As I write this post, I am about 80% done with the complete site overhaul I originally embarked on many months ago. You would think then that I would be in good spirits, perhaps even excited. Yet as the time for the update to be pushed looms closer and closer I cannot help but feel.. sorrowful. I created this site in September of 2021. It's been nearly three whole years! As I re-import content from my previous website a realization dawns on me. Three years... and all I have to show for it? Five articles, one of which isn't even complete, another a simple rewriting of existing works and one of which was rushed and needs to be re-written from scratch. I bit off more than I could chew.
I believe that when you are starting out on Neocities you can be swayed by all of the gorgeous front page sites. Their looks are so perfectly sculpted it'd make even the most hardened of internet veterans pause. You view something like, say, Dokodemo's page and are taken aback. Every detail perfected. You see it and go... "I want to make something like this!". So you to go to pick up HTML. You head on over to the hallowed grounds of W3Schools. Slowly but surely, you become literate-ish-kinda-sorta in HTML/CSS and begin constructing your own design. You desire your page to look special, for it to stick out from the rest of Neocities crowd.
However you will quickly encounter issues. It's frustrating because you feel like you're right there. I mean i've got a functional webpage; what's stopping me from making something like this? The truth is that gap is often much larger than it appears. It takes much trial and error for someone without any real HTML experience to start making a great-looking site. I don't say this to discourage, rather that you should remain grounded in your expectations at first. It takes time to learn how to design a webpage.
The purpose of creating a website varies from person to person. I am aware that there are those who treat their webpages like art. They see the designing process as artistic expressions of themselves. If this is how you view your website, then who am I to say otherwise? That said, I believe that many webmasters wish to express themselves through their site's content. I was one such webmaster. I wished to prioritize the informative value of my site over the design. I was okay with it looking a little uglier as long as it got the point across.
Yet somewhere along the way, I begun to think that on Neocities people often won't check out your site if it's not flashy. Or if it doesn't stick out much from the crowd. It's discouraging to watch time pass and see how little traffic you've received when you're first starting out. Pair that with the initial inspiration from those beautiful front page sites and it resulted in an identity crisis for my page. I was never sure how I should organize things. Should I try to make my site look glamorous and rake in the eyeballs? Should I have my page just be a bunch of tables in the vein of a site like this one and focus entirely on being informative? Should I try to make every subcategory it's own sub-domain? Should my site be multi-purpose or focused on one subject? I constantly fluctated. It resulted in multiple namechanges, neverending overhauls of the UI, indecision on how I wanted categories to look, and general lack of direction.
That is how i've ended up at this point. I came to the conclusion the only way to fix it was a complete reboot. No more trying to operate on tables and unreadable code. New name, every single page gutted and restarted from scratch. What's more, I finally felt that after 2 years I had enough knowledge to make things look pretty without much issue. Hoo boy was I wrong on that one. In the end, I was doomed to repeat many of the same problems that I made when beginning. Eventually it got so demotivating that I took lengthy breaks. This was further complicated when my old PC finally gave out after 7 years, forcing a complete absence from site activity for a good 2 months. In that time I attempted to plan things out and came to a good idea of how I wanted it to look. Yet even when I got my PC back, progress was sluggish. It took me 15ish hours alone to complete the front page. That was the bulk of the work and general base for the layout so subsequent pages wouldn't take as much but it was still a hell of a time investment. It's just so demotivating knowing... "I still have THIS many pages to do, AND my site STILL has no content on it?!".
It just seems like I've failed my website. All because I got caught trying to chase some A E S T H E T I C rather than simply fleshing out what I had. As if the vast majority of personal webpages in the olden days weren't simple and uniform, designed for functionality above all else. Thrown in a bit of nasty anhedonic depression that saps your motivation and you end up working at a snails pace. Which then adds further to the negative feedback loop. "Damn, I'm never going to have this in a presentable state am I?". It eventually reached a point where I became so ashamed I removed the URL to the page from my online profiles. It's also why I pushed this update all at once instead of updating more frequently. I didn't want to be seen even in the activity tab. To me, it's embarassing to have a three year old site with so little of worth to say on it.
In the end, I have two purposes for writing this. First for the handful of people interested in my site so that y'all understand where I've been and secondly as a warning. To any budding webmaster who may have stumbled across this article by chance; figure out what YOU want to do with your site before you worry about how it looks. Block out any and all expectations of what you think it "should" look like based on the sites you've seen. This is YOUR canvas. You simply want to get your voice out there? Or maybe you have a niche interest that you want to document? Consider simple page design or hell perhaps use a template. Just don't get bogged down working on things that are out of your depth and that you don't even really enjoy solely because of other pages you've browsed. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. You are the judge, jury and executioner.
If you are reading this, it means the site has finally reached a point where I deem it worthy of appearing on the activity page. This also means that the Mayflower is finally in a state where it can receive more focus on the content rather than exclusively on getting the damn thing in a functional state with organized pages. I am hopeful that this shall usher in a new age for my website.