Why make your own site?
Friction
It's a little absurd, building a handmade site from scratch. You can make a website, fast, from a company with pre-built templates. That was too frictionless. And I was looking for a challenge. Mixed with a little tech vanity. "I coded my own site!"
Digital self-determination and hermiting
I control everything you see on this site. It's mine. I can leave it as is for a year or change it every day. It can't disappear if a big tech company shuts down. If the hosting service closes, well, I still have my code. Like a hermit claiming their spot deep in the woods, this is my claim here. In a noisy, infinite internet, this site exists.
We are not commodities
This place has no ads or algorithms. We can be visitors, wanderers, readers.
You should make one too!
If you like this site, you should make one, too. It's easier than you might think. This site is hosted on NeoCities, which is the place to go for independent sites.
How I made this site
The last time I coded was in 2004 when I was on Neopets. This time, I learned with YouTube videos and W3Schools tutorials. The actual coding took a few hours to put everything down, with a few more hours of trial and error.