So I was talking on Discord with someone and suggested they infodumped about sumo wrestling on a blog (don't ask). They said they were interested in making a Neocities, but that it was an intimidating project they were worried they couldn't do. I implore that person, and anybody who happens upon this post, that if I can do this, you can, too! I realize I'm not on the level of complete normie when it comes to tech, but I'm also definitely not a technical person. The most code I know is a small amount of HTML, a smaller amount of CSS, and a tiny, tiny amount of Javascript. Still, I could figure out Strawberry Starter, and even figure out enough raw CSS and HTML to modify a webpage generator's output to my liking.
This post will be divided into three sections: A history of how I published to the web, then a description of my current workflow, and finally, some advice for people who want to make their own site with Neocities or possibly even other web hosts.
A Brief Account of My History with Web Publishing
My first experience publishing my writing online was DeviantART. That, or it was Blogger. DeviantART was where I posted fiction, and the Blogger site was a politics blog. The DA is still up, but I don't suggest looking at it, the first thing I posted was in 2009, when I was in high school. It's all juvenile now. The Blogger site was hidden a long time ago, never to return. While I've never been an outright right winger, I know for a fact I said some really shitty things on that blog that I'm deeply ashamed of and I don't want anybody else to read. For the Blogger site, I just wrote using the site's built-in tools. As for DeviantART, I wrote my stories in WordPad and copied and pasted them over. Super simple stuff.
In 2011, I got myself a Tumblr. Again, there, I just used the site's built-in editor for posts. Initially, it was used for shitposts, but I soon deviated from that. Again, I ask, please do not go through my old Tumblr posts, or if you do, please try to understand I am a very different person now. I posted on Tumblr from 2011 to, well, I recently posted an obit for my cat, but other than that, I think I mostly stopped posting after the porn ban. A good chunk of that era, I was involved with Gamergate, something else I am deeply ashamed of. I probably said a bunch of other heinous shit there I can't even remember. Just be kind to me, please. During this time, I was still posting to DeviantART up into my university days.
In the late 2000's and early 2010's, I was super into Newgrounds. For many, many years, they said they planned to have a section of the site called NG Lit, which would've been lit if it had ever been released. As far as I could tell, there hasn't been much talk of NG Lit for a very, very long time. A shame, I would've loved to have posted my work there.
At some point in 2013, 2014, something like that, I was made aware of Twine. Twine is a tool for making hyperlink-based interactive fiction. Twine's output is an HTML file, so you can put your Twine games anywhere that allows you to host HTML. For me, that was Dropbox, which allowed hosting of HTML files as webpages. There came a time that Dropbox stopped supporting this, though I can't find when. I can't remember how I happened upon Neocities exactly, but it was most likely because I was looking for how to publish my Twines again.
In 2017, I made the first version of my Neocities, which itself used Twine. I realized pretty quickly this was a bad idea. It was a pain to update it whenever I wanted to post something. I very quickly moved the whole site to plain HTML. This second version of the site is still preserved if you follow a link labelled Old Rodania or Old Site or something like that. Eventually, editing and posting to the site by hand making every HTML page really got to me, too. So, eventually, I started dabbling in static site generators.
I first became aware of SSGs from Bryan Lunduke, who talked about Hugo. He also turned me onto WordGrinder and was one of the people who made me realize how cool Linux was, so unfortunately, I owe a lot to him. Unfortunately because he turned out to be a pretty horrible right wing nutjob. Regardless, I found out about Hugo a long time before I actually started using it, which ended up being in 2023.
If you look at the first few posts on this blog, you'll know what happened, but here's the gist. I thought I got Hugo working great, turned out I didn't actually, I tried a bunch of other SSGs but they were all too confusing to operate, and finally, I settled on Publii. Publii worked for a while, but then I came to a point where Neocities CLI, which I was using to upload to the site, stopped working for me. It was also a pain to use between multiple PCs. Eventually, after trying to get Neocities CLI to work and then looking for alternatives to Neocities CLI, Publii, and even Neocities itself, I found Strawberry Starter.
Again, full story in a previous post, so here's the CliffsNotes. Strawberry Starter is based on 11ty, another SSG, which I think I even looked at when I was looking for alternatives to Hugo. Still, the extremely well-written documentation allowed me to make something I'm quite happy with.
I didn't include social media like Twitter or Mastodon in this post, nor did I talk much about software I used for my actual writing, as I feel like those are different stories entirely. Drop me a line if you'd like to know more about that.
My Workflow Today
When I want to work on something, I start out by going to a folder called ppr (Personal Project Repository) and opening a terminal there (done by right clicking in my file manager and clicking whatever the option is listed as, something like open in terminal). I use Git to sync to a website called Codeberg and between computers, so I do a quick git pull command to make sure I'm up to date.
The next step varies. If I'm working on an actual story, I go to my writing folder. If it's a blog post, I go to my blog folder. If I'm on my Steam Deck, I have to do an extra step. Steam OS is an immutable operating system, so if a software isn't already built in or available as a Flatpak, I have to use a program called Distrobox to make a virtual environment to use it. These days, Distrobox is built into Steam OS and already integrated so that it uses the same file system as the Steam Deck, so I don't have to futz with trying to find my files after I exit. I simply run distrobox enter (name of virtual machine) and off I go. I need to do this so that I can use WordGrinder and NPM for Strawberry Starter. If you're on something not immutable, you don't have to worry about this.
I then open up WordGrinder and work on whatever project I decided to work on, and save it as a WordGrinder project (.wg) file. When I'm ready to post, I export the document as a Markdown (.md) file. If I've exported to Markdown, I move the Markdown file over to the src/posts folder in the Strawberry Starter directory. Here, I add the front matter to the top of the file, which looks like this:
---
title: (title here)
date: yyyy-mm-dd
tags:
- one tag
- two tags
---
Once I do that, I can use Strawberry Starter to preview my changes if I really want to, which is more useful for when I'm modifying the site itself than when I'm making a blog post. To do this, I just run the command npm run dev and go to localhost:1234 in my web browser. When I'm satisfied with what I see, I kill the web server with control+c (if applicable) and run npm run upload to both build the site and upload to Neocities with one command. If you're not using Neocities or you want to upload it by hand for whatever reason, you can just use npm run build to build the site so you can upload it wherever. I personally upload into a folder on my site, which allows me to have the blog as a separate section.
After I've done all this, or even if I've just made changes, I exit the VM (if applicable) and run three more commands:
git add .
git commit -am "Whatever I want the commit message to say"
git push
I run git add . to add any files I've created to the Git tracker. The period basically means add all new files, but you can also type --all. git commit commits the changes. -am has two purposes. The a is so that all changes I made to everything in the repo are commited, and the m is to make a commit message, which can be whatever I want. I'm pretty sure one of them is literally, "THIS BETTER FUCKING WORK OR I'M THROWING MY COMPUTER OUT THE WINDOW."
For other pages on my Neocities, I used a webpage generator and pretty heavily modified the output. The way the generator outputs the page, it bundles the CSS and the HTML into the same document. I have a test page on my site which is the original bundled file that I modify when I want to make changes. I put the CSS in its own file and simply copy and paste the boilerplate HTML when I want to make a new one. It's not so bad to modify the CSS, I just have to copy the changes to one file, but if I change the boilerplate HTML, I have to make sure I modify every page that uses it. I'm pretty sure I've got it how I want it now, though, and any further pages I make will be for other projects which will either have unique pages or will not be linked in the navbar, which is the biggest issue.
Some Advice and Other Info
So first things first, probably don't use Git to sync your shit. I'm sure there's a better way to do this. I'm not a programmer and this is the only thing I've ever used Git for, so setting it up and figuring out how to use it was very frustrating. Why am I using it? Well, one, sunk cost fallacy, two, I mean, it works now, I guess. Technically, I don't think you're supposed to use Codeberg for what I'm using it for, but shhh, don't tell them. Why did I start using Git? Well, it's supposed to track all your changes and I can use it from the same terminal I run Wordgrinder in. This was bullshit because I don't even know enough to look at what changes I made and being able to stay in the terminal isn't worth it. I'm just a stubborn idiot who always has to do things the hardest way possible, overthinks everything, and always gets in his own way. But hey, you're the same way, right? That's why you're trying to use Neocities for your blog and not Wordpress or something.
Anyway, as for Wordgrinder, as much as I love this software and will sing its praises to anyone who will listen and everyone who won't listen, you don't have to use it. Strawberry Starter uses Markdown for its posts, so you can use any old software that puts out a Markdown file, including a basic text editor. Markdown itself is pretty easy as far as markup languages go and I'm pretty sure a good chunk of Markdown editors are WYSIWYG anyway. Another interesting note is that HTML is okay to put into your Markdown files as well!
As I mentioned, Strawberry Starter is based on 11ty. I looked at the documentation for 11ty itself while I was learning Strawberry Starter and it seems kinda unwieldy. A lot of stuff is just not set up for you, obviously because they want to give you as much freedom to make whatever you want as possible. This is why Strawberry Starter is a good choice over 11ty. If you want a blog in the style that it's going for, you can just use it.
I didn't get into setting up Strawberry Starter because you should really just use the official documentation for that. Seriously, it's great! It explains everything better than I ever could.
In terms of looks, Strawberry Starter has nine themes out of the box, which you can modify to your heart's content, or you can create your own. I personally use the contrast theme, following that philopsphy I mentioned previously of making things readable and simple. I know the rest of the site doesn't really follow that, but for the library, I want to have a focus on the text.
If you have issues, make sure you're covering stupid mistakes, like making sure you're formatting your front matter correctly. I had this issue a few times trying to post. Just little things like getting the date format wrong or forgetting a space somewhere. If you do happen to make one of these stupid mistakes, don't worry, it happens! What matters is that you created something cool.
So I just finished Bunny Drop, the first of four shows I wanted to for sure watch this year. I'm also once again descending into madness with anime this season, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Bunny Drop starts out with a guy named Daikichi going to his grandpa's funeral and finding out he had a six-year-old daughter named Rin. After the funeral, everybody asks the obvious question of what to do with her. Nobody wants to take her in and when they start talking about putting her in a care facility, Daikichi says, "Screw you guys, I'll take her!"
I want to say, I genuinely love this show, but while there is some very light drama, there's not nearly as much as the premise might imply. Most of Daikichi's family is not seen again after this, but he does visit his parents with Rin multiple times and both Daikichi and Rin seem to be on good terms with them. This after the first episode paints them pretty negatively. There's also a plot thread with Rin's mother that doesn't end super satisfyingly. Speaking of plot threads that don't end satisfyingly, Daikichi seems to have a thing with a fellow single parent, Yukari, but we don't get to see them have a relationship. This show could really use an epilogue or something...
Yes, yes, elephant in the room, the manga has an epilogue that is basically the worst thing ever. If you've somehow never heard, in the manga's epilogue, Daikichi and Rin get married. Yes, really. Somehow, the mangaka thought having Daikichi do a Woody Allen with Rin was a good idea, except not only is she basically his daughter, she's also his great aunt. Fucking ew. Literally nobody liked this, and the anime producers wisely decided not to adapt it. It all seems even more insane after watching the show because, like I said, Daikichi really seemed to have a thing for that Yukari lady.
All that aside, again, I really loved this show. It doesn't go for the obvious drama, but it's not that kind of show. It's a cute little slice of life show, and that's fine. As a cute slice of life show, it's a damn good one and I can highly recommend it. At only 11 episodes, it definitely doesn't overstay its welcome, either.
The next show on my list that I'm going to watch is Kyousou Giga. I've already watched the first episode and found it very intriguing! My kind of weird, as they say.
Unfortunately, I seem to have gone off the deep end, as not only am I picking up Kyousou Giga, I am also picking up four seasonals. This will bring my total number of currently watching shows to 11, and I'm still playing catch-up with three of them! The last time I watched this many shows was in spring of 2021 and it kinda burned me out a little, as I said in my post about my anime watching habits. I'm hoping that doesn't happen this time, but I think I've got a better roster of shows this time around. Well, that, and Kyousou Giga won't be week to week, so I won't have 11 shows for long. Beastars will also drop later this season, hopefully after I've finished Kyousou Giga. Out of these 11 shows, two are classics (Turn A Gundam and Kyousou Giga, of course), five are sequels (and one of those sequels is a leftover from last season!), and the four I'm picking up are originals.
First up is Journal with Witch. I think I'll really, really like this one. In fact, I've already thoroughly enjoyed the two episodes I've watched! The premise is somewhat similar to Bunny Drop, actually. A girl's parents die in a car wreck, and her aunt takes her in because, again, the rest of her family sucks. It's definitely a departure from the iyashikei sweetness of Bunny Drop, so if you were disappointed by that show or just want a show that seems like it'll follow the natural questions of the premise better, try this one.
The next show I picked up is Sentenced to be a Hero. I actually ended up watching all three episodes that were out for this one. The first episode was excellent, but then by the second, I realized that the MC was basically like Kirito, or Ayato from The Asterisk War. He's just this edgy guy, but he actually cares a lot, but like, these two sides are in complete conflict with each other. I know the setting itself is edgy, and this isn't the worst example I've heard tell of, but maybe they'll remedy this somehow. Still, I liked it enough I watched all that was available in one sitting. I can see this one either going really well or falling off hard, we'll see.
You and I are Polar Opposites, I only watched one episode of. In fact, I almost didn't pick this one up at all, but I'm glad I did. Excellent first episode of this adorable and hilarious romantic comedy, and I can't wait to watch more.
Finally, I tried Champignon Witch. This show is, unfortunately, let down by its poor production values. In the OP, you can see an outline on the titular witch where they failed to properly composite the image. This is the OP, we're going to see it every episode, you need to get it right! I didn't see any other such errors in the rest of the first episode, but again, the show just isn't animated super well. It's not ugly, though! The character designs are super cute, and the backgrounds are pretty. What I really liked about the show is that it feels like a fairy tale. There's a sense of melancholy and sadness here that I like. I look forward to getting caught up on this one.
I really shouldn't be afraid to try new shows. The reason I was so late on these series is because I waited until Mother's Basement put out his Ones to Watch. I already knew Sentenced to be a Hero looked really cool, why did I need old Geoffy to tell me to watch it? I was already interested in Champignon Witch, why didn't I just start watching it? I wouldn't have watched Journal with Witch on my own, nor would I have watched You and I are Polar Opposites without Geoff's recommendation, but still, it would've saved me two shows worth of catching up. From now on, I think I'll start more shows on my own.
I said in my previous post I'd have to make a post about my anime watching habits. Well, here I am, I guess.
In my childhood, I watched anime like Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z. It was a time in my life where I didn't even realize it was anime. Hell, when I first read Harry Potter, I didn't even realize the books were set in England. In fact, being an autistic kid with ADHD, for a good chunk of my childhood, I wasn't even cognizant of when new episodes came out, so I think I missed a lot. By the time I was old enough to know what anime was, I was in middle school and in the middle of a phase where I thought anime (and animation in general) was dumb and for babies. In high school, I softened a little bit to thinking anime just wasn't for me, but I was still resistant to watching it. Then, in 2011, after I had graduated high school, a friend of mine told me I needed to watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
Madoka Magica was the first crack in the dam. Even then, I was resistant to watching more anime. I convinced myself I just liked magical girl shows. I would binge shows like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura at this point, at night, on my porch, because I was a hopeless romantic I guess. At the same time, I was starting to be more open to watching shows like Adventure Time, so this era was marked by a lot of me getting over myself. However, in 2013, the same friend who showed me Madoka Magica recommended Attack on Titan. I fell in love with that show, and still love it to this day. Yes, despite the weak ending. It was so good, in fact, that I actually started reading the manga after there was no second season in sight. In that time, I also saw the two Little Witch Academia OVAs and got really excited for the prospect of a show based on them. Yet, still, throughout university, I wasn't really into anime.
Come 2016, I had just left university and was looking for my first job. That April, I was excited to watch the first season of the Ace Attorney anime adaptation. This was the first anime I had watched while it was airing from the start. Madoka Magica finished by the time I saw it, and I started AOT seven episodes in. Same with Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress that season, which I started eight episodes in. Eventually, up through 2018, I fell into a pattern. I'd watch two shows that had finished, and maybe one new show a season, two if I was feeling spicy. At the time, I was working weekends, but my shift on Sundays would start later, like in thwe afternoon, and I would often watch anime in the morning before work, and I'd usually try to watch seasonal shows the day the episode came out. I got to watch the Little Witch Academia TV show when it came out, and hey, AOT finally got a second season! I even dropped my first show, Fuuka. I also watched a little show called Death Note.
Death Note was ten years old at that point, nearly 20 now, and I remember hearing about it at the time. Watching it and loving it as much as I did made me realize how truly foolish I had been. All the wasted years I spent being a pompous, self-righteous asshole! I really do wish I had been more into anime when I was younger. I missed so many shows I probably would've loved.
In late 2015, I had a new job with weekends off. It didn't happen right away, but at some point, I started condensing my anime watching into Saturday mornings. This may have started summer 2019, as I had a shift in the number of shows I was watching. That summer, I was watching five shows. Granted, two of them were half length, but still. Even after this, I'd often just add shows to my plan to watch list, thinking I couldn't handle that many shows at once. LOL. LMAO, even. Something would happen that would turn that idea on its head.
In 2020, COVID started and delayed many productions. As a result, the studios kind of just blew their load all over the start of 2021. In that winter season, I watched eight shows, an unprecedented amount for me. It was crazy, or so I thought. The very next season, I would watch 11 shows. Honestly, this was too much, and I was a lot less amicable to the idea of dropping shows, so I kept going with a couple shows I should've just dropped. That summer, I only picked up one show, Sonny Boy. I was still watching four shows that season because of the leftovers from spring! I can't remember if I stopped watching all my shows during this or before, but at some point, I just started watching all my shows as close to release as I could.
I'm looking at my MAL charts as I write this, and it looks like the blowback from that one season lasted longer than I thought. Until fall 2022, I didn't go over four shows, and more often, I'd only pick up a couple new shows. In that fall, I watched seven shows, but four of those seven were sequels. In 2023, I watched a whole lot of shows, with only summer dipping down to four.
Unfortunately, in 2024, I had a year of fatigue. In winter, I picked up one show. In spring, I picked up seven. Then, in summer, I felt like I couldn't keep up, there were just so many shows that looked so good. I felt like I didn't get to watch a lot of shows I wanted to, and honestly, I kinda wish I traded a couple of shows I did watch. Not that any of them were bad! Giji Harem, for example, put a smile on my face, but I would've rather watched Makeine. The very next season, I was just having trouble keeping up. I ended up having to put two shows on hold and drop one. I didn't even dislike the one I dropped, but I just didn't see a whole awful lot of potential in it.
2025 started out looking much like 2022. Three shows in the winter, then two in the spring, despite there being other shows I thought looked interesting. To use my own phrasing at the time, I guess I was taking a break. One of those was Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX, which was more like Gundam G-CUCKED ME. Hold that thought, we'll come back to it. That summer, I watched seven shows, but one of them, Takopi's Original Sin, I ended up watching in the inbetween time before the fall season. I preemptively dropped Sakamoto Days season two (part two of season one?) because, honestly, it's not a great adaptation and I had better things to watch, and I also dropped Kaiju No. 8 after one episode because I just wasn't feeling it. If what I'm hearing is correct, I made the right decision, as apparently the source material just gets more boring and generic as it goes on, ends unsatisfyingly, and completely leaves behind what made it special in the first place. In other words, a waste of my time, and this was when I was starting to try and be more mindful of what shows I watch.
Also during this time, I watched the original Gundam with a friend, the same friend who I watched GcuckS with. Gcucks was my first Gundam, and I wanted to like it, but it was just bad. It was like the franchise sniffing its own farts. It made Char uninteresting! And I can say without a doubt now, after watching the original, Char is an interesting character. I definitely want to watch more Gundam in future.
In any case, summer 2025 was a banger of a season, partly because I didn't waste my time with bullshit. Fall 2025 was also really good! I've even started watching Turn A Gundam week to week to follow along with a podcast type series, which is indeed still going on, if you saw me questioning that in the last post. I was worried because this same pwerson also did a previous podcast that did something similar, but ended abruptly. and it was fun following shows week to week for that as well. This and the Gundam TOS experience made me want to watch more older shows, hence me making that resolution. The same friend I watched Gundam with also wants to watch Digimon, we just haven't found the time, but we'll do it eventually.
If you'd like me to elaborate on anything I've said in this essay, by all means, reach out to me on Mastodon or Bluesky and ask! Maybe I'll even write a followup post. Here's to more great shows to watch in 2026!
I mentioned in my last post, one of my New Years Resolutions was to write more. I guess I'll elaborate more on those resolutions.
For 2026, I want to:
- Write more! I already mentioned this, but it bears repeating. I only released one short story in 2025! Unacceptable! I want to make serialized stories! I want to post more short stories! Hell, I want to write more about my thoughts on things! Even blog posts about local restaraunts will do. I'm already doing better, this makes two posts this year, and the month's barely started! I also want to look into posting on other sites, like Royal Road or Honeyfeed. I think there's a couple others, but those were ones I thought of off the top of my head. In this way, I might actually get together, you know, an audience.
- Watch more (older) anime! My PTW list on MAL is super fucking long! To this end, I've been watching Bunny Drop, which has been great so far. I told someone else that this year, I definitely want to watch Bunny Drop (check!), Kyousou Giga, Mawaru Penguindrum, and season two of K-On! this year. I might be able to squeeze in a couple other short shows before the year is out. Out of the four I mentioned, Bunny Drop and Kyousou Giga are 11 and ten episodes, respectively, while Mawaru Penguindrum is 24 episodes, while K-On! S2 is 26, so half the shows on my docket are shorter, anyway. I started watching Turn A Gundam late 2025 week to week to follow along with a YouTube series, but that series may have already broken down after only eight episodes. If so, I don't know if I'll keep doing week to week or try to speed it up. I still want to put some time between episodes, I was watching one episode of Bunny Drop a day for the first two episodes and then watched the third today (unintentional, been a bit rough). I think I might watch another after I post this. I'm really liking it so far. I'm going to keep watching seasonals, I've got four on the docket for this season, but I'm trying to be more mindful of what I spend my time on. In 2024, I felt like I didn't get to watch a lot of shows I really wanted to, and I started to get better about that. I should write another post about my anime watching habits, or this one will be way too long.
- Watch more (not anime) shows! I haven't watched a whole lot of Western shows and movies for a long time. At one point, all I watched outside of what I saw with my friends was Star Trek and anime, then I finished Enterprise and all I was watching was anime. I haven't even finished TOS! I think I'm only eight episodes in! Eight, 12, somewhere in that ballpark. I also haven't seen anything past Enterprise, and I really wanna watch Lower Decks. I should also finish The Good Wife, really liked that show. Oh, and more movies, of course! I used to watch a lot of movies, what happened?
- Read more books! I bought a Kobo for myself Christmas 2023 to do this, and it actually worked pretty well for the first year. Second year, not so much. I think I only read They Walked Like Men by Clifford Simak and started reading Don't Talk About Politics by Sarah Stein Lubrano. Still on that one. Interestingly, They Walked Like Men was the first book I pirated for my Kobo, and Don't Talk About Politics was the first book I bought for it. Everything else was either a freebie or a library book. By the way, if you do want to use digital library books, I can highly recommend Kobo! I can't recommend Kindle at all because fuck Amazon.
- Play more video games! I got a PS5 for myself last year for Christmas. I played Miles Morales, and am currently playing Ghost of Tsushima. I'm not really playing much on my Steam Deck, though, and I definitely want to use that more. I have been playing more since the end of last year, I played through Far Cry 3 in November for instance, and I tried to get into Death Stranding and back into Baldur's Gate 3. They haven't stuck, partly because I spent a lot of the time where I just have the Steam Deck working on this website! Still, I hope to continue the video game trend and even make it move upwards in 2026!
- Spend less time on YouTube Shorts! Kinda failing this one, sadly. There are some genuinely great shorts creators, like Sellsword Arts and Luke Humphris, and I do see genuinely interesting stuff on there all the time, which makes quitting/managing my time harder. This is why I don't fuck with TikTok, I wouldn't stand a fucking chance with that app. I don't say YouTube in general because, well, YouTube is just what I watch the most of and I don't think it's necessarily a problem. I should make a separate post about that, too.
Resolutions one and two seem to be going okay! Three, four, and five, I still need to work on. I don't know if maybe I'm just not vibing with Don't Talk About Politics or what, but I really don't wanna drop it because I spent money on it. Actually, that reminds me, I also need to write (rant) about the Jujutsu Kaisen "movie" I paid good money for to see in the theater that was literally just a recap of the Shibuya Arc that I already saw and the first two episodes of the new season. So many story ideas! So many blog post ideas! The new year will be a good year for writing things down! Look forard to it!
EDIT: I forgot to put the video game section in and had to edit the post like an hour or two after I put it up lolololololololololol
Aw shit, here we go again... - Carl Johnson
Well, Publii didn't really work out. So what happened? Neocities CLI happened.
Basically, when I tried to post You Die in the Game, you Die in Real Life, I was out with my Steam Deck. I tried to use Publii to edit the website, but I was having issues because of the way Publii works. Basically, what I needed to do was export a backup file and use that, instead of pushing the site files to a Git repo. So that sucks, but whatever, I just added the story to the site when I got home.
And there appeared the second issue. I tried to update the site using a little program called Neocities CLI, which I had used before. Problem was, it wasn't installed anymore. No problem, I thought, I'd just install it again. Wrong. It was problem. You see, Neocities CLI is a Ruby program which you install by running gem install neocities-cli. This program absolutely refused to install. I tried so many things, uninstalling and reinstalling Ruby, messing with config files, nothing worked. I had to manually upload the index page and the story page. I didn't even upload the rest of the changed files, so the tags on the post didn't even work properly.
After trying off and on to get Neocities CLI to install and even looking into alternatives, a little while ago, I found something I could use instead, a framework for blog sites called Zonelets. Zonelets, however, was missing tagging and RSS. I then found out about Zonelots, a fork of Zonelets with tagging but no RSS, and Bumblebee, a framework with both tags and RSS. I initially went with Zonelots because the Python script included with Bumblebee kinda spooked me, but then I decided to just go with it since that took some of the tedium out of updates (you have to manually edit the Javascript file for each post in Zonelots, and also Zonelets). Working with HTML (or Markdown in the case of Bumblebee) didn't bother me since my chosen writing program, Wordgrinder, can export to HTML and Markdown. I'd still have to manually upload the site, but I figured I could just make that a separate section and have a standalone homepage. I could've done this with Publii, but the other issue would've still been there, so I decided against it.
Now, you might have noticed this blog isn't made with Bumblebee. Bumblebee is controlled by a Javascript file, and no matter what I did, it felt like it was ignoring the Javascript file. At least, I think that's what it was. Even unmodified, webpages acted like there was no CSS file. So I looked at Zonelet's page again, at the section where the author listed some forks and programs inspired by Zonelets. I saw one that looked promising called Strawberry Starter. I was hesitant since it was basically just a template for an SSG called 11ty and I haven't had any luck with SSGs, but Strawberry Starter's site has really simple instructions that are super easy to follow. It also has, in addition to tags and RSS, a simple function to upload to Neocities! I'm going to stick with my plan to use this as a separate part of the site, and hopefully, you'll see this post and many more to come soon.
That brings me to why I want to do this now. One of my New Years resolutions was to write more. Even if it's simple blog posts, I'd like to post more. Hopefully, this helps me do that. Watch this space!
So some things about Publii aren't super intuitive. Go figure. Still more intuitive than most SSGs I tried.
As you may have noticed, I cleaned this site up quite a bit. The width is now 95% of the screen, I'm actually using the author page, the hero section is gone unless I can think of something useful to put there, and so on. One big thing is the navbar. I had to put the navigation links in the hero section until I realized I still had the Terminal theme's page open in my browser, went to close it, and just happened to notice the navbar in the screenshot. Of course, Publii's documentation for people actually wanting to use it isn't so great, so I went to the demo website and used inspect element to get a hint as to what and where the options for that were. Turns out it's the menus tab, but then after you create a menu, you have to add it to a group called Main Menu? I'm not sure if Terminal just has one slot and there are other themes with more than just the main menu, but it seemed kinda unnecessary, since I don't see a way to create more groups like that. Now that I have that figured out, though, it's looking pretty good.
Aside from that, I recently read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It's written in first person present tense, and while I don't really like present tense (it just doesn't feel good to me), it did get me thinking that maybe some of my stuff would be better in first person. Yeah, remember that story I talked about way back in the first post? I'll have to take another look at it, but it might be getting rewritten in first person. I'm actually working on a different story right now, and I want to at least finish a draft of that before I touch something else.
I need to write a postmortem of that VN I wrote as well, also mentioned in that first post. I really am proud of it, even if it was rushed (because I am my own worst enemy when it comes to actually doing this writing thing). People who say they need inspiration kind of upset me, come to think of it. I've got a million ideas and I can come up with more on the fly, I do NOT need anymore inspiration. What I need is that perspiration part. That's my fucking issue. I should also start shitposting more. Shitposting is fun. If you do want to read my shitposty works, you can see my AO3 here. Currently, all my shitposts are fanfiction, and all my fanfiction is shitpost, though maybe I should write more original shitposts.
Something else I'd like to do, speaking of shitposts, is make some web pages that are more in line with the Neocities/Geocities throwback aesthetic that are more typical of this website. This site is somewhat of a throwback to old web design, too. If you've ever heard of Maddox's Best Webpage in the Universe, I actually took a lot of cues from him for both this and the old site. Now, Maddox turned out to be a not so great guy, but I really took his thoughts on web design to heart. Simple, easy to read text, no distracting GIFs or weird microfonts, just a focus on the writing I am putting up here. Yeah, I know this site is a premade theme, but I chose it with those design principles in mind. However, the old Geocities (or Geoshitties, as Maddox referred to it) aesthetic has a beauty to it all its own. If I do make some, they'll be subdomains on this site, so stay tuned for that, hopefully maybe.
Hopefully, you'll be hearing from me again soon, this time with something to actually show for it.
So you may have noticed it's been pretty close to a year since I last tried anything with this site. That's because Hugo sucks and I hate it.
Okay, maybe that's unfair. The problem I had with Hugo was that I tried to update it with a new post, and it didn't update. Couple other things just refused to work as well, like how I wanted to archive the old site and the link just refused to go anywhere.
I've since tried a few other static site generators, such as Jekyll, Pelican, and Publii. Jekyll was also hard to understand, Pelican clicked with me, but had no decent themes, and Publii was rock simple to use, but also had no good themes. There were probably others I'm forgetting, but the fact is, if I can't get it to work and look good out of the box, it's probably unusable for me. Writing is my only skill, I'm not a programmer or any kind of web developer. Hell, even though I dabbled in very simple HTML, CSS, and Javascript, the themes for these SSGs were very opaque to me, so I couldn't even modify any of them.
Well, fast forward to now. I was getting back on that SSG bullshit, only to find that way too many of them are effectively dead. I found one that was promising and looked at its GitHub only to find the last commit was two years ago, for example. I soon came back to Publii. There are still things I don't like about Publii, but honestly, since it's a GUI program with no confusing front matter category folder bullshit, at least it's going to get out of my way and just work. I hope. They even finally got a good theme! Terminal was originally from Hugo, I think, and I thought it was pretty attractive, even though I didn't pick it. Well, whatever problems I had with it before, I'll take what I can get now.
I just know somebody's going to swoop in here and tell me that actually, Hugo is soooo much better because response times or some esoteric programming reason. Dude, I don't care. I work slowly and get distracted easily at the best of times, the last thing I need is to have the tools I use also get in my way.
Publii devs, if you happen to stumble upon this, please let me import HTML and/or Markdown files as posts. Maybe even plain text files, too. Also, what were you thinking making the social media share and link plugins premium? Why those? Especially the link plugin, and come to think of it, why is that a plugin? Whatever, I just made a link to my Mastodon manually in the footer.
What I said about my social media usage still holds true, by the by. Best way to contact me is at the Wandering Shop. I hope to see you all again soon with another post, for real this time. May have to finagle a couple things still...
Hey, all! I hope this post finds you well.
So if you've ever seen this site before, you'll know that it looks a lot different.
The previous site was built basically by hand, which was kinda cumbersome, both to build initially and to update. It was also purely an archive and directory of where I was at elsewhere. That will now change, at least for the time being. I've built this site with Hugo, which should make it easier to use. Well, I say that, but trying to use Hugo has been a bit of a pain in and of itself.
If all goes well, there should be a link to the old index up on top of the page. I'll keep the old site archived there. Hopefully, if something goes wrong with Neocities, it'll be easy enough to migrate somewhere else. Eventually, I'll make dedicated pages for things that can't go in text posts, like my Twines and the PDF files of my one act plays. I hope to make more Twines and scripts, too. I was also the writer of a visual novel earlier this year. It wasn't a big project by any means, but I thought it was really cool to make it. More info on that in a blog post to follow.
I also have a story that's basically ready to go. It'll be the first in a series. Funny story, I actually had someone beta read it and then submitted it to a magazine, and they both said it seemed like the start of a larger story, which... I guess I have to make it the start of a larger story now? I promise that wasn't my intention, it was supposed to be its own standalone short story. But hey, whatever, I've got some things in mind for where it can go.
As for contacting me and finding me elsewhere, I'm basically only on Mastodon these days, which you can find here: https://wandering.shop/@evilroda
I mean, I still lurk on Tumblr, but that's it, so I'm not gonna bother linking it here. Twitter is fucked, and I haven't used it in years, anyway. And that's really it for other places I'm at online, aside from like, Steam and Facebook and stuff, but that's not something I want to give out.
Hope you all get to hear from me soon!