Every song was basically just smooth jazz or soft rock instrumentals, but where the lead singer or main instrument should have been playing, there was just a loud, constant car horn.

if you're like me, you got a little taste of geocities as a kid before yahoo pulled the plug on it in 2009. if you're like me, you heard someone started a revival effort called neocities, and thought "aww, that’s nice" without looking into it any further. you maybe visited the neocites homepage once and figured it would take too much time/effort to learn html to make a decent website for yourself, and why would you do that when you already have social media? what is there to gain? it sounds hard, and you have better things to do with your time...

but do you really? does making a personal site need a cost-benefit analysis? what the past me (and maybe you too, sorry i'll stop speaking for you,) didn't realize was, NEOCITIES IS REALLY FUN???? i think there's just a small barrier to entry that stops people from reaching the fun part--and i don't mean learning to build a site!!! because i don't think that's universally fun!!!!!! but the amount of self-expression happening on neocities makes it SUCH A JOY to browse. i think here in 2024 it's harder to realize you can just wander the internet without a specific goal, and without an algorithm to throw it all at you. (i mean, you're here on cohost so i'm sure you get it!!)

the old web you may or may not have nostalgia for is still alive in a new form and you don't have to keep sitting here lamenting the current state of the internet (bad). you can just go on neocities and see a thousand little handmade websites of people sharing things they care about. it's amazing. i'm legitimately so sad that i skipped out this place for so long, because i wrongly thought there was nothing for me in there!!!

so i have written a beginner's guide to enjoying neocities. i'm still completely new to it (i only started building my site 2 weeks ago) so i don't even know that much, but i really really wanted to share how to have fun browsing sites at least because YOU CAN JUST DO THAT!! I THINK IT'S HARD TO REMEMBER YOU CAN JUST CLICK ON THINGS AND GO ANYWHERE!!!!! please let me tell you how because this has been my new favorite hobby and i want everyone to experience the fun!!!!!!!!!!!

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.