Building My Space on The Net

Something I've always wanted was a solid personal website. Nothing crazy, just something to house some links and look cool to represent me. This past week I didn't just cross that off of my to-do list, but achieved something much cooler than expected.

Starting Point

hiijax.net as of February 7, 2026

I did have a site up and running on my domain, hiijax.net. But it definitely wasn't anything special. I was lazy while making it. Its style stemmed from a basis I used for a previous "links only" site years ago. There was a brief period that I was trying to make a website styled like the Wii Sports main menu in pure HTML/CSS/JS. That's where the colours for this placeholder came from.

It simply linked to my beacons.ai page for all my stuff that was "me" elsewhere on the web.

Note: I want to move away from Beacons, but still have it since sites like TikTok show a scary warning for bio links to non-whitelisted domains.

There was also a link to my Forgejo instance, which wasn't really of any use to anyone, only things public were two GitHub mirrors. As well as a W.I.P. site for Nyx with 360 viewers. Now that I'm deep into web dev stuff, that'll get integrated into my new site soon enough.

Inspiration

A Web Revival: the Internet didn't die, you're just not on it on YouTube

Not only had I been wanting to upgrade my site in general, I had some other things that fueled me. Social media addiction is something I struggle with. Because of that, I'm really not a fan of the big sites. I'm very aware of, and hate the algorithmic slop machines that they've all become. For a while, I'd been yearning to just go back to a simpler time. A time where I could still make fun stuff for people, but not worry about some machine deciding whether my friends will get to see it or not.

Little did I know, I didn't need to turn back time. We have the opportunity to do this today. In fact, it had been hiding in plain sight for me. I was just so blinded by the lights of the For You feed, that I didn't see it. neocities.org. Right in my mutual's Bluesky handle... (shoutout @bootfloppy.neocities.org!)

What finally woke me up to learn more about Neocities - I thought it was just a static website host - was the YouTube video linked above. On paper, Neocities is just a static host with a few social features. But what's happening there is so much cooler than I could've guessed.

I found just what I was craving. It was like I'd found a portal into an alternate timeline where the priority wasn't the algorithm, it was representing yourself exactly how YOU want to be represented, connecting with who YOU want to connect with. The algorithms and billionaires don't decide that for you here, you're in charge!

The best part in my opinion, is that a lot of people treat it like the early 2000s on the internet, a time I'm nostalgic for in a weird way. I just barely got a taste of this era of the internet as a kid, but I never got the chance to indulge in it, until today.

Building

The Forgejo repository for my website

It wasn't immediately that I started working on a new "old school" site. I was still working on my Fluffgan Warmers when I first learned about all this, so I was a bit occupied. Luckily their release went smoothly, and coincidentally, I was going to be away from home, and therefore my PC, for a bit.

This gave me the perfect opportunity to start work, I had my laptop, and a calm environment with nothing else to do. Having a big chunk of time to get started really seemed to help. Kind of like when you're watching a new TV show that everyone says "Just push through the first season. It gets better, I swear!" about.

I decided to use SvelteKit for my website. I don't recommend starting with this if you've never done any kind of web dev before. I happened to stumble upon it when I was making a Christmas present, involving ImmichFrame and an old iPad, but that's a story for another day.

Svelte is pretty well documented and has tutorials that I actually enjoy following along. That says a lot in my opinion since I'm bad with that kind of thing usually. The only official programming docs I've found better were Rust's.

After getting setup with SvelteKit, I used PetraPixel's layout generator as a basis for CSS. It's handy and I don't think I could've got to where I am without it, I really needed a basis. But I do want to build my own CSS style from the ground up soon.

Final Product

hiijax.net as of 1:39pm EST on February 25, 2026

I shouldn't call it "final" I suppose, it'll always be evolving, but I have something fun up and running now! It runs locally on my Unraid server, a key requirement for me, to show off my love for self hosting. It allows me to do some cool server-side stuff too. For example, I can drop more buttons to /buttons and they'll appear immediately by just refreshing the site!

I'm most proud of the art gallery. It dynamically reads image metadata from a list and shows all corresponding pictures. You can filter by character and even switch between .webp and .avif! It works almost like browsing directories too, going to hiijax.net/gallery/nyx will show you Nyx's photos, hiijax.net/gallery/nyx/zowolfi_headshot will bring you to the photo viewing page, and adding the file extension to that brings you directly to the file!

On my to-do list is make it easier to view full screen, add "Next" and "Previous" buttons, and then use this basis for a blog section of my site. As much as I love Leaflet, and this is my first real post here, it'll probably be my last, since I like the idea of my stuff being on my site hosted on my server.

Overall, I'm happy I've discovered this part of the web still exists. If you feel modern social media is a drag, I encourage you to start surfing this alternate web. I have a links section that could be a good place to start. If you stumble across a webring for an interest you enjoy, check it out! Diving through links is a fun way to find people with common interests. Maybe it'll even inspire you to put yourself on the indie web too, it's easier than you'd expect to get started! Be sure to check out onionboots's video too, it covers so much more than I could've hoped to here.

I'll wrap it up there for now, but I enjoyed writing this and think, despite how lengthy this already is, there's a lot more I could tell you about in more posts! There's lots of fun to be had owning your content and kicking the big corpos. But for now, enjoy exploring cyberspace!