I am happy to formally post about BlinkieWiki (@ https://blinkie.wiki ), a website built on TiddlyWiki & hosted on NekoWeb that's an (ongoingly) searchable archive of blinkies as well as other types of graphics! A big goal here on top of exhaustive transcription is to source the original creators of graphics whenever possible, something which is often missing in collections.
I've mostly been doing this solo so far with lots of help from my boyfriend @vesselvindicate for finding websites. I'm opening this up to the blinkie community because I've now added a way for users to submit metadata for graphics, which is handled through Google Forms. That way, anyone can contribute to the collection! Just click on any blinkie and hit the button in the top right corner that says "Submit metadata for this graphic".
This site is a big work in progress! It is only somewhat mobile friendly at the moment and is prone to lag. The UI in places is a bit ugly, but I'll be making it look better over time. There's a bunch of other features I'm aiming to add as well.
This was heavily inspired by the Geoblinkies project by blinkies.cafe, which I helped work on back in 2022. You should check it out!
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.
"the CEO of the site i use just committed another atrocity!"
"i want a webspace that's all my own!"
if any of these sound like you (and if you're on tumblr, i know at least one applies) you should make your own website!
why make a website?
incredibly customizable
you can put whatever you want on it
it's, well, your own! like a house you build with your own hands
things you'll need
a computer. you can maybe get away with doing this on a mobile device, but i have zero experience there
a code editor. i like VScodium, which is a de-microsoft-ed version of VScode.
a will to learn ;)
site hosting
neocities. everyone knows neocities. at this point i do feel like it's become a bit too centralized, but it's a good option nonetheless. do note that there are filetype restrictions for free users, but that shouldn't be a huge issue for most. what may be an issue, though, is that there's a content security policy that prevents sites made after jan 1st, 2024 to use outside scripts. also, you have to pay to use your own domain
nekoweb. similar to neocities, but there's no filetype restrictions or a content security policy. some differences are outlined in the FAQ (thinking about moving here... i am a traitor...) i'm not sure if domain support is free or paid.
github pages or codeberg pages. you'll need an understanding of git for this
pages.gay: run by besties.house, uses git
teacake: free hosting is currently closed, but paid hosting starts at 2 bucks a month.
leprd.space: i know next to nothing about this.
a web server. don't recommend this if you don't know computer stuff but it is an option (you'll likely have to provide your own domain though)
gripes & solutions (?)
i'm not comfortable maintaining pages in pure HTML / templating with JS sucks!
with a static site generator, you can write pages in markdown and they'll be converted into HTML and (if you'd like) be put into a template of your choosing. my personal choice is 11ty but there are tons of options!
static site generators can be a bit of a learning curve (and you will have to write some html for templating) but if you're making a lot of pages or blogging regularly it's something to consider
there are starters for 11ty online but i might make a more beginner-proofed starter and/or guide in the future? don't count on it
i don't want to write/maintain CSS
simpleCSS is a tiny CSS file you can use to make semantic HTML ("naked" HTML) look nice. it's got decent customization options too. it's not particularly fancy or opinionated, but it's a good starting point if you need something
i don't know what to put on my website!
small list of ideas:
weblog
art/writing/music gallery
movie/show/book tracker
place to store bookmarks/links
scary! i'm scared!
my askbox/messages/e-mail inbox/etc. are open to anyone who'd like to ask for help!
