It’s been wayyyy easier than I ever thought it was going to be. I especially learned a lot from this site: https://www.w3schools.com/
I’ve been learning as I go, and I’m so glad I did.
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God I miss myspace and its customizability, and even neopets doing the same. But… I still kinda get why those features got dropped, viruses got real bad and I’m sure there were a few cases of auto-friend scripts on myspace that some folks wound up having the entire site on their friendslist.
Still though, it was cool. And I miss webrings too, where people would link to each other’s websites in the toolbar or something and you could like navigate a whole group of friends’ sites to see what they’re all up to. Some webcomics still do this I think!
I think most colleges have a basic web design course that’s part of the required IT general education stuff, but it really feels like most people do it for the class and then forget everything immediately. Kinda a bummer.
I have my own site, hosted through github, and that uses Hugo. I have a little tutorial up about it, but it’s way more convoluted than just run-of-the-mill html. Would recommend looking into static site frameworks though, since hosting for that kind of thing tends to be cheap/free and it lets you throw content up without being super locked into a template or something (since these things usually put the base template in one spot, you don’t have to update every single page, just one file and regenerate)
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I think one of the biggest fumbles in web design was dropping WYSIWYG, there’s a reason Microsoft Publisher doesn’t require coding and there’s fundamentally little difference between the essence of web design and laying out a document.
Anyway here’s a website I made, I still have things I’d like to add to it but at least I have some templates for further expansion:
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I follow this geocities archive bot on bluesky and there was something about this one that was quite moving. The point being that it was never hard to make a website, it just required some time. That meant it wasn’t accessible to everyone but it was accessible to a wide variety of people.
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I feel like wysiwyg died with the advent of mobile readiness. suddenly sites have to change entire layouts and flex for a variety of screen sizes and not everyone’s on a 4:3 box anymore. Wysiwyg doesn’t really work all too well for that. That said, they’re still used fairly often for content editing – that’s what this exact reply text input is after all. Wordpress and similar CMS things work with em a ton.
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I got started with NeoCities a couple years ago and sadgrl’s resources are really invaluable for simple html sites
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Oh hey I’ve done quite a bit of research about this! Let me share some of my finds!
Philosophy
First of all I think the resurgence of “hey I should make my own website” is extremely good and everyone should try it. A lot of tech literacy has been lost in the move from PCs to smartphones and the introduction of apps, and as an elder millennial I feel this strongly! I think basic web dev is a good way to get in there and understand a bit more about how the internet works for people who don’t know. I have found a resource that focuses on the ownership and tech literacy side of things: Indieweb might be interesting to have a read although I personally feel that the barrier to entry can feel a bit high if you start on this website.
Resource sites
Neocities has already been mentioned several times and it’s a wonderful site, but if you’re in Europe and want your site to be hosted in Europe (which in my opinion you should, if you can) there’s an EU alternative called Nekoweb. It functions much the same way as Neocities and I think they can be considered sister sites in a way.
Webflow is a WYSIWYG free website builder, good for dipping your toes in if the coding aspect really intimidates you
mmm.page is another WYSIWYG editor with a different aesthetic. the free version has a limit to how many elements you can add though
Visual Studio Code is a smaller and free version of Visual Studio for your coding needs. The plugin Live Server allows you to run a virtual server that updates in real time making development comfortable and fast!
European Alternatives has a handy list of internet services that are hosted in EU. The location of your server is important especially if you plan on writing about things that certain kings might find unpalateable!
That’s what I remember for now from my deep dive (I went so far into this rabbithole some months ago) hope it might help someone!
…I would link to more of the resources but as a new user I’m limited as to how many links I can put in a post…:’)
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This forum is hosted in the EU for that very reason. The US tech industry has proven itself to be entirely untrustworthy.
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That’s good to hear! Trump is entirely unpredictable (nicest way I can put it) so I can’t trust him not to wake up one day and decide the great firewall is a great idea and he wants one too, right 
And make it taller and bigger than the chinese one!!!
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There’s a modern MySpace like called SpaceHey! Apparently it’s gaining some steam but I haven’t checked it out yet.
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Personally i find the tutorials from html for people really good ! it covers all the basics for html, some tips for CSS and how to publish on neocities !
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Can’t believe I’ve been messing around with HTML for 26 years 
honestly, HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS (in moderation) get you so so far.
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I’m a programmer who makes websites for my job… but I don’t actually know what would be a good way to go about hosting my own web sites and webapps. Everything I do for work is hosted on servers I don’t have to set up or know anything about.
What are good resources for hosting sites/apps that aren’t like, aws cloud servers?
I’m not trying to make anything crazy, but I need to be able to have a small database. Neocities can’t do that.
All of this stuff has become sooo expensive. I use one.com for my website. It has dB and mysql and all that jazz.
Its 120usd per year. (i wrote them and said it was expensive…. So now I get it for 80-90 usd per year.) noice!
When I started it was like 20 usd per year. Much has changed.
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I use NameCheap.com to register domains and for hosting. It’s cheap and it works. The support team has been able to help me solve problems. They’ve been around forever and seem reliable.
But they also don’t have the best reputation nowadays it seems. I mostly used them because a friend recommend them for registering domains around 15 years ago. When I finally needed to host a website too, it just made sent to start with them.
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I use IONOS and Netlify via Github repos for hosting different sites and most of my domains are from IONOS and Porkbun. It’s not a cheap endeavour since I don’t make money off my sites (I have about 10 now I think?) but I couldn’t imagine life without them
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I grew up in the Geocities era, so I learned my fair share of HTML. I even took an HTML class at my college as both a refresher and wanting to know more about HTML than someone who used it in the early 2000s a few years ago that doesn’t appear to be available now. It does seem like a lost art nowadays now that people can just make social media accounts.
When I discovered Neocities, I did end up making a website for it. It is mostly a glorified Linktree page to my other socials. I did add a blog section, but I just keep thinking it would be better to use WordPress or even Tumblr for that kind of thing even if updating it is just writing a few paragraphs and wrapping it up with some <p>s. But yes, it’s very cool to learn to code something and make it look like how you want it to look instead of being limited to the website you’re on.
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I’ve got a neocities page, where I’ve got an ongoing journal from playing through a bunch of old games and a couple other random things I felt like putting up. The plan is basically to put up something whenever I get seized by the urge to write about something. The looks are basic as hell, though, my HTML experience is pretty limited so I kept it simple so I could focus on putting stuff up. I’ve got a long weekend coming up, though, I should fancy it up a little. Definitely going to use some of the resources here.
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Don’t forget to put up a guestbook!
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Absolutely agree that having a site under your own control is the way to go. I procrastinated on this for years before doing something about it, but it’s been incredibly rewarding.
My setup: domain via Hover, hosting on Netlify’s free plan, and for site generation I’m really happy with the open-source desktop app Publii; you can use the visual editor to write pages quickly but still drop down to editable HTML if you need to. It generates and uploads static pages, so there’s basically nothing in the way of server requirements.
Planning on getting more adventurous next year with the kinds of things on there, maybe some custom-coded quizzes or something? Can’t do that on social media!
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