I was reading this post about link directories and thinking about the link directory I've been meaning to add to my own site. When I was first putting together my blog I went and researched all the recent additions to HTML in the decade or so since I'd last put together a website, and it was really depressing when I realized how much of the stuff that initially seemed neat semantically was really just SEO nonsense. I don't want to have to add a bunch of attributes to every HTML element to make Google happy or to exclude Google. I just want to not be bothered.

So like...what if I just put <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">¹ in my HTML templates or an X-Robots-Tag header in my web server config and be done with it?

Like, if I ever got into webcomics again, or if I were putting together a reference site, I could see some value in being indexed by search engines. But it's my personal blog. Think about how algorithm-driven social media sites dump Internet randos on you. Why would I invite that same thing from a search engine? I don't care about widespread distribution for my blog. I just want a thing I can link to, and let other people link to it, and folks can discover it organically.

Gonna have to think about this one.

1. Supposedly this is more reliable than robots.txt because even if your site isn't crawled, other people's links to your site can result in it being indexed. Presumably it is in Google's business interests to not honor the intent of my banning them via robots.txt.

The list of resources has been put on my website, and I will continue to expand them,
For now if your looking for it, you can find the eggbug resource list at the bottom of my page!

THE LIST:
https://foxblox.nekoweb.org/list.html
KEEP IN MIND THE REST OF THE WEBSITE IS 18+
TREAD CAREFULLY

a bit of sentiment; inspired by https://cohost.org/mykocalico/post/7643640-i-had-a-thought-so-i ! i couldn't decide between the two so have both. feel free to stick 'em on your neocities

If that doesn't mean anything to you, then imagine writing blog posts in a real nice post editor, then dragging some files around until it's on the internet. This gets around the fact that I hate writing HTML or Markdown, but don't want to run some sort of overwrought Wordpress install on my own server so I can post twice a year about video games or whatever.

In other words, I don't want to think or study harder than necessary!! I just want to write!!

This is all free, requires no technical know-how, and includes multiple screenshots. I'll write a followup post talking about modifying the default theme with your own CSS, but for now this should get folks started.

EDIT Sep 10 2024: HEY now that this is blowing up again, a quick update:

I was wrong when I said this is "all" free. Publii is free, Neocities is free, Cyberduck is free, BUT Neocities won't let you upload files via Cyberduck unless you're paying $5/month.

However, you can still upload files via the Neocities interface for free. It just takes longer and is a little clunky. And you don't have to use Neocities anyway - you can upload this static site anywhere. It's completely portable, which is part of why I like Publii vs. many other solutions.

If you can't afford the $5/month, you can still do this, you just need to upload the files manually. I've also heard good things about hosting at Nearly Free Speech, which is much cheaper, though I've not used it myself.

Anyway, please ask if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to help! And if you do make a site using this, LET ME KNOW i wanna see your cool wabsites thanks

Seems like as good a time as any to reshare this.