On LackLuster Websites
March 4th, 2024 At 11:14PM
Digital Cheese
Somehow there are more lackluster websites in the modern era than there ever have been. They somehow fail at both looks and content, of which you need one to be good, preferably both.Introduction
If you've looked around on Neocities, or nearly any other site-host (especially one that has heavy "old-web" and "nostalgia" culture), you'll notice just how many websites have nothing except the default new-page, a "WIP" page, or just a generic layout, despite being months or even years old, and sometimes having 100s or 1000s of updates.I would consider it a web-epidemic, due to just how prevasive these websites are. I am not entirely innocent on this one, as my website has itself been in update hell for the past few months until I finally gave up on self-hosting and PHP for now, but it's safe to say that there are far too many of these websites.
I've noticed they even end up looking the same because they often use static-site generators, but that's not entirely the issue. Its not so much a SSG, but also the fact they don't ever add anything. So imagine half the websites all look the same, except they ALSO don't have anything interesting to read or see. Now realize that is essentially the current state of Neocities.
I'm not sure where such a desire starts. Even if they make a cool unique layout, they just give up on the website after a while. I believe it is due to pure laziness, the extra popularity of static-site generators from Sadgrl who used to actively manage Yesterweb, and/or a few other reasons.
Neocities
I am addressing Neocities specifically because websites hosted here, such as my own (as of writing), are the primary source of this BS. I could probably write a book as long as the Bible listing off websites with this BS that will never get updated. This isn't to say there aren't plenty of good websites, whether they fit the well-crafted or the well-written criteria for a "good website" to me, but many of them are neither well-written nor well-crafted enough that it would be meant to be more artistic, hence why I am putting Neocities especially as a note.A. Examples Of Stupidity
I flipped the sorting to "Random" for this search, and while I obviously couldn't click every individual website, I could easily take a guess already. 5 websites that are essentially the default look, with nothing to read on them unless a default new-page message is that cool. 1 website that isn't the default look, but uses a SSG with no actual content.I was very generous with my rating on "default", so if I actually went stricter, there would probably be 15 at least on this list for just the first search alone. I will list the 6-websites I see like this, but I doubt they'll change. If they do, I'll update them and show another example (since there will likely still be plenty of these by then).
No, duplicate content is not "unique" and so 4 pages with the same shit isn't a "good website". I probably don't have to tell you that unless you're an absolute idiot luckily, but still.
t148398andres01.neocities.org
replicaeva.neocities.org
schoolwithsipa.neocities.org
ameliashen.neocities.org
blisterbeetle.neocities.org
cyara.neocities.org
Even a page simply pretending you're gonna do something with the website is better than doing this over and over again. Like come on, are the examples above that hard to avoid? Well I guess it is, apparently it's been an issue for many years, even before Sadgrl, Yesterweb, and anything else that merely dumbed-down the already often stupid Neocities user.
Although back then, many people still actually coded the website instead of not even knowing HTML/CSS when making a website while also making it so soydevism isn't available to auto-detect the website as normie garbage. Now, even if the website looks interesting, its likely to be SSG bullshit, and so you often can't even go "oh this website looks cool" after the 5th time of seeing a site like this. Because you'll just notice the layout instantly.
I would argue that the shitty-SSG layout copy/paste websites of now are more like an evolution of the Nostalgiaminning that was (and still is) frequent on Neocities, just the shitty-SSG copy/paste websites are far easier to create and forget about without any effort at all, whereas Nostalgiaminning websites are still going to require more effort, although maybe not even that is required anymore either.
B. Average Website Here
Below, a page I have made is shown where I make fun of the average website on Neocities. If it can load this page, that page should also work well. I may later turn it into a .MAFF and simply upload 1-2 images for those who aren't on a computer (and hence can't load .MAFF files via WebScrapBook on Firefox).digitalcheese.xyz/p/nostalgiaminning
You should see real quickly why I don't like it, when it's a perfect example of the average website here.
Proper Web-Design
Either make one damn good looking website with a few interesting pages, or write well enough to make up for the lack of an interesting layout. Preferably, do both interesting layouts and actually write interesting stuff.A. Layouts
I will note right now that I am no-where near the best on layouts. But, I can give you some guidance on a "good" layout. If you don't have much to say, but much to show, make a very detailed layout (it's ok if it doesn't work on mobile, but try to get it working there too if possible). If you have much to write and can't make a very good layout, just keep it simple, people will still read the page as long as it's not soydev garbage.Examples Of Detailed Websites:
- fauux.neocities.org
- feelingmachine.moe
- cyberoccultism.online
Examples Of Well-Written Websites:
- thricegreat.neocities.org
- simpleliving.neocities.org
- foreverliketh.is
- whitevhs.xyz
- youtuube.neocities.org
Some of the very detailed websites listed are highly advanced and well-written, others are purely for looks but still good. Either way, these should be examples of something to strive towards. While I don't expect the average website to be on level of someone's like faaux, it can't be that hard to make well-written content first like with thricegreat's website. There are more of course, but I didn't want the lists to go on forever.
B. Avoiding Soydevism
Avoiding soydevism is quite important. I don't have much to say here, so I'll go over the few key-points as it should be easier to be sane than soydevism, unless that's all you're taught.- 1. Don't use infinite elements for no reason. So no, 300 divs inside of each other then span elements before p elements isn't a good idea.
- 2. Don't use too many images/videos, nor highly-uncompressed ones in most cases. This is both a bandwidth thing and a sanity thing, it doesn't often add when theres that many. A ton of images on a really long article that benefits from them is fine of course, but don't try to just put useless things for the sake of having images/other media.
- 3. Use CSS properly, seriously proper usage of HTML and CSS does a lot of what JS used to be required to do now.
- 4. Don't abuse JS, so use it sparingly and only when the website *needs* it to do something. And in most cases, make sure your website doesn't need it, but merely benefits from it (such as theme changes or minor enhancements that dont lag the page).