Webmaster questionnaire
Inspired off Arrow (thank you for listing me as an inspo!!!) and Bechno Kid doing this questionnaire as well!!
- Please introduce yourself.
Heya!! Name's Aid, mostly taken from Asuraid which is my online handle on most places.
- How long have you been making websites?
This year actually LOL, I did work with Tumblr themes before, but never to the point of making any from scratch. I have worked with HTML and CSS through that, and through Toyhouse, so technically I've had the skillset for a lot longer of a time.
- And what got you into the hobby?
Tumblr themes :P
- What kind of website are you most interested in?
Usually personal websites in terms of people's fandom/hobby interests, I like seeing people going nuts over their own interests. I really like coming across other yume/self-shippers as well or other people into games/media I like too
- What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?
Usually just go do it. I have a general idea, though I tend to either rely on templates to give me a metaphorical box to work with, or have an idea I just need to hammer out. If it's just trying to figure out a layout using my general site layout, I go ham and bonk at it.
- Please link to your biggest inspirations.
Oh man there's so many good sites to be inspired from ... Nana inspired a lot of my page ideas, Marie's layout is gorgeous, Kalechip's layouts inspired me to look into improving my own site and how to make it more mobile friendly.
- What's your favourite part about making websites?
Making them look nice and mobile responsive LOL. I like decorating them and hammering out the CSS, even if sometimes it's frustrating to figure out what isn't working, but that's the whole fun of it as well.
- And the thing you struggle with the most?
Finishing projects LMAO. We do not look at my incomplete gallery page, or my greyed out OC pages, or other things that are work in progresses and half done until the energy comes back around again.
- Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?
Same layout, since I use javascript to maintain the same sidebar, headers, and footer, it makes it easier to just keep it in one layout. Plus it makes my brain happy to all see it the same, but for each page to have its own flourish or content (ex my gallery for my Minecraft forever world). Some pages do have unique layouts to cater to certain things (art gallery, shrines), but otherwise for consistency I keep it the same.
Even for my OC pages they all use the same layout, but I use variables and different HTML chunks to make them unique to each page.
- How confident are you with CSS?
I'm ... ok with it. I'm still learning new things like nested variables and what stuff like > does, as well as working with ::before and ::after pseudo selectors.
- Do you know how to correctly use
<dl>?
Didn't until now! I've never used it, and it definitely seems very niche ...
- What is your favourite HTML element?
<b>, <i>, and any decorative element. But I'm a sucker for those.
- If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?
Open up a test page and fuck around with the layout I wanna do, putting in all the garrish ugly colours so I can see where each section is and if it's properly appearing.
- Do you know JavaScript?
Vaguely how to read, not how to write.
- How about PHP?
Even less.
- Does your website have a theme that you stick to?
Greens and my layout, since I use the same layout. Oh, also Sylvie themed. What is joy but deciding to theme your stuff around your favourite OC?
- Are you more focused on content or design?
Yesn't. Both? Since my layout is pretty set in stone, I don't do too much more designing so I can focus on content.
- Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?
I do, albeit only one to host my carrd turned to art website. It'd be cool to get a custom one for my personal site but I also just do Not care that much.
- What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?
I think they're pretty neat. I never grew up on retro websites/Geocities so to me they're a cool way for people to try to redo the old coding from back then, but in a more modern way with syntax.
- Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?
It is for the most part, I don't really actively check to be fair, but my coding program tends to catch most minor errors.
- What are your opinion on buttons and banners?
Fun as hell!!!! They make linking and exploring fun!!!!
- What do you think of button walls in particular?
I own one LOL.
- If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?
Mm, for the time being similar, I haven't quite worn out my website layout so I'd probably lean into something similar. I tend to like reusing the same kinda layouts so they wouldn't deviate too much.
- Are you envious of other people's websites?
Not really!! I'm more inspired than anything.
- What text editor do you use?
Phoenix Code Editor.
- Why do you use that one?
Too lazy to set up VSCode/VSCodium plus its integrated to my Github flow already.
- Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?
Usually on my server, some very low priority files are relegated to imgbb or if I'm too lazy to localize some files, they'll be the direct links off deviantART or Toyhouse.
- This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?
Not one I care for. Let people use what they want.
- How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?
Neocities shows ~110 MB at the moment. I do still have my art gallery to upload which will add more over time.
- Do you keep local backups of your files?
All of my files are local since I push them through Github.
- Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?
Depends? Simple can look really nice if it's not Corporate, but I can appreciate a highly visual website if it's not eyestraining.
- Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?
I like greens and pinks, and browns as well. Otherwise it depends if I'm going for a certain theme, or what images I'm using, I'll work around those (ex. my templates are themed around characters, so the colours will be themed after that).
- Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?
Not really, but it's also a very new thing to me. The fact I haven't dropped it after 8 months is a good sign, mostly cause I tend to filter through new hobbies very quickly, and I've made sites catered to allow me to make 'content' easily (media logs, diary, blogging, etc).
- Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?
Neocities oomfs...? I've been trying to get a few of my external friends into making websites, but otherwise it's just the people I interact with on Neocities.
- Do people in your real life know about your website?
No. The only ones I've brought it up to were classmates, otherwise I keep my online life and IRL life very separate.
- Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?
Very often is basically every day or every other day, or once a week. I always tend to find small things to tweak or fix, or update my Dragon Cave hatchlings, or add a new dragon of the week on my index, or update my diary. I update often because I tend to be a person who does tiny chunks of work.
- And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?
Not really, it's been pretty consistent since I've made my site in April.
- Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?
Me and hobby focused, some outside world focus bleeds into my diary, but not often.
- Do you do web design professionally?
Nope. At most I sell carrd templates which ... not professional, lol.
- If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?
I've considered it, but I wouldn't wanna turn something I enjoy into a job, even though it's terribly tempting. I've burned out turning hobbies into a job before (or commissions) so I'm not a stranger to it. Otherwise I kinda am a freelancer artist, working right now as a Unity developer for VR.
- Do you communicate with people by email very much?
Not often, I have with a few mutuals but I prefer just commenting on Neocities.
- Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?
Yes. most of my friends are on social media. Tumblr is my primary one, though I'm on Pillowfort as well.
- How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?
Discord, it's how I keep contact with my friends. Otherwise not really.
- Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?
Rarely, depends. Sometimes I have Spirit City in the background and that's lo-fi music, otherwise I get too locked in and don't need music.
- Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?
Just one, too lazy to make more websites.
- On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?
Many, a lot of them are obviously hobby centric so they're all ... 'me' as a topic, but I like putting my foot into a lot of metaphorical places.
- Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?
It's my real authentic online self? The me online is not the me IRL, but I'm not curating what I'm writing cause I'm writing for myself. Case in point is I curate what I talk about on my art social medias, but here I can't give a crap and just yap about what I enjoy.
- Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?
I'd like to think I've met with a lot of cool people on here :) IDK how many think of me as their friend, but the concept is so muddy that I don't worry much about it. Familiar faces I'm happy to see come around.
- Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?
Yes? I do think they need to get masonry grids natively built in though ... pls ...
- What are practices that you think people should avoid?
Uh ... not sure, I don't think there's any bad practices I can inherently point out.
- What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?
Offering dark mode for sites, using variables in CSS more, please please please check your colour contrast for text and backgrounds.
- Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?
Both? I try semantic but there's only so much you can do until you get to the guts of stuff, and need <div>s.
- Do you consider different browsers?
I try to ... Phoenix Code lets me test in Chrome and Edge, and I have Safari tested by incident because my phone uses it.
- Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.
Firefox, Chrome just sucks to me sorry. They got rid of my adblocker that speaks more than enough.
- And what OS are you on?
Windows 11. Blegh.
- Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?
Happen to use it, though so many incidents make me desire to move to Linux.
- Are your websites mobile-friendly?
Yes, that's been one of my thing I sorely wanna do is make layout that ARE mobile friendly. I still design desktop-first but I have methods to trim out decorative objects that won't work on mobile.
- What are your thoughts on autoplay?
I'm not a fan of them IMO, I'd rather have them on an optional toggle.
- What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?
I think they're neat as hell!! I never got exposed to them until now so I'm enjoying seeing what people are part of the webrings I'm in.
- Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?
I love them!! I just never know what to write for them??? Cause it's hard to condense my blabbering or figure out what I wanna blabber about in the first place. I just like seeing people's history and feelings on their own webshrines, I don't necessarily need the history of the media/character cause I can look that up myself.
- Are your websites "cliche", in your opinion?
N ... o? I dunno what even counts as cliche imo.
- What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?
A place that is me and holds all I care for. Also an archive of my OCs and art if I can do that (though I may have to rely still on external holders like Toyhouse).
- Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?
I am an artist, I do showcase some of my art on my page designs, but I mostly tend to grab decorative elements from others (pixels).
- What are your favourite resource sites?
Scripted for lace borders, kalechips and eggramen for templates, css box shadows for lazy copy and pasting.
- Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?
Pushing and noticing minor fixes again, and again, and again. Why 'frequent' updates happen often.
- What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?
Take your time, and don't force it. It can be daunting and scary, so please begin with templates if it makes it easier, and learn how to break them apart and put them back together. It's how I began, working with templates on tumblr, Toyhouse, and now Neocities. Even my current layout is an old remnant of a different template, until I rewrote the code myself.
- Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?
Mostly in CSS, the only time I hard-code is to make an adjustment from a CSS class (ex this flex layout has a gap of 5px, I need it 10px for this one).
- What do you think of frameset layouts?
I have ... never heard of them? ... they definitely feel like a Choice.
- How about table-based layouts?
What tables do, flexbox and grid can do better. At least for layouts, for stuff like how I have my calendars set up it works fine.
- Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?
Mine is a hybrid two/three column one so LOL, I think they work for reason and are pretty intuitive and can be mobile adjusted pretty easily.
- Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?
HTML. though CSS sneaks in when something just isn't CSS-ing even tho it should.
- Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.
Nope. Scary. Looks naked ... I can just go write in Obsidian if I need to ...
- Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?
Uh ... considering how much I re-use my layouts, I only have like a barebone layout for a new page + an OC page, otherwise no.
- Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?
Middle...? I'm familiar with CSS and HTML through my history, but putting it into practice is still new to me.
- Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?
Yes, if I'm curious on how someone did something, or a font, I'll look at it.
- How did YOU learn how to make websites?
Breaking apart templates to learn how they work and putting them back together with sticky tape.
- Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?
I try not to.
- Thoughts on floating elements?
Ok in some uses, I have a helper class that makes images float left or right and turn into a display block on mobile. It's usually decorative though.
- When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?
Depends on the context, some images are constrained to % of the body width so it's not larger than a certain portion of it, otherwise it's px. Font is always em, padding and margins tend to just be px.
- Do you have a favourite font?
... Nunito has bled into a lot of my work, and even my carrds used it a lot.
- Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?
Eh, not really? I like doing things on my own, and having a second person to worry about would err ... worry me. Hell, I didn't even like sharing game coding duties, I doubt I could do a website.
- Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?
Not too often cause I tend to go deep in the sauce, but I did very early on when I got on Neocities. Sometimes I'll toil through button walls if some look interesting.
- Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?
I do mostly for resources, otherwise I will link them in my button wall if they interest me (that's my bookmark). I'm honestly honoured if people bookmark mine.
- What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?
Mobile responsiveness/accessibility/ease of access and reading? Also my pretty OC and all the art of them /j
- Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?
Loosely? I do follow some tech trends but it's very lowkey and mostly from just what other people post. I don't collect anything.
- How often and for how long are you online?
Uhh. Most of the day. Oopsies.
- When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?
MEEEE and whoever else is curious to check my interests out.
- Have you ever been interested in XHTML?
No idea what that is. :D
- Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?
I do C# coding, specifically for game coding in Unity. Because of that, I don't really work with making programs ...
- Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?
Neat, but it goes over my head. I like having control over my coding so I'll stick with raw coding and using javascript to avoid tedious copy pasting.
- Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?
Couldn't get it to work so I gave up LOL. I can't say I care much.
- Do you frequent forums? Which ones?
32-bit Cafe and recently Treefort which I started with Joro. :D
- Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document?
Editor, easier to work there.
- Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?
I... think I do??? People have complimented me on the site and think it looks cool/my OC pages are cool so, yes.
- Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?
Nope, wholeass my art gallery has art from when I was 12. I've lost art due to being forced to delete my old deviantART and have zero archives of some stuff, so I've made it a goal to never delete anything if I can. I can just hide it if it's uh ... too weird even for me.
- Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?
Nope, never would close it. I'd leave it as an archive and with a hope of returning.
- Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?
Yesn't...? I'm used to yapping about myself from being on Tumblr, and I've used even this blog to introspect about myself. Obviously I'm not blasting out more personal things that can be super linked to me IRL, but I've talked about my history online, my identity, and my own mental health here.
- Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?
My bestie does not have a site ... she's secretive anyway so no.
- And do you optimise the images on your website?
I try to, I only got 1GB to spare LOL. I've had to cave to the WEBP ...
- We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.
My left hand feels stiff LMFAO. Weird that I type all day but this is nuking me right now. I had fun though.