In light of *gestures at the latest Twitter trashfire* I've seen people talking about making your own site. That's a pretty daunting prospect if you're not already In The Scene, though, so I'm gonna share some resources to help folks get started!
That being said, I want to make something crystal clear first - it is actually okay to keep using social media, or other non-self-run things! People have different reasons for using the Internet. Obviously, there are endless Issues with social media that its users should keep in mind, but someone who doesn't care about archiving all of their posts (and it should not be a Moral Obligation to archive all of your posts for future generations to Consume) and who just wants to chill with other people may still have their needs more readily met by social media than by going through all the effort of spinning up a Hugo-based blog with embedded comment sections.
I am not entertaining debate on this. (Also: we're all on Cohost, for god's sake. It's a great site, but it's still a social media.)
Anyway, onto the actual resources!
Where do I host a personal site? Doesn't that like, cost money?
So, static site hosting (as in plain HTML/CSS/JS without a database or such) is actually dirt cheap, and there's a lot of free options out there as well.
There's Neocities, which is probably the most beginner-friendly option. In addition to letting you edit your site's files directly on the website, there's a bit of a social media-like component where you can apply tags to your site to get it to show up in site-wide directories, as well as profiles for each site that you can follow and leave likes and comments on. (It is possible to opt out of these things.)
There's Github Pages, but with the caveat that it's Github and thus owned by Microsoft. If you'd rather stay away from corporate stuff, there's Codeberg Pages, provided by Codeberg, a non-profit alternative to Github. (I don't think Codeberg has a file editor, though, so you'll have to learn how to use git. Actually it seems to, but git is probably still the easier option here.)
There are numerous smaller hosting sites as well: for example, ichi.city, teacake, and leprd.space. However, these may have limited signups and/or require application.
Having your own domain is optional for the above options (and requires a paid Supporter plan for Neocities), but if you want one, glauca.digital is a neat registrar run by trans people. If their prices are out of your budget, Porkbun has been recommended by several people.
Okay, but -how- do I make my website? I don't know this code stuff
My advice boils down to three things:
- If you're going to use a course or tutorial, pick ONE and stick with it. Don't fall into the trap of hopping around, trying to find the best or the most complete course. They'll vary on quality and up-to-dateness, but you don't need to (and outright cannot) learn everything. You just need the basics, so that you can...
- ...fuck around and find out! Like, just get started! Just put shit in there! Let it all break horribly because you forgot a bracket somewhere and then fix it! You WILL learn by doing, even if the doing is messy af. The beauty of a static site is that it's really hard to fuck things up in a way that you can't recover from. (If you're really anxious, make backups.)
- Get used to looking up answers. Once again, it's impossible to know everything in this field, and frantic "how do thing" googling is a time-honored tradition. You WILL feel in over your head, and that's normal, I promise. It gets easier the more you fuck around and find out.
Here are some resources that might help with learning HTML/CSS/JS! (I have not gone through all of these myself, fair warning.)
- Neocities' collection of tutorials
- 32bit.cafe's guide to creating your own website
- Sadness's webmaster links
- Dragonheart Collective's hoard of sitebuilding resources
- MDN Web Docs - if you have questions about specific bits of HTML, CSS, or JS, this is the most comprehensive resource.
I think I know how to do this thing now, but what do even I put on my site?
~Absolutely anything that your heart desires~
Want a bog-standard bio page with contact info? You can do that!
Want to hoard a bunch of useful links in a place that other people can find them? You can also do that!!
Want a place for your art and writing to live that's not subject to the whims of social media? Shove it on your site!
Want to make a pile of your genders, complete with flags and pronouns, and decorate the shit out of it to your specifications? Go right the FUCK ahead
Do you, like me, routinely pay your friends to draw you pictures of the Great Serpent of Ronka - may they forever scree - and want a place to enshrine them? YOU CAN DO THAT ON YOUR SITE
NO ONE CAN STOP YOU
...My advice beyond that: look at other people's sites. If you see something that makes you go "ohh, that's so cool/helpful," write it down as an idea to put on yours.
People keep talking about making your own blog. Is that possible on a static site?
Sure is! There are tools called static site generators that let you plug in a template, your content, and some configurations, and they'll spit out a bunch of HTML/CSS/JS files that you can upload to any static site host. The result is a blog with functionality like filterable tags, toggleable light/dark modes, even search!
The caveat is that using these tools is somewhat more complicated than writing your own site from scratch. If you want to look into them, Hugo is the one I'm using, but there's others out there.
Closing
This post barely scratches the surface of sitebuilding - it's just a resource to help newcomers get started. Please feel free to recommend more!
Happy website-ing! And don't forget to put your nifty new site in your profile links so others can find it!
You can also write your blog’s code by hand, including an rss feed for it, I did it/do it https://rubymayvalentine.net/blog