A whole year on the Indie Web

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I signed up to Neocities at 11:41am on Tuesday the 4th of April 2023.

The URL was (or technically still is) fri11s.neocities.org. I wanted 'frills', obviously, but someone pipped me to the post 7 months earlier. I settled with the leet speak version, replacing the 'l's with '1's. However, screenreaders pronounced it as 'Friday 11 S' 😬 Not really what I was going for, so I eventually purchased frills.dev and that is where you are today.

I've had a bunch of websites in the past, as is the norm for any meddling developer. But overwhelmed by the idea that they had to be professional and informational, they never really got past a simple splash page and quickly stagnated.

This time, it was different. The intention was different. The intention was to play and to break things and be silly and to just have a good time:

Hey this is my new website

this is my space to just be silly, write bad code and dumb blogs and get away from the big platforms.

The nostalgia of what the web used to be, the community of webrings, chatboxes and guestbooks. and goddman handwritten html and css.

Love, Frills xo

The stats

  • 1017 Neocities updates
  • 643 git commits
  • 12 webrings
  • Half a million views

My favourite pages

  • My Guestbook - I love these kinds of micro-interactions. The "hey I was here", a little bit like a graffiti tag or a name scratched into a public bench. Guestbooks are what bring the Indie Web together, without the need for social media. If people leave the link to their website as well, I am over the moon that I can go and check out their website.
  • HTML named colours tool - I spent hours compiling a 140-strong list of the HTML named colours. Manually checking and noting their color contrast ratios, fetching the Hex, and RGB values of each one, making those values copy-able at the click of a button, deciding on filter sets and adding the filter functionality. I loved how it came out and it still gets hits so I'm proud that some people are making use of it.
  • Character sheet style about page - I find writing about pages really hard, so creating a character sheet made it fun and (a bit) easier to do. It's still not finished, I've embraced working in the open, partly to actually have some content for people to read, but also to force me to get on with the unfinished page.
  • My avatar collection displays my Picrew spree and commissioned avatars by super talented artists and designers. There is also a randomiser on the homepage which adds a different flavour avatar each time it is refreshed.

My highlights

My highlights include (but are not limited to) being linked to by Sophie Koonin (whose website is the whole reason I got here) and having my blog post, this website is personal, blow up a little bit (and being annoyed I didn't form the URL properly but by then it was too late!), taking part in the 32 bit cafe community and having my theme default for a few months.

The Evolution

I didn't start capturing screenshots until late 2023, the Wayback Machine did some heavy lifting here to get some shots of what it looked like at the beginning.

I didn't know what to do with my website for a while, I knew I needed to flesh out the content before getting too deep into the design, but November 2023 was really when I started to get an idea of where I wanted the design to go.

Dark and light mode themes have been a staple for a while, initially just using the prefers-dark-mode media query, but eventually getting a JavaScript-based toggle so you could override your system preference. Seasonal themes were created for Halloween and Christmas 2023, but I didn't screenshot those 😢

April 2023

The Inception. Screenshot of a simple white website, using a monospaced font. The title says 'Hey this is my new website' and there is a little introduction saying 'this is my space to just be silly, write bad code, and dumb blogs and get away from the big platforms. The nostalgia of what the web used to be, the community of webrings, chatboxes and gustbooks. and goddamn handwritten html and css. Love, Frills xo'. A list of links I had recently seen and bookmarked in raw URLs sit underneath.

June 2023

A little bit of flavour.

Screenshot of a simple pale green website, using a monospaced font and lots of emojis, a brief RPG-style introduction, nav items are just home and directory (a links page), list of info including star sign, pronouns and location, latest status and last played song, 2 webrings sit in the footer

July 2023

First flicker of that bubbly heading font, Cherry Bomb 🥰

Screenshot of a dark green website, title is in a bubbly font and the body font is the system sans-serif, lots of emojis, the brief RPG intro, nav items include about, blog and weeknotes. New block for currently reading, 3 webrings sit in the footer.

August 2023

Moving away from green as it wasn't resonating. I was also experimenting with a full theme based on a colour using HSL (similiar to how elly does it).

Screenshot of a dark pink website. Same as the previous one really, just dark pink. Nav items are About, Blog and Button wall

September 2023

Enter chat: Dark mode toggle

Screenshot of a black website, title is now a logo (Frills) in the same bubbly font, the body font is Atkinson Hyperlegible, the list of info is now a bio section with an avatar, added an item saying 'Probably only', the brief RPG intro is longer and is explaining the site as a place of experiments, I imagined it like a wizards lair. Dark mode toggle is top right. Nav items include about, thoughts (a separate service), blog and links and experiments(!). 2 webrings, and a footer nav with accessibility, about the site and back to top links. Otherwise very bare!

November 2023

Things get exciting, first version of what I have now. Started being a Neocities supporter.

Screenshot of a black website, a brief RPG-style introduction, bio section online status is styled like Myspaces' flashing icon. New dashboard style, 2 picture galleries including photos of me and my dog, new latest articles block, RSS feed links, a 80x15 badge for Code Like A Girl. Everything is very square but colourful. Nav items are About, Blog, Links, Collections, Experiments and Guestbook. 5 webrings sit in the footer!

January 2024

Everything goes rounded and I love it.

Screenshot of a pale pink website. All very similiar to the last one, but everything is has rounded corners. More 80x15 badges for LGBT, Trans ally and 'Tea powered', 5 webrings sit in the footer

March 2024

Kinda where we are now, give or take.

Screenshot of a pale pink website. All very similiar to the last one, but emojis are much larger. Colourful borders have been dropped for a more subtle lighter background colour, 7 webrings sit in the footer Screenshot of a dark blue (dark mode!) website. Same as the last one, but with a dark blue and pink colour palette.

It's been bloody lovely to be here. I have done so much, read so much and seen so much on this side of the internet. I've digitally met a bunch of people that I hold in high regard in the development world and I feel more of a part of it than I have in my almost decade long stay in this online world.

I'm participating. And that is what the Indie Web is all about.