The first blog post and... Image hosting problems
I'm glad to announce that the site is *officially* open! I added all the main pages and functions I wanted to include at the start. It took me about a month to build this site from scratch, and I think that's pretty fast for a beginner in HTML coding like me. Thanks to YouTube tutorials and forums — I don't even know what I'd do without them (⌒▽⌒)
Yeah… I see how other people's sites are all cute and pretty, and mine looks kinda tacky and dry. But it's only the beginning, and I'm going to work on the design soon. For now, at least it works, so I can already start filling it with content.
What's going to happen on this site? As I said on the homepage, there will be my blog, an art gallery, and a character hoard. It's a personal site, so I'll share stuff about my life too, not just creative stuff. And like I mentioned in my latest Tumblr post, I hate social media, so I've got to move on and create my own little corner of the web. Even if nobody views it or not regularly, at least I won't be expecting any feedback and getting disappointed every time. I love journaling, but when you have to count likes and start thinking that a lack of feedback means your blog is boring — that's ass. Also, I'm gonna publish some drawings here that I'm kinda embarrassed to post on socials for various reasons… Nothing "illegal" or nsfw, just sometimes I want to share some sketches, but I feel they're not "attractive" enough for social media. They look like a tired camel's spit bruh. And there's also stuff I won't show publicly, like characters who are half undressed but without any sexual context that could be misinterpreted by random people and marked as "mature". Or my OCs that are just random and nobody would be interested in them. Idk I'm shy bruh.
I always dreamed of having my own site but for a long time I didn't know about Neocities. When I first found out about it, I thought it wasn't that serious because you depend on the hosting and the site isn't fully yours. But now I think running a site on a hosting platform isn't so bad. It's a great opportunity for a beginner: it's free, there are no restrictions on how your site should look and I should take any opportunity I can get.
The only flaw is that there's only 1 GB of space on the free plan. I wouldn't mind buying a Supporter account, but it's not possible to pay from my country with the payment methods they offer (￣︿￣). I won't say which country I'm from but the government has been going nuts as fuck for the last 5 years and puts restrictions on literally EVERYTHING foreign on the web.
By the way, about these restrictions… The pictures on the site might not load because of them. I'm using an image hosting service that's blocked in my country (EVERY image host is blocked here I have no choice) so I can't even see the images myself unless I turn on a VPN (and you might have to as well if you have the same problem). So I'd really like to get feedback on whether you can see the pics on my site. You can find my contact info on the "Contact Me" page! And if you're reporting that images won't load, please tell your native language (or even your country if you don't mind I need it for stats anyway), so I can understand who can see my pictures and whether it's an image hosting problem or just my country's restrictions. I hope it works for people in other countries. Also, all UI elements and decorations on the site are uploaded to my site storage and should work for everyone.
Why didn't I upload all pics to Neocities? As I said, there's only 1 GB on the free plan. But I don't know how long these dumb government restrictions will last, so I have to save space and use it only for important things like site pages, scripts, and UI elements. All other media: like Gallery content and images in blog posts have to be on external image hosts.
So, I think I've said enough for the first blog post. Despite these problems, I'm happy to have this site. It's ugly and clumsy, but at least it's mine, and I'm finally free to do whatever I want. I'm proud to be a new member of the indieweb. Stay tuned!