Is this a blog or a website?: Musings on webmastery, Bearblog vs Neocities, etc
First try at Neocities
I'm not sure why I want to make a website, really. I just think it would be fun. I've spent so much time prowling static sites that I wanna join the club, and I feel like there's a lot of ideas I have that would be better suited on a proper website than this blog, like a page for my music collection, photo walls, etc.
I finally signed up for a Neocities account yesterday and fiddled around with the HTML/CSS. It was fucking torture lol. I tried using a layout generator but the code got borked when I uploaded it to the site. Then I realized the problem wasn't the code but the fact that I'm a moron. Even after I got all that figured out, I was just staring at the CSS/HTML at a loss of where to begin customizing all of it, so I ended up just coming back to Bearblog and screwing around with stuff here to satisfy the itch.
Back to Bearblog
Coming back from Neocities to Bearblog was a huge relief. I started thinking about of all the random widgets I've pinned around the viewport here (on desktop, at least--sorry mobile readers, there's no room on phone screens!).
So far I've got:
- a Last.fm widget
- a collection of 88x31 buttons and blinkies
- a theme switcher
- and most recently, a dropdown panel for my imood, status.cafe, and piclog widgets
For a simple "blog", my page is pretty bloated, but I've found that I'm something of a digital maximalist when it comes to UI and graphics haha. Plus I made my FUN ZONE page a couple weeks ago. Ever since, I've been itching to do more creative things with HTML and CSS.
It's all sort of made me wonder: is Bearblog just a "blog", or have I ended up with a whole "website" on my hands. And is there really a difference?
Bearblog vs Neocities: purpose and use case
I'll still be screwing around with Neocities for coding practice, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's necessary. Like, Bearblog could probably fit most of my needs.
I guess the difference is in intent. Bearblog is full of really minimalist pages and slick writing. A lot of people here seem inclined to clean UI, professional writing, and stuff like that. I feel like my page is an exception to the norm; at least, mine and folkmoss'.1 I haven't really seen many other Bearblog pages that go hog wild with design, so if you know of one (or have built one yourself) please share it with me! You can either email me or sign my guestbook, both of which are linked in my footer.
With platforms lke Neocities and and Nekoweb, the purpose is a lot more broad and flexible. You can build just about anything, and when people go exploring for new websites, webmasters, web pages, etc, they don't really have a preconceived notion of what to expect. Also, I feel like there's a lot more variety of communities, web rings, content, etc, than there is on Bearblog.
But when I go into Neocities I'm just beset with so much STUFF and very little direction. It's really intimidating! It reminds me of how I've tried playing Minecraft like five separate times throughout my life. I just can't get into it. The farthest I got was putting 50 hours in on my Switch, and most of that was just building out a base. Eventually I finally put together a Nether portal, jumped in, got attacked from all angles, then noped the fuck out and just never picked it up again haha.
A year or so after that, however, I played Terraria for the first time. And it was amazing! I fell in love. It's pretty much the same sort of concept as Minecraft, just in a different format. I also appreciated how there was more direction in the gameplay. I put in 30 hours and stopped right before prepping for the Wall of Flesh boss, mostly cuz I didn't wanna fuck around with Hard Mode after that lol. Someday I'll jump back into it.
Bearblog and Neocities feels the same way to me. They both offer the same thing, but do it in entirely different flavors and formats. Neocities is great if you want a real sandbox experience, but after starting out on Bearblog, where everything is already structured for me, I found it was just too directionless, I guess. Coming back to Bearblog was a huge relief.
Bearblog webmastery
Neocities has been around for over a decade. Bearblog is just a few years old. I've only been on here since last October/November, and I've already seen a huge influx of users since then. Maybe, in time, Bearblog can become another fun indie web platform that has its own variety of different users, each with different use cases, and therefore a lot of different and unique websites!
With the basic HTML theme, you can basically do whatever the fuck you want as far as styling goes. The default theme is pretty flexible too. I don't have experience with any of the other themes, though.
When I built my FUN ZONE page, all I did was set all the special <div> containers for my header, footer, widgets, etc to display: none; and I was basically left with a blank slate. So, not too bad of a workaround!
I think I might as well try building out more stuff here on Bearblog, where I feel comfortable. If I find it's too restrictive, I'll just move to Neocities, and will have learnt some good stuff either way. Jumping into Neocities right now sort of feels like if someone threw me into Minecraft and told me to go get Ender pearls and find the Ender portal.
My plan as of right now is to set up a new website on my root xavierhm.com domain. I want to have a little portal with fun web pages. I reckon I can just build out the basic stuff on the Home page, then make individual pages with whatever I want. If I want anything persistent across the whole site, I'll just throw it into the header/footer directives in the Settings. Since I'm not gonna have "content" per say, I'll probably just use the basic HTML theme and see how it goes.
I'll probably set up a little devlog of sorts once I really get started. In a week I'll be flying to the UK for my first proper non-working holiday in a couple years, so I'll have lots of time to faff and fiddle around.
I'd be super interested to hear from anyone else who's into building websites, CSS/HTML, etc!
As far as creating a community on Bear goes, I'm considering spinning up a little webring or something! I think it would be fun to create a group of bloggers/webmasters akin to the sort of communities you see on static site hosting platforms, where it's more about personal stuff, hobbies, and just fun!
✘ Posted on — 04/06/25
✘ Last modified — 4 months, 2 weeks ago
✘ Link — https://blog.xavierhm.com/is-this-a-blog-or-a-website-musings-on-webmastery-bearblog-vs-neocities-etc