The format of this site has started to solidify (Which will happen as you brute force more pages into existence), so I'd like to make a formal statelment of real intent for how I want this site to be, as a reflection both of who I am, and who I wish to be. Because as a wise man once said: "I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards". There are a number of principles, so let's run through each one.
A lot of the personal sites revolution found on Neocities and Nekoweb are inspired by an incredibly Maximalist time for the internet: The early 2000's. Y2K is a very popular style to go for, and even further afield are the surrealists like Melon King. When done with proper intention by an experienced Webmaster (Like Melon King is), this allows the website to become a tapestry, flowing eaily and flooding the viewer with an experience they may not even realize at first. Done with blind nostalgia, however, and you get something of an eyesore or a website that can be difficult to navigate and use as the cost of appearance.
My goals with the visual design of this site are a little complex and contadictory, but that's just what it's like to be a person. I want to combine the elements that I do find nice about old internet, from early 90s to 2010, while also making them my own and taking them into a modern sort of context. I want they whimsy and joy a lot of the older Geocities sites and a lot of Neocities site, but without things like eyestrain or "dead ends". That's why the header is always a consistent look, no matter what part of the site you go to. I always find it a little awkward to have to go back and forth from a site's homepage, and I know that's more or less a symptom of being a newer webmaster, but it is something I've found annoying with some other people's sites. This navigation line leads me to my next point...
There are a couple ways to picture and organize the structure of a website. Google Sites, where I used to make my website, uses an awful-looking series of nested lists (Which couldn't go more than 3 deep, by the way). I think a Flowchart is good way to show how I like to think of the way I look at this site's structure.
This entry will be finished after I make a digital version of said flowchart. The following paragraphs will act as though the graphic is here.
What I'm trying to do with this structure is twofold:
Preventing information Overload is a bit trickier. In essence the principle here is to keep information presentation consistent and clear. For instance, while the Dreamcast and Phantasy Star pages have their own CSS, the site structure is exactly the same, and the header links are always in a green bar, which is the "width" of the hierarchy for this site, functioning as the "top level" which is accessible at any time. If I'd had the foresight to do so, I would probably have that nav bar always at the top of the screen. This makes exploration of the site fairly convenient, and by using an incredibly common form of the nav bar, it's a seamless experience for most users.
No real way to transition to this topic smoothly, but this is something that I kinda of gleaned from the amount of time I've spent wandering around Melonking.net, as he has both implied and spelled out his ideals of the web revival. Within the thoughts page on the website is about making the internet connected again, and part of that is ensuring that you link to the rest of the internet, preventing yourself from becoming a "dead end site". Most sites will do this with the standard singular "links" page, and I do have that, both for my links and for linking to others, but I wanted to go a small couple steps further, which is something that Melon has also done, and sprinkle cool links elsewhere. Melonking.net has this in the form of various functions like the plots of land he sells on the site (The whole site is a truly bizarre experience), the Surf Club, and a few other things, probably that I haven't even seen, it's a dizzying website. here, I do what I call "Further Reading". When possible, on related pages of mine or in journal entries that reference other things, I try my best to link to what I'm talking about (See above mentions of Melon King). These links could be to other personal sites, News Networks, or hell, the oldest link on the site is the Home Page link for John Titor. The goal of things like this is to promote the behavior of "surfing the web", which fell out of fashion as the "attention economy" rose to prominence.
And one last thing about this site is a newer feature: Secret paths. I won't spoil it here, but while every page can be gotten to with relative ease, there are hidden ways to get to some of them faster.