Site Updates & Personal Updates

I’ve been working on customizing the theme for my site. All of the default WordPress themes are super corporate. I’m not trying to run a business or even portray myself super professionally here. That isn’t the point. I’m not here to sell anything. I don’t care about effective hero images or calls to action or whatever. I just want to express myself, and give people who like that expression the opportunity to interact. And if they don’t, that’s fine, too. I’m not doing this for clout.

Theme

I basically took the most basic default WordPress theme and I’ve been customizing and building on that. I’m going for a retro fantasy pixel art theme. My inspirations are obviously video games from the 16-bit era, old-school D&D, browser based games from the early 2000s, covers of pulp fantasy novels, etc. I feel like this vibe gives the most intersection of my interests. I made a logo and a background that I’m really proud of. Here they are for posterity, in case I change them later.

I want to add lots of little images to different areas of the site. I feel that as an artist, it is a way to express myself, and it also is a good way to capture the vibe I want to go for. Having images for everything was part of the character of the web of the old days, back before we had CSS. I want to get some of that feeling back.

Future of This Site

Right now I’m just going to keep it as a pretty straightforward blog. It seems silly to make a bunch of navigation links for categories I don’t have any content for, yet. Once I’ve got more stuff on here, I’ll add pages for things like art and writing and make a more intricate homepage to feature content from different sections. I want to add a section for links and webrings eventually, too. I want to get into the social aspect of maintaining a website and support others who have undertaken this journey.

I’m kind of nervous, though. I’m not quite to the state where I feel that this is ready for public consumption. I’m still tweaking the layout and adding content.

I intend to post personal updates, essays, fiction, and art. I also intend to share stuff that I find interesting from around the internet. Basically I’m using this to replace how people use social media. I’ve never been a big social media person, but sharing in my own space feels a little comfier. I used to do it all the time back in the olden days.

Changing How I Use The Internet

I’ve also been changing how I use the internet. I’ve been spending much less time on social media, and more time getting lost on people’s personal websites. I’ve been having a lot of fun seeing what people have created on Neocities, clicking random links in webrings, directories, and people’s links pages. I’ve also been searching for things that interest me on independent search engines such as Marginalia and Wiby. I even got an RSS reader on my phone so that I can have a feed of content that I actually care about to scroll through instead of something cluttered with ads and curated by an algorithm that doesn’t have my interests at heart. It has been really exciting and enlightening. I am experiencing the joy of internet browsing in a way that I haven’t since I was a 13 year old on AOL.

I really want to get into webcomics again. I’ve seen some cool looking comics over the years, but following the creators on social media doesn’t really do much for actually seeing someone’s content regularly as they update. That’s the thing about those algorithms, they don’t show you what you want to see, they show you what they want you to see. Following doesn’t really do much to ensure you see someone’s updates. I really should have gotten into RSS feeds a long time ago. Seems like a much better way to keep tabs on people.

If anyone has some suggestions for some webcomics I might like, drop a comment. I always liked slice of life and fantasy stuff with an ongoing story.


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