100 Questions for Webmasters

Original from Mousling.net

1. Please introduce yourself.: No.
2. How long have you been making websites?: It's sort of hard to define? The first time I had FTP access to a server was around 2013ish. The first time I built a layout from scratch was... 2016ish? based on file creation dates. I also had a Freewebs site in like fucking. 2007. That shouldn't count but I just remembered it.
3. And what got you into the hobby?: Online TCGs!
4. What kind of website are you most interested in?: I generally like personal sites and informational sites. I don't like gimmick sites that exist just to show you a single image/animation.
5. What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?: It varies a lot, but I'd say I do sort of go with the flow once I sit down, even if I had a plan. I tend to plan on paper. I don't have the greatest visual imagination, so that really contributes, but I do often try to scribble something to decide how to present data, or to figure out the page structure.
6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.: It's hard to really put my finger on it? I think my design sensibilities are pretty rooted in fan sites from the early 00s, but I can't name any specific ones that really spoke to me. For content and structure though, these people's sites (in no particular order) had the most influence, I think: Scumsuck, ✦, Marine Haddock, Alex, Mei
7. What's your favourite part about making websites?: Coding the layout once I have an idea to chase.
8. And the thing you struggle with the most?: Writing the page content.
9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?: It's split out based on topic, essentially. The main site is entirely the same throughout, so you can sort of tell what I don't consider to be the main site. My shrines, my bookmarks, and my microblog post archive all have their own individual layouts.
10. How confident are you with CSS?: I may not get it on my first try but I will win.
11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?: Honestly, no, lmao..But my site's main CSS now contains styling for these elements...!
12. What is your favourite HTML element?: Details (and summary)!!! I love you HTML-only spoiler tags.
13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?: To be honest I technically don't because I copy either the SSG header or the literal head tag from something else I wrote and then edit it. I am not typing boilerplate by hand. After that, I start slapping down basic layout elements and then color them horrifying eye-burning colors with CSS so I can see what the fuck I'm doing.
14. Do you know JavaScript?: A little, I used to know more. I could relearn it quite fast I feel, though I was never Amazing. While I was digging through my web project archive I actually found a fanfic trope bingo card maker made in javascript and a partially completed AoC year, also done in javascript (I did not, in fact, get far).
15. How about PHP?: I know the include tag, and I can set up a site powered by etcg. Don't ask me for anything else.
16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?: Nnnnah? Unless you count the bizarre dedication to the colorscheme on the main site.
17. Are you more focused on content or design?: Design is what I find fun, but I feel like there's no point without content. Though I've warmed up to content because I've slowly discovered I feel more free on a site than on social media (I'm not allowed to see the zoo visitors since it scares me so we need a window tint.)
18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?: Yeah. Everything is a subdomain. Including this, which means that the no subdomain variant of this URL is a parking page. Thanks Porkbun.
19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?: A lot of them feel corny and insincere to me. I think people generally aren't aiming for the sites that are actually nostalgic for them and are instead imitating how they imagine the web used to be? I think teens and fresh adults are always like that though, like the big kerfuffle about those damn kids buying up all the vinyls, lol.
20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?: ...I super don't check. Looking at it now, I've been forgetful a couple of times... gotta fix those missing attributes whoops. There's also some problems with the microblog generator I use? Some big problems actually. I should check if its been updated probably.
21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?: They're fine, but please keep things accessible.
22. What do you think of button walls in particular?: I feel like really excessive ones lead to people not actually reading them/not actually caring to check the sites you're linking to.
23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?: Same content, but if I'm forced to start over I'd probably go for a drastically different layout for fun.
24. Are you envious of other people's websites?: I like mine, but sometimes I do wonder how people possibly make the really cluttered ones haha. I just wouldn't have enough ideas to do that.
25. What text editor do you use?: NeoVIM
26. Why do you use that one?: Because I hate all text editors and this is the first one I haven't hated.
27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?: Mostly on my web server, but larger images I want to keep at full quality get a thumbnail linking to Squidge.
28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?: Both of them want me to pay money to use my domain man
29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?: Uh like. 3mb. ? Yeah the output folder from 11ty is 2.8mb and the microblog is its own thing. 3mb.
30. Do you keep local backups of your files?: Coding locally does that by default. I also backup my harddrive to an external, and I have a local git forge on my home server that I never remember to commit or push to.
31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?: I like sites that are easy to read, which is generally towards the middle of that. Stark black on white is difficult for me, but a lot of super fancy sites are also impossible for me to read @_@
32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?: When there's no specific thing I'm taking colors from, I tend to pick a random palette with green or blue in it. This site sticks strictly to its colorscheme because I find it fun. The pages that don't stick to it have their own theming, either after the subject of the shrine or some other thing I like that's elsewhere in the layout. Dana's Cradle is just themed after the game its about.
33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?: With such a low pressure hobby I think I would've already quit if I felt like quitting... I guess with my other site it's a resource, but I don't think I'd ever "quit" so much as stop updating. (...I know it looks like I have but I've been working on it, prommy)
34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?: I have friends who currently or previously owned or worked on sites. We don't tend to talk about websites together.
35. Do people in your real life know about your website?: People in real life do not know that I've dedicated time and effort to a dead gacha game, nor that I have a site where I talk about fictional characters they've never heard of kissing. My sister has enough information to chase me down though, but I don't think she will.
36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?: When I feel like it.
37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?: Not really? I don't feel like it.
38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?: Hobby, though it's around my opinions rather than informational.
39. Do you do web design professionally?: Nah.
40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?: I probably should but I don't understand corporate design trends and I don't know how to use shit like Bootstrap or Tailwind.
41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?: I don't like any 1-on-1 communication at all! I do have my e-mail public though, or at least an alias linked to it.
42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?: I've mostly left social media, but it's not for the usual reasons in these spaces. I don't really think it's soul sucking or poisoning my brain or whatever, I just don't like some of those sites and I was tired of using sites I hate to compromise for other people. No more! I grew a spine!! I do self-host Akkoma (Mastodon) though, because I sincerely like it. I also don't treat this site anything like social media. For one, it deliberately isn't social.
43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?: Despite what I just said, I use whatever my friends use. Right now it's Discord. Check back in a couple months at this rate.
44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?: Sometimes? If I'm just doing design or data entry I like to listen to podcasts or youtube though.
45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?: I've got two, but the other is a fan site. It started shrine adjacent but it grew out of hand and it's now less personal.
46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?: Anything
47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?: I feel this is a more philosophical question than you realize OP. But I'm mostly talking to myself here to begin with. This is about how I sound in my personal notes. Ah unless you mean life circumstances rather than personality/demeanor? No, I just don't talk about my real life.
48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?: I don't know that a single soul has even read my website.
49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?: For the most part yes. But did you know? Did you know that the HTML tag can have a height? And that sometimes you may need to set the HTML tag's height instead of or in addition to the body tag's height? Did you know that? Because discovering that while I was working on my Heieru shring made me want to scream.
50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?: If you're in a webring the widget goes on your landing page, especially if your landing page has any sort of warning on it. Please stop putting it 10 pages deep into your website that's covered in gifs.
51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?: It's honestly fun to make responsive layouts. Mine aren't perfect but it's satisfying to figure out what I need to do to make it work and then see it in action when I test it. In general I think we should all make our sites as accessible as possible. One or two things being personal preference or not knowing how to make it work is fine, god knows the contrast on my site is ass, but a lot of people act like making their site viewable and not hostile to anyone with even the slightest disability is going to suck the personality out of it or is otherwise an undue burden.
52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?: I tend to aim for semantic HTML. Generic elements feel like admitting defeat even when they're the correct option lol.
53. Do you consider different browsers?: Honestly if you're not using bleeding edge CSS I feel it's unlikely to matter? I do sometimes check Firefox, and I will sometimes spot check using Lynx since it helps to spot screenreader issues (it's text only, so it shows pain points where there's an image missing alt text, something displaying in a weird order, etc.)
54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.: Vivaldi. If you prefer Chromium over Firefox, Vivaldi is hands down the best Chromium fork. If you're using Firefox that's probably fine, keep doing that.
55. And what OS are you on?: CachyOS (Arch with nvidia patches, stupid cpu optimizations that barely if at all matter, and a user friendly installer)
56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?: I like Linux because it means I can fix my own problems when they occur. This is not true on MacOS and extremely untrue on Windows. I like Arch and its derivatives specifically because I like having new software without effort. And I specifically chose Cachy becausen I tried their kernel and nvidia patches with my old distro and it got me a good 5 extra FPS from my nvidia card when I was right at the border below 60 FPS.
57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?: I try, no promises. I'm usually too lazy to test on a real phone and just make sure that it squishes gracefully
58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?: Horrible. Awful. I'm so glad browsers put a kibosh on that for the most part, and sort of disgruntled that people seem to have found ways around that.
59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?: They're fun but it's annoying when they're broken (and they always are). Yes I am in one, I'm in Fujoring because the concept suits my site and I really adore the widget for it.
60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?: I do! Currently just two for my favourite ships, but I fear I will just indefinitely make more until I run out of things I care enough to make shrines for. I like when there's creative web design, analysis of the topic, and a genuine sense of love.
62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?: I have never considered this in my life, to be honest with you.
63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?: I dabble in every creative hobby on earth, but I'm not the greatest with painting or illustration. My assets are edited official art and free to use images. I do make my favicons from scratch, but this site currently has a placeholder because it turns out making a favicon requires knowing what you want your favicon to depict, wow. I also made the site button for this site (which is not very good but I seriously don't have a good idea there either), and while my other site's button does involve a piece of official art, I did do the backgrounds motif myelf. Historically I've made my own tiling backgrounds, but I haven't felt like using tiling backgrounds this time.
64. What are your favourite resource sites?: Uh, IDK. I'd say the main resource sites I use are stock photo sites, whoops... I do collect this sort of thing though, because I am an insane hoarder. I've got like a million in my bookmarks section. I do hate how common it is to see resources sites that are just entirely stolen assets though... Yes it was common at the time! We don't do that anymore!
65. Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?: Closing out void-element start tags with trailing slashes? I was taught to do that and then very quickly learned it was nonstandard and did nothing. Net-zero information. I'm still doing it though, the habit stuck.
66. What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?: If you approach it like social media, it's going to be social media. If your goal is to get away from the horrors of social media, do not keep a hit counter, disable all social features on Neocities/Nekoweb, and do not worry about mutual linkbacks.
67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?: All in CSS, except temporarily for quick testing.
68. What do you think of frameset layouts?: Annoying but proper nostalgic.
69. How about table-based layouts?: I had to edit someone else's table-based layout once. I think table-based layouts are the devil.
70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?: I mean unless you're doing a horizontal scrolling site, what else are you goint to do...? I don't like three-column layouts though, they feel cramped in anything other than a webapp or social media site.
71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?: I spend so little time on the HTML that it doesn't feel like a different step.
72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.: "It's useful for your thoughts" it's difficult to read for my thoughts. Too wide and horrible max contrast black on white. If I want my thoughts with no fancy formatting I'll simply type directly into a blank text document or write it on paper. I do both of those plenty.
73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?: Only when the need arises, but I will admit that the contents of my shrines were fine elsewhere and I just wanted to code them.
74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?: Uh. IDK man. Feral animal gnawing on a keyboard and eventually producing a website.
75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?: No, but sometimes I get curious. Usually not just to figure out how they do it though... For the most part I either know I could figure it out on my own or it's something so unique that I wouldn't want to rip it off. Really outside of some really crazy CSS magic though, a lot of layouts get most of their magic from design skills rather than code.
76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?: Partially in college, partially via trial and error and reading documentation while I worked. I learned more from the latter, incidentally. I've also read way too much accessibility documentation, which combined with the college thing is probably why my code is so obsessively semantic.
77. Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?: Did you know that a p tag with text-align center can be used to center most inline elements including images? It's true!
78. Thoughts on floating elements?: I never used them until making this site. They're... actually kind of fun and it's not that hard to make them not cause problems in most viewing environments? One of the pages I use them on has the default text size set bigger because it breaks down above about 200% zoom though, ahah.
79. When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?: I have good instincts for what I want. Margins are usually px, text is ALWAYS em or rem, other elements are usually % or vh/vw. I really like vh and vw though. An unhealthy amount, honestly.
80. Do you have a favourite font?: I mostly only use fonts when making images. The main exception is using the actual game fonts on Dana's Cradle, which is an acceptable sacrifice even though that's like 4 fucking megabytes of font after compression due to them having Japanese character support.
81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?: I don't really have any plans to? I don't tend to do that sort of stuff honestly.
82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?: Yes, in place of scrolling social media since Mastodon is so slow.
83. Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?: Yes, if I really like them and want to revisit them. I think I'd be a bit confused and weirded out to find out someone bookmarked mine though. I'm a very strange creature though, so just don't tell me.
84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?: My shrines, probably. They're both art projects and me pouring my heart out.
85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?: Yes and no respectively. I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. (Though I do kind of covet smart home shit that's compatible with home assistant... habitat enrichment, wanna do terrible things to my house)
87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?: Me. No, legitimately, everything I post that seems directed at the void is for a hypothetical alternate universe me. The sort of stuff I make and ramble about are things where even if I thought they were misguided or amateurish, I'd still enjoy seeing if it was someone else. So I want to post these things for that hypothetical person who is enough like me that they enjoy it. It's sometimes hard to keep that attitude up when you remember there's people who aren't like that, though.
88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?: To be quite honest the answer is no to the point where I've never found out the actual difference between the two.
89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?: I had great aspirations and then failed to actually follow through on any of them. I have done some though, just not recently. None of this has been for my website though. I'm not actually sure what I'd want or need though.
90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?: I think the aversion to them from people who think it'll make their site look too uniform is odd, there's nothing saying you have to use a single pre-defined template... That being said I'm working on moving away from them after a time of enjoying 11ty. I don't trust the company that acquired them and I was reminded that I am a control freak when it comes to technology. I've moved Dana's Cradle over to being put together using a makefile and shell scripts already. I want to do it to this site too, but I need to learn awk to be able to replicate some of the things I do with 11ty currently, I think. A fully hand-coded website is just being rude to yourself though, there's a reason frames were so common in older static sites. An SSG is a sewing machine, not buying clothes from a store.
91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?: No, I don't want to know I'm being perceived
92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?: Every forum is discourse now. Discourse is the worst software on the planet and a complete insult to the concept of forums and good taste in general.
93. Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document?: I write into the editor because while it does require extra keystrokes, HTML is more comfortable than markdown and I'd be staring at a terminal with NeoVIM either way.
94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?: I have never thought about this ever. I think somehow has once, it's not frequent and I don't really care.
95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?: Being able to say it's old does a lot to help. But honestly I'm embarrassed of a lot of my current work @_@. I like my sites though, they're nice. Even the old ones honestly.
96. Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?: Definitely my fansite stays up as an archive or maybe gets passed on to a new maintainer. My personal site... I'm currently inclined to say I'd leave it up, but there's a chance I'd go back and wipe it because it's either become bad for opsec or bad for my reputation.
97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?: See question 1
98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?: I don't pick favourites and I don't know that any of them want to be spotlighted here by name... Of the people I'm comfortable talking to in private, two of them have sites and they're both on my links page. A couple others don't or at least don't anymore.
99. And do you optimise the images on your website?: Yes, which is funny when most of them are limited palette, miniscule, or both. I used to use commandline tools but TCRF's guidelines recommended trimage and I just went. Oh okay, I'll ue this.
100. We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.: Wrist hurt.