6 ms·

Am I allowed to plug my own site? The old web is still around - you just need to dig through more new web to find it. I run my site through a few Gulp tasks to

by Nadya 8y ago

Am I allowed to plug my own site? The old web is still around - you just need to dig through more new web to find it. I run my site through a few Gulp tasks to minimize files and provide security-integrity checks for my CSS - but otherwise it is all hand written HTML. Every page begins with copy/pasting another page and changing out the content by hand. I've noticed in the last few years the articles about the "early 90's/00's" web has increased. A desire for the older, more personal, mostly text and some cheesy few-framed animated .gif web. A web that felt more person to person instead of corporation to corporation or plastic Barbie doll to plastic Ken doll full with fake personas. This is why I support Neocities [0] and host my site with them. You can find all sort of interesting sites if you browse [1] a while. My personal favorite is browsing all the layers of [2]. [0] https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ [1] https://neocities.org/browse https://neocities.org/browse [2] [Warning: Auto-playing Music] https://mebious.neocities.org/Layer/Wierd.html https://mebious.neocities.org/Layer/Wierd.html

52-6F-62 8y ago
It's like 1998 all over again. Thanks for posting this.
jasonkostempski 8y ago
I think you just /.'d neocities.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  I was getting "502 Bad Gateway" for 20 minutes when I wrote that.
gerdesj 8y ago
Am I allowed to plug my own site? - crack on, no need to be shy.
- h0p3 8y ago
  Okay: https://philosopher.life/ https://philosopher.life/ Slow AF, but it usually works. If you feel it's just a Timecube or TempleOS, then I'm sorry for wasting your time.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    TempleOS is actually a very impressive piece of tech.
    - h0p3 8y ago
      I said that poorly. I meant that it might be dismissed as merely the work of a crazy person. I agree with you; I think TempleOS is fascinating, and I'm blown away that one person built it.
  - ycombinete 8y ago
    Hey there, love the idiosyncratic design of your site. I'm interested in reading through this, but the about section left me a little confused. Also, is computational existentialism a term of your own? If so, could you define it for me?
    - h0p3 8y ago
      Yes, it's my own term. I'm still developing what it means to me. You can find my evolving definition here: https://philosopher.life/#Applied%20Computational%20Existentialism:%5B%5BApplied%20Computational%20Existentialism%5D%5D https://philosopher.life/#Applied%20Computational%20Existent... Currently, it reads: "Applied Computational Existential is the scientific method loaded with a profound respect for metaphysics applied to my fundamental existential problems. The goal is to balance my self-dialectic with empirical bottom-up reasoning and rationalist top-down modeling from a transcendental realist's position in epistemology and ontology. This is an assay in teleology based on the assumption that the physical world and my mind are almost entirely reducible to computational models while humbly accepting that the final telos of reality exists in metaphysics."
  - mercer 8y ago
bananaboy 8y ago
Does neocities survive solely from donations? That's pretty impressive if so.
- jncraton 8y ago
  It's definitely impressive. In addition to accepting donations, they also offer a paid plan that offers more space, bandwidth, and features: https://neocities.org/supporter https://neocities.org/supporter
- kyledrake 8y ago
  Yes, and supporter accounts. https://neocities.org/donate https://neocities.org/donate Nobody is more impressed than I am. It hasn't stopped being amazing to me that it works.
  - Nadya 8y ago
    Thank you so much for your work on Neocities - and sorry for sending the HN hoard your way! I personally think the support model is all about scaling properly - or simply not scaling past a sustainable point. As long as the number of patrons scales with the number of "freeloaders" it is a sustainable model. The issue is if you begin to hockey stick and don't restrict your scaling (because you "want to be larger" or you "hope people will donate as we hockey stick upwards"). Once that happens, donation ran sites tend to collapse under themselves - which, for recent examples, is what has happened to so many pomf.se clones. Becoming too popular can become a death sentence. As a support-driven site, can you provide any insight into that? Or offer whether you agree/disagree with the idea? Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the matter.
  - bananaboy 8y ago
    That's fantastic! Congrats! You should do an interview over at indie hackers :)
hjek 8y ago
> [Warning: Auto-playing Music] https://mebious.neocities.org/Layer/Wierd.html https://mebious.neocities.org/Layer/Wierd.html While it looks like Neocities doesn't suffer from this reverse chronological bias mentioned in the article, the page you linked to is post-millennial enough to not work at all without JavaScript. But even in the 90s some would argue [0] that the web was getting too fancy: > Enough's enough. The World-Wide Web promises a new way to let people communicate. But too many Web designers are being bewitched by "multimedia" - they load their sites with gigantic graphics, embedded sound clips and animation. [0]: http://world.std.com/~adamg/manifesto.html http://world.std.com/~adamg/manifesto.html
- mercer 8y ago
  I'd argue 'a new way to let people communicate' is exactly in line with broadening the forms of communication to things other than just pieces of text. There's plenty 'wrong' with the web as it has evolved, but I don't think it's a bad thing to make it easier to use a variety of ways to communicate. Text is just the one that is easiest to implement.
  - birksherty 8y ago
    There are podcasts and youtube channels for that.
    - tazard 8y ago
      YouTube channels... You mean like videos on a website?
commandlinefan 8y ago
I still maintain my own blog “by hand” with VI, minimal CSS and a handful of CGI scripts written in Perl because I’m too lazy to learn the modern way to do it. Does that count?
shams93 8y ago
I'm a big neocities fan. I was on the original geocities team, my first real job, I love how neocities uses ipfs and their liberal content policy, a lot of hosts have as restrictive a content policy as the app stores.
nyc111 8y ago
Thanks for neocities.org link!! I created a site. It was fun and refreshing.
3pt14159 8y ago
This is cool in a sort of "stick it to the man" kinda way, but simple sites don't need to be weird. My whole site is just HTML and CSS. It renders normally on every platform. I host everything myself (purchased fonts, images, etc). I don't have to copy and paste HTML each time, because I wrote a static site compiler from scratch in Ruby. I don't even use any gems, it's that easy. For an example article, check out: https://zachaysan.com/zero https://zachaysan.com/zero The web doesn't need to be this horrible bloated thing we've all made it into.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  While I agree with you I don't think we should encourage everyone to build their own static site compiler. However there's a sweet spot and I think it is Netlify (or any other comparable host) and the static site generator of your choice, for me it's Middleman. Anyway, you're right, the tools to build a blog and publish content you truly own are absolutely there.
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    Oh I totally agree that most people shouldn't be writing their own static site compilers. That being said, I think that it's so much less work than an expert may think it is that I think it is worth mentioning. The web doesn't need to be that complicated. Sometimes stitching together some HTML isn't the end of the world and it's kinda enlightening to have something that is 100% you.

by Nadya 8y ago

52-6F-62 8y ago

It's like 1998 all over again. Thanks for posting this.

jasonkostempski 8y ago

I think you just /.'d neocities.

jasonkostempski 8y ago
I was getting "502 Bad Gateway" for 20 minutes when I wrote that.

gerdesj 8y ago

Am I allowed to plug my own site? - crack on, no need to be shy.

h0p3 8y ago
Okay: https://philosopher.life/ https://philosopher.life/ Slow AF, but it usually works. If you feel it's just a Timecube or TempleOS, then I'm sorry for wasting your time.
- adrianN 8y ago
  TempleOS is actually a very impressive piece of tech.
  - h0p3 8y ago
    I said that poorly. I meant that it might be dismissed as merely the work of a crazy person. I agree with you; I think TempleOS is fascinating, and I'm blown away that one person built it.
- ycombinete 8y ago
  Hey there, love the idiosyncratic design of your site. I'm interested in reading through this, but the about section left me a little confused. Also, is computational existentialism a term of your own? If so, could you define it for me?
  - h0p3 8y ago
    Yes, it's my own term. I'm still developing what it means to me. You can find my evolving definition here: https://philosopher.life/#Applied%20Computational%20Existentialism:%5B%5BApplied%20Computational%20Existentialism%5D%5D https://philosopher.life/#Applied%20Computational%20Existent... Currently, it reads: "Applied Computational Existential is the scientific method loaded with a profound respect for metaphysics applied to my fundamental existential problems. The goal is to balance my self-dialectic with empirical bottom-up reasoning and rationalist top-down modeling from a transcendental realist's position in epistemology and ontology. This is an assay in teleology based on the assumption that the physical world and my mind are almost entirely reducible to computational models while humbly accepting that the final telos of reality exists in metaphysics."
- mercer 8y ago

bananaboy 8y ago

Does neocities survive solely from donations? That's pretty impressive if so.

jncraton 8y ago
It's definitely impressive. In addition to accepting donations, they also offer a paid plan that offers more space, bandwidth, and features: https://neocities.org/supporter https://neocities.org/supporter
kyledrake 8y ago
Yes, and supporter accounts. https://neocities.org/donate https://neocities.org/donate Nobody is more impressed than I am. It hasn't stopped being amazing to me that it works.
- Nadya 8y ago
  Thank you so much for your work on Neocities - and sorry for sending the HN hoard your way! I personally think the support model is all about scaling properly - or simply not scaling past a sustainable point. As long as the number of patrons scales with the number of "freeloaders" it is a sustainable model. The issue is if you begin to hockey stick and don't restrict your scaling (because you "want to be larger" or you "hope people will donate as we hockey stick upwards"). Once that happens, donation ran sites tend to collapse under themselves - which, for recent examples, is what has happened to so many pomf.se clones. Becoming too popular can become a death sentence. As a support-driven site, can you provide any insight into that? Or offer whether you agree/disagree with the idea? Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the matter.
- bananaboy 8y ago
  That's fantastic! Congrats! You should do an interview over at indie hackers :)

hjek 8y ago

> [Warning: Auto-playing Music] https://mebious.neocities.org/Layer/Wierd.html https://mebious.neocities.org/Layer/Wierd.html While it looks like Neocities doesn't suffer from this reverse chronological bias mentioned in the article, the page you linked to is post-millennial enough to not work at all without JavaScript. But even in the 90s some would argue [0] that the web was getting too fancy: > Enough's enough. The World-Wide Web promises a new way to let people communicate. But too many Web designers are being bewitched by "multimedia" - they load their sites with gigantic graphics, embedded sound clips and animation. [0]: http://world.std.com/~adamg/manifesto.html http://world.std.com/~adamg/manifesto.html

mercer 8y ago
I'd argue 'a new way to let people communicate' is exactly in line with broadening the forms of communication to things other than just pieces of text. There's plenty 'wrong' with the web as it has evolved, but I don't think it's a bad thing to make it easier to use a variety of ways to communicate. Text is just the one that is easiest to implement.
- birksherty 8y ago
  There are podcasts and youtube channels for that.
  - tazard 8y ago
    YouTube channels... You mean like videos on a website?

commandlinefan 8y ago

I still maintain my own blog “by hand” with VI, minimal CSS and a handful of CGI scripts written in Perl because I’m too lazy to learn the modern way to do it. Does that count?

shams93 8y ago

I'm a big neocities fan. I was on the original geocities team, my first real job, I love how neocities uses ipfs and their liberal content policy, a lot of hosts have as restrictive a content policy as the app stores.

nyc111 8y ago

Thanks for neocities.org link!! I created a site. It was fun and refreshing.

3pt14159 8y ago

This is cool in a sort of "stick it to the man" kinda way, but simple sites don't need to be weird. My whole site is just HTML and CSS. It renders normally on every platform. I host everything myself (purchased fonts, images, etc). I don't have to copy and paste HTML each time, because I wrote a static site compiler from scratch in Ruby. I don't even use any gems, it's that easy. For an example article, check out: https://zachaysan.com/zero https://zachaysan.com/zero The web doesn't need to be this horrible bloated thing we've all made it into.

thirdsun 8y ago
While I agree with you I don't think we should encourage everyone to build their own static site compiler. However there's a sweet spot and I think it is Netlify (or any other comparable host) and the static site generator of your choice, for me it's Middleman. Anyway, you're right, the tools to build a blog and publish content you truly own are absolutely there.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Oh I totally agree that most people shouldn't be writing their own static site compilers. That being said, I think that it's so much less work than an expert may think it is that I think it is worth mentioning. The web doesn't need to be that complicated. Sometimes stitching together some HTML isn't the end of the world and it's kinda enlightening to have something that is 100% you.