Here is a preview of Blinkie.world, my blinkie collecton site! The goal here is to collect every blinkie on earth (but only if they're free to use, and can be credited). They're all sorted into these color pages, and also sorted into tons of sub categories on other pages (like food, animals, holidays, etc etc). This is what some of the color pages look like now! Once I have at least 300 blinkies in each color, then I'll consider the site full enough to go live! I'm aiming to get it online by Art Fight (aka by July this year).
Do note that this isn't actually an accurate representation of how many I have. I have thousands more than this! I just have to code them all in. It's not as quick as just an image tag and a link, because it also needs to be named, linked to it's source, tagged so I know what categories they're in, have a link to a screenshot that proves who the creator is and their terms (in case the credit link dies one day), have alt text, and have hover text which says the creator and a description of what the blinkie says! So, it's not like this:
<img src="">
It's actually like this:
<a href="" target="_BLANK">
<img src="" alt="" title="Credit: . ID: """></a>
<!--Categories: -->
<!--Screencap: -->
And that's for every blinkie! You can probably see how this is so time consuming, but I think it's worth it. I've never seen a blinkie collection with 6,000+ blinkies, much less every single one credited, and even less sorted into dozens of categories! It's like I have a blinkie for everything, while also knowing the creator of each, and being able to easily search for a specific one via the sorting system! It's especially good for helping others find blinkies, and helping people get the sources for blinkies they already have! It's also great for finding blinkies to use for your ocs (which is my initial reason for doing this).
I'm very excited about this. I really think this could be a very fun resource for people, and that aside, I just really like having so many in my possession. I love to see them. I even have blinkies that I've downloaded before they were deleted off the internet! That's very exciting to me. I have blinkies that are straight up lost media, and I'm happy to be able to preserve them.
Of course as I said, it's going to take forever to add them all, but I'm chipping away at it. I shall not be stopped! Also, if you want a blinkie in any of these screenshots above, just let me know! I'll get it and it's source for you, easy peasy! I'll post more screenshots as significant progress is made, but for now, it's back to downloading blinkies!
First screenshot is my homepage! Ignore the navigation section, because it is now outdated. The other text is fine. Then is all my color categories! On the red one I've made a footer with some buttons to make the page easier to look at, and a pagination test at the bottom. They'll all have that footer eventually, and pagination when a page gets full and needs another page. Some other pages have older button/pagination tests, but those I'll delete in favor of red's style. Then, some of my aesthetic pages! They're not very full, but I still like them. These aren't even most of the pages, but these are definitely all the ones that are actually visually interesting lol
Also if you missed my last post, do know that this site will likely NOT be ready by July 1st, but I'll try and keep transparent about it so when it is ready, you guys will know!
Hey all! I have come to a decision on when and how blinkie.world will go up. It’s going to take months and months to redo all the blinkies, so that’s why I’ve decided on a compromise! TLDR at the end.
So some time ago I did a poll on if you guys would rather the site be up sooner with less blinkies, or later with the original intended amount. Most of you agreed to have the site public sooner with less blinkies! I’m kind of leaning this way as well. I’ve been doing this nearly every day for over a year now. Of course I want people to see it! The downside though is that it’ll be a lot smaller than what I wanted to start with, but what if that wasn’t the case?
So, I’ve decided that I’ll make it public, AND have all the blinkies! This does mean that most of them aren’t going to have a dropdown menu, but they’re still functional without. All blinkies are still linked to their source regardless. I did say that having some with dropdowns and some without would be a confusing mess, but maybe not if they’re separated! Here’s what I’ve come up with:
In the footer there is a new button that says “toggle blinkies in progress”. If you click this, you can see all the blinkies that aren’t recoded yet!
It does feel a bit scrappy to me to have things unfinished just openly there on the website, but I also think I’m way over thinking this. I mean, most people don’t even credit blinkies at all! In fact, I practically never see a big collection of blinkies that are all credited. I have 5,543 blinkies up, and all of them are linked at the very least. I think it’s time I take a step back and realize that I’m actually in a pretty good spot right now, and that the site has been more than good enough to be public for a while. Besides, I have all the time in the world to reach my insane ambitions with each update! Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all.
So where does this leave us? This means that I’m going to wrap up some last minute essentials (formatting, links, typos, etc.), and then the site will go live! It will start with a handful of category pages too, and all the aesthetic pages! Some category pages are just really huge and I can’t wrap them up that fast, but I’ll add them in as they’re completed in future updates!
Because this version of the site is a bit cut down, I have opted to call it the beta version. You know, like a video game or something! Just like my main site, I am naming the updates in versions like a game because I think it’s cute. Plus, it fits perfectly! This is the version that’s not quite 100%, but it’s close enough that people can be let in to try it out! That’s basically exactly what this is. Then once I reach the 300 of each color goal like I wanted, and all the category pages are up, then that will be the official version one! Does it make much of a difference if I call it version one or beta? No, of course not, but I find it fitting.
Okay, okay. So, I’m cutting things down and fixing the necessities, therefore making the site functional for the public. Blinkie.world then goes public sooner, without having to cut down any blinkies! I think this is a good compromise. I’m very excited to finally have something to show for all I’ve done so far! It’s a very very long way before it reaches its full potential, but at least this way anyone can see the progression for themselves, rather than me just telling you about it.
Just give it a few days guys, and then I’ll make it public. I’m really really close now!
TLDR: Instead of removing blinkies that I haven’t recoded yet, I’m making all of them viewable on the site by clicking a toggle button. This way all 5,000+ can still be seen by anyone. I am taking a few days to make sure everything’s functional, then I will make the site public. New blinkies and pages will be added regularly and indefinitely.
Heyo, new idea for my blinkie site today! So, right now for each blinkie they are linked to their source, and then it also says the source when hovered over, and it has a screenshot of the source (in an html comment) in case the credit link dies one day.
The problem is, that’s a whole lot of bologna. With this current system, I will have to swap the credit link for a screenshot link whenever an old link dies. And, well… how am I supposed to know when a credit link dies?? I’m not checking random blinkies 24/7. (Well, I kind of am… but that’s because I’m coding my blinkie site. Shh.) Would I make some kind of reporting system so users can tell me when they find a broken credit link? Or, will I have to tell the users that if a link is broken, to go into the code to find the screenshot?
No, those are both ridiculous and inefficient. Ideally, I won’t have to update a blinkie’s code at all, and the site should be accessible and intuitive to everyone. Once a blinkie’s in, it’s in, and good to go forever. That’s how it should be anyway. So my solution? Give each blinkie a link to it’s source AND a link to it's screenshot! I didn’t think this would be possible or easy, but with some css I think I’ve figured it out! Check it out gang:
(Blinkie source btw)
When you hover over a blinkie, you get three options. A link to the source, a link to the screenshot proving the creator, and a link to view the blinkie at full size! And, the blinkie itself is still linked to the source as well, so a simple click will still take you there. With this new system, I won’t have to update anything. Instead, on site I will explain like “Hey, each blinkie is linked to it’s source, but if the link is broken, you can view a screenshot which proves who the creator is by hovering over the blinkie!”
This goes so hard. I’m very happy about it. This means that I won’t have to update the site for credit over time, and the site should ideally still work perfectly fine without my intervention for years to come! The credit for every blinkie shall be immortalized, and accessible to all. It’s very exciting! Things are going just so swell right now.
Edit: Posting this today since I forgot it in my drafts lol. Since then the dropdown css looks a lot better, and I also made variations for each blinkie color! I’m not going to have this on day one (focusing more on quantity over quality right now), but I plan to go back and implement this at some point!
Hey gang. Today I am seeking your opinion! I'm thinking about how my site is progressing and if I'm going about this the right way. So anyhow, I've made a poll to see what the consensus is amongst you guys! Optional clarification/update under the cut.
Which would you rather?
Site comes out sooner, but with less blinkies.
Site comes out later with the amount it has now.
Idk / see results
Voting ended onSep 23, 2025
So, I was thinking about way back in spring when I had first posted about this site here. Back then I'd thought it'd be ready a lot sooner. If I had stuck to the original plan, it probably would be ready by now. Then somewhere along the lines I changed the plan, because I wanted to redo the code for all the blinkies so they all have drop down menus with information on them.
Now, I'm wondering if perhaps I'm being too ambitious, as I often tend to (Burnout and carpal tunnel are my besties /lh). Back before I committed to the new code, I could have just finished the homepage and double checked my blinkies, and it'd be out now. Then I could redo them all for the next site update. If I'd realized it'd take this long I probably would have just done that, releasing it the old way and updating to the new way later. Alas, I have not backed up anything, so if I wanted to do that now I'd have to undo all the ones in the new style, and it's daunting chaos regardless.
That is to say, I can't help but wonder if I'm having a perfectionist moment that's holding me back. I mean, do I really have to make all the blinkies in the new style? At once I'd say yes, otherwise it'd be such a mess to navigate. But, what if I just cut off the ones in the old style? If I did that now, the site could be up within the month! I wouldn't actually do that right now though, because then some colors will only have like two and that'd be lame. I'm thinking maybe I can just cap each color off at 200 blinkies. Here is what red looks like now with the ones still coded in the old style removed:
It's a fair amount, I'd say. 238, to be specific. So if every color page had a maximum of 200, or maybe less, but the site comes out way sooner, would you prefer that? That's what I'm asking really.
To be clear, all of the blinkies are going up eventually. All the blinkies in the screenshots, the ones on my computer, the ones on my bookmarks, the ones I left on imgur and forgot about... You know, all of them! They'll be there eventually regardless. I'm just talking about how many will be there on day one. After day one I'll be adding more on a weekly basis, probably for years.
Whatever I decide on, for now I'm just focusing on things that are definitely bare minimum, like making sure all the links work and that the pages all have their style sheets and what have you. I'm making sure it's completely functional in every way besides the blinkies, then I will decide exactly how many more I should do before version one is out.
And, if you're curious, here's what the site looks like now with all the blinkies that are coded in! This isn't all of them coded in the new style. This is just them regardless of how they're coded. If I recoded all of them this is how many it would be. These aren't really different from last time I posted screenshots, but I just put them so you can see what I mean. I'd love to start with this amount. I think it looks awesome, but it's also taking forever. This is what I'd be cutting down from, if I do. But, it'll look like this again one day regardless. Hmm...
Heyo, tiny update today! I wanted to let you know that I am going to close my ask box soon. It’s not usually anything noteworthy, and I’ve done it a few times before, but this time I mean I’m going to close it for a long while.
This is because, it is time to lock in! I want to release version one of Blinkie.world, and to do that I need focus and incentive. I love looking for blinkies for you guys, especially since they often lead to me finding blinkies I didn’t even have before. But, that’s the whole problem. I can’t have too many fun things around me when I’m trying to focus. If I stopped doing asks for a while, I’ll be more focused, and I’ll have more reason to want to finish the site!
I’m still going to do the ones that are already in my ask box, but once it’s empty it’ll stay that way until the site is up. If I had to guess, I think I could get it done in one more month.
If any of you have been meaning to send me an ask, now’s a good time to! I don’t truly know how long it’ll be closed, but it would be sad if you wanted to send one but missed your shot for who knows how long. Therefore, you guys have two days! After that I’m closing it, and when I return I’ll return with Blinkie.World!
TLDR: I’m closing my ask box in two days, and it’ll be closed until version one of Blinkie.World is finished.
Hi everybody. Thank you all for the support on my last post! I literally only just got on Tumblr, and I already feel very loved and supported. This is a very nice community for sure. It makes me happy to see so many people excited about it. And to every person saying they'd love their blinkies to be included... bold of you to assume you're not already on my radar! When I say I'm collecting every blinkie, I mean EVERY blinkie! The only exceptions are immoral ones like proship and anti equal rights. Even if I'm already getting blinkies from you guys, I do appreciate everyone sharing/ pointing them out to me. It helps me to be sure I've got as many as I can! So, thanks you guys. You're all very kind.
Anyhow, since there seems to be interest in Blinkie.World, I'm sharing a little more about it. This is about how the site's being made physically, both explaining it and trying to think of ways to improve the process. Also a bit on the workflow side of things. If that's not of interest to you then you can go ahead and give this one a skip. This one's probably a bit boring for most people, but if you are interested... then onto the post!
Someone mentioned that they hope I have automation for making the site, since it seems like a lot of work. I've done what I can to help this go efficiently, but at the end of the day, I am just doing it by hand. Last time I showed what the code looks like per blinkie, which is this:
<a href="" target="_BLANK">
<img src="" alt="" title="Credit: . ID: """></a>
<!--Categories: -->
<!--Screencap: -->
That is the actual code I use. I copy and paste this every time, then enter in the details. I'm not sure that counts much as automation, but at least I'm not out here typing that over and over. This is an example of what a blinkie looks like coded in:
That is an actual snippet from the site! First is the link to the creator (and yes, it HAS to be the creator, not a reposter of any kind), and a target="_BLANK" which makes the link open in a new tab. Next is the image link. Each image is named the same as the text on the blinkie. That way, I type what the blinkie says, then copy and paste that to the image name, alt text, and image description (title). Then is the title. If you don't know, a title for an image in HTML is text that appears when you hover your mouse over an image. So, for each hover text (title), it says the name of the creator, then a caption of the blinkie's text (since they're often hard to read). After that is </a>, which closes the link, making only the image linked to the source.
After the link and image, there are the comments. In HTML, a comment is text that's in the code but doesn't appear or affect the website itself. It's usually just notes to self. The first comment is categories. First I put the creator, then the color category it is sorted in, and lastly every other category it's in. You'll also notice that each category listed has a slash after it. The reason is, when I put a slash after a category, that means it's already added to that category page.
Below that is the screencap. This is an image showing the creator, every blinkie they have made, and their terms if any. Here's this specific screencap if you want to see how that looks. I go in and screenshot all the pages I need, then combine them all in Photoshop, then name it after the creator, upload it to Neocities, and finally add the screencap image link below every blinkie by that creator! And, that's how I fill in the code for a blinkie!
So, yeah, this is definitely a lot. I'm sure I could benefit from more ways to speed up the process, but I don't know much else I can do. It's mostly copy pasting and routine. There are some other things I've done to help though, and that's browser extensions!
One I use is called Download All Images, which as you can assume, downloads all images on a page! You can also specify what kind of images you want to download. What I do is set it to add every gif that is 150x20 pixels (or bigger if I see that there are big blinkies on the page).
I also use GifsOnTumblr. If you've ever tried downloading gifs on Tumblr, you'd know Tumblr is a little weird about it. It always saves as a gifv, so you have to open the image link, then change the end of the link from gifv to just gif, click enter, THEN it downloads as a gif. It's not that hard, but let me tell you, now that I have an extension that makes it download as a gif immediately, it saves more time than you'd think!
That's about all I've figured out as far as maximizing efficiency here goes. If anyone else has any advice/ideas, I'd love to hear it! I've been at this since October (give or take, I'm not 100% on that), and as for the workflow, I'm wondering a bit how long it will take before all the blinkies I have are online. It seems like years for sure, but I think I can handle it if I'm slow when I need to be. As in, if I'm tired then I'll stop. I'm not going to treat it as something I HAVE to do, because then I'll burnout most definitely. I'm being chill about it. Especially since I'm currently on break from another huge project, believe it or not.
Just a few months ago, I burnt out from my other project, which is an animated music video I've been animating for almost two years (in which I initially planned out in 2020, started it in 2021, burnt out, cancelled it, then decided to try again and start it all over in 2023 and since). My point is, I'm very ambitious, often to a fault. I'm a workaholic. (I'm also ADHD, so I think being a workaholic is me overcompensating for it, at least partially.)
Because of that, I'm going out of my way not to take this too seriously. It's a passion project, and if it's not fun, then it's not a passion project, then what am I doing it for? Even so, my ambition cannot be held back! When I get excited on a project, I grind like crazy. I'm not scared by the idea of something taking a long time. I want to do this. I'm happy I'm doing this. I'm not going to pretend it's not a lot of work, but working is what I do! It's how I'm built. When I don't work, I feel like I start to loose it. It's not a matter of IF I work, it's a matter of WHAT I work on (and the intensity).
So, despite the somewhat daunting nature of such a big project, it makes me happy, and if it stops making me happy, then I'll stop doing it. It's as simple as that. That's about my feelings on the workload side of this. I can handle it, and if I'm wrong and I can't handle it, then that's okay too. But if anyone has any advice or ideas on how to make this process faster and/or easier, I'm more than open to hear it! (But don't give me ergonomics advice. I promise you I do every ergonomic thing in the book lol.)
