Back when I was making my blog I looked at a bunch of different neocities that I liked to see if they had a page that explained their process for making their pages. I didn't find any (I didn't look very hard), so I just winged it after I found Zonelets.
Because of this experience I thought I'd make a page about how I made this website!
Getting Started
The very first thing I did when I decided I wanted a blog, was research. I knew I would host it on Neocities because it's free and someone on the internet had mentioned it.
That was all I knew. Prior to building this blog I had no experience with HTML or CSS. I had used JS before, but only for like a day. I had a background in coding as well, so learning HTML and CSS was easier.
So, where did the research take me? How did I get started? I'm glad you asked! After a few quick Google searches I found this crazy thing called Zonelets. It advertized itself as a "simple, free blogging engine for everyone", so I was immediately hooked.
I read through the site and found the Quick Start Guide. I followed it: download from itch and import to Neocities. It's really that simple. And that's all it took for me to get started, the rest of the site was all me!
See blog functional for my real-time reaction to getting started.
Elaborating
Zonelets is nice and all; it gives you a functional blog and even teaches you a little bit about making a website. But that wasn't enough for me (and probably not enough for you, either).
For starters, I wanted a side bar, not a top bar, for navigation. I also didn't like the colors. Technically Zonelets comes with theme packs so that you can change the colors without coding, but where's the fun in that?
I took fate into my own hands and began changing colors and learning how to add a side bar. It didn't take too long for me to get something working that looked... okay...
I was happy for a bit and then decided that it needed a redo and now my website looks like this!
It's amazing what learning what your doing can do for you!
But like... That was such a useless tutorial.
Yeah... Yeah it was.
I really wish I could take you through every step of the process but, honestly, I don't even remember them all. My best advice for creating this blog or some other website would be just start doing it and look things up as you go: that's what I did.
HERE ARE SOME WEBSITES THAT HELPED ME:
Genuinely. If you want to make a website, you just have to start and figure things out along the way. There's no better strategy in my opinion. JUST DO IT!