I’ve been building a little browser-based digital grimoire / webgrimoire for my site, and it’s finally at the point where I want to let other people try it.
https://shrine404.neocities.org/grimoire
It’s still in beta, so im basically just asking people to poke around, play with it, and tell me what works, what feels clunky, and what you’d want added.
It's not a productivity app so don't go in expecting that. I wanted it to feel personal, decorative, a little old-web, a little devotional lol..
I worked really hard on this so if you can give me feedback and maybe reblog I'd be so happy. Again it is FREEEEE.
What it can do right now:
☾ create entries for different sections like spells, materia / correspondences, dreams, lore, links, journals, divination / omens, and more
☾ has an altar / webshrine area where you can make little devotional pages with things like:
shrine images
candles
offerings
blinkies / extra shrine images
shrine frames / styles
relics / decorative bits
“now playing” style details
guestbook / shrine personality features
☾ has a practitioner / about area so you can personalize it with your own path, signs, beliefs, deities, tools, icon, etc.
☾ includes writing tools so entries can be more than just plain text — invocation blocks, prayer cards, omen / warning boxes, poetry formatting, ritual steps, foldaway notes, dividers, and other little text charms
☾ lets entries link to each other, so it can work more like a tiny personal web or wiki instead of just isolated notes
☾ has optional ritual metadata / seals for entries, but they can also be turned off if they don’t fit the page
☾ has backup / export options all grouped together, including a full HTML export option
☾ has different palette / theme options in settings, including lighter and darker modes for readability / vibe
☾ has a header image option and other little personalization settings
A few important notes before using it:
𖹭 it is still a beta
there may still be bugs, odd save issues, awkward layout moments, or parts that need smoothing out
𖹭 it currently saves in your browser storage
so if you use it a lot, please export backups regularly
𖹭 it’s meant to be a little expressive and decorative
so some features lean more “digital shrine / personal archive / weird old web object” than “minimal serious app”
If you try it, I’d especially love feedback on:
✴︎ anything confusing or unintuitive
✴︎ bugs / things not saving properly
✴︎ sections or features you wish existed
✴︎ readability / accessibility issues
✴︎ whether the altar / shrine side feels fun enough
✴︎ whether the writing tools feel useful or too much
✴︎ anything that feels especially charming, broken, annoying, inspiring, messy, or missing
Basically: if you use it and have thoughts, I want them.
This is my weird little beta grimoire child and I’m trying to make it genuinely beautiful and fun to use, not just functional.
Also, if you like strange personal websites / old web things / occult tools / shrine pages / browser toys, you may enjoy it just for that alone.
a few pngs I made of some vintage aquamice, I did NOT know how many companies made these just to be promotional material! Wish companies did this more still, this is like 10x better than getting an okay pen
I started overhauling my sketch-page :-D as is the nature of my website, it's a forever-WIP, but I think it looks cool so far hehe. I hope it's functional across platforms, but we'll see! Either way, the 'selected sketches''-gallery at the bottom still works as before, and should be viewable for most userz...
I haven't seen anybody on Tumblr post about this yet, so here's a heads up to Neocities, Bing, and Bing-based search engine users (including Duck Duck Go):
Microsoft has, seemingly without reason, deindexed all sites that use the neocities subdomain. This means that any website with neocities.org in the URL is not currently showing up on Bing or DDG searches, including not only the main website but also every website hosted on the domain.
I've verified that this is the case for both of my Neocities websites --- which are the top results on google for their respective names, and used to be on the first page of DDG --- and every other one I've checked with neocities in the domain. This does not appear to be affecting websites with other domain names and are hosted on Neocities. It is additionally not affecting discoverability on other search engines; it is only being blocked by Microsoft.
Not sure what's to be done about this besides hope that it gets resolved. For me personally, I've been recommending DDG as a Google alternative for years, so this is frustrating to say the least (even if its not directly DDG's fault; they like many other search engines just rely on Bing's indexing). I know many people use my UTAU website to find resources for the software, and for the time being it's no longer easily discoverable to anyone trying to distance themselves from Google. Guess it's time to finally get around to getting a custom domain, but that's not an option for everybody.
here's a list of resources from a person that knows jack shit about coding
1. INTENT
first and foremost you need to know why you're making a website. do you want it to be your portfolio, a blog or an art project? the tools for your website will vary depending on your intent. i made my website as a personal blog + art gallery + place where i put all the info on my characters, so the resources will mostly be for that
during this step you need to figure out what you want on your website, page by page. usually you always have a home page, an about page and sometimes a guestbook, other stuff varies.
2. DESIGN
after you have figured out the list of pages for your website, you can start designing. try your best not to make a complicated design, since you will be in hell trying to backend it.
i searched for websites i liked and put screenshots of them in milanote, so that i had like a moodboard of them.
during this step you need to figure out:
- the main palette of your website
- the layout of your website
- fonts you want to use
if you're bold enough you can make a prototype in figma, but for complete beginners even a sketch in your notebook will do.
* for fonts: try to use no more than 3 fonts to make your design cohesive. you can break this rule if that's the style you're going for (like some art projects or personal websites that are trying to emulate the designs of web 1.0)
3. BUILDING
if you're looking for website builders and want to take the easy way out - there's hotglue, a website builder like tilda or wordpress. as far as i understand you build and host your website right there. no coding is required - everything is done through dragging and dropping images, text, etc.
however i advise you to either host a website yourself or use nekoweb. [i was talking about neocities and ai here but i was wrong. use anything you like more] in any case i use nekoweb and so far i like it a lot
so for that you can:
- use templates (a number of free templates is listed here). you will need to do just a bit of coding, but usually template makers give very detailed comments on how to edit their templates. you can edit everything in vscode or online in codepen.
- use websites that help you generate code from your layout: like nekogrape. here you set your website like you want by dragging and dropping blocks and then you copy the code and put it in nekoweb.
4. TIME
you should understand that making a website takes quite some time and generally you will probably always be working on it - editing, adding and removing stuff, making it more accessible. and that's okay - that's literally what makes it so special. so don't worry about making it perfect from the first try - just make it exist first.
5. CODING?
a lot of stuff can be done only through coding (like flashy animations and some effects) and generally i really advise you to learn the basics
html/css is not that complicated especially with the right resources, css is slightly broken but you can figure out how to work with it through trial and error.
here are some books and websites that you can use to learn html/css:
- freecodecamp - a free course to learn the basics
- interneting is hard - an online textbook on html/css
- w3schools - a big wiki on everything html/css related
6. MORE STUFF!!
now that you have the basic outline of your website and you know some stuff on html/css here's a list of resources that you can use to make your website more pretty or more aligned with what you want from it:
parts of your website:
- art gallery
- comments
- a live chat
- guest book from the founder of nekoweb
graphics:
- blinkies
- a cat that follows your mouse
- javascript effects for text or mouse
- old web banners
i will try to update this list as i find more stuff but for now this is something i used/plan to use
after you make your website i would also recommend setting up an rss feed but i don't know how to do it yet so i will come back to you when i've set up my own. : )
so yeah. im waiting for yall on nekoweb go follow me and when you make your website you can share it in the reblogs or comments!!
