let's Chatter!

Hey there, Smallweb! Let's Chatter!

Hey there, Smallweb! Chatter post time!

Hey there, Smallweb!

Fannish webpage templates

How's it going, Smallweb?

Profile

August 2026

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