and you decided to look to an uninformed amateur for advice

hosts

neocities

Neocities is a great place because it can accommodate the simplest handmade stuff up to the fanciest output the fanciest static site generator can spit out. Also, they have a social layer that’s valuable for not feeling like you’re screaming into a void.

mmm.page

Do you like dragging and dropping things around? Real handy with a GIF? Not a fan of typing <things></things><like></like><this></this>?

Their functionality has only been expanding and I haven’t checked back in lately, but it’s really impressive. CSS isn’t too hard to learn, but if you want to start doing really aesthetic stuff without learning it? mmm.page is my recommendation.

smol.pub

If you want to blog mostly written content, this is a great place to be! It will also expose it via gemini–if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it. Nice and simple, yet it’s got pretty much everything you need.

glitch

Glitch is like Google Docs for lil’ website servers, I guess? If you are interested in things that require a backend (e.g. to store things in a database) but don’t need a huge or professional-tier backend, this might be right for you! It’s all based on Node, I think, which I can’t say I know much about… but even for me, it’s approachable because they make it really easy to take someone else’s project and “remix” it (fork it) to be able to change to your taste. (And uhhh there’s a free tier)

html resources

There is a great overview with a billion good links in this part of this issue of the Yesterweb zine.

sadness’s layout builder

If you don’t know nothing about HTML and you want to start making a website, one challenge is that the best way to make something that’s simple but has navigation elements has changed since the olden days. CSS now has lots of ways to make things work nicely switching between mobile and desktop, to set variables to make it easy to change colors, and to get other conveniences. But if you’re looking at old resources, you may not get the best advice. If you want to handwrite your HTML and not start with something like a static site generator’s default theme, consider this layout builder! The output is nicely commented to give you a great jumping-off point.

design resources

Don’t underestimate the possibilities of going to a Tumblr you like, copying and pasting the HTML/CSS into a new file, and modifying things until they work. (You should probably save all the images you like, too, to make sure it’ll still work if Tumblr gets rid of them)

There are some great Japanese sites with templates like fool lovers.

what should I put on my website

According to this authoritative list, where by authoritative I mean pumpkin-themed, constituent elements might include:

  • about
  • album
  • bbs
  • blog
  • bookmark
  • chat
  • clap
  • diary
  • dream
  • event
  • gallery
  • home
  • illust
  • index
  • link
  • love
  • mail
  • memo
  • new
  • novel
  • offline
  • p-bbs
  • p-chat
  • pixiv
  • profile
  • ranking
  • res
  • reset
  • te-blog
  • text
  • thanks
  • union
  • works

I was never taught any HTML or CSS and haven’t taken any kind of course. I mention this so you don’t feel limited if you don’t have formal education in this stuff either.