Image: Unknown source

I had a go at answering the questions from https://mouseling.net/100webmaster

1. Please introduce yourself.

anonee desu. I’m trying to practice my creative skills by publishing whatever I can put together.

2. How long have you been making websites?

Just started in March 2025 with this site.

3. And what got you into the hobby?

Overwhelming desire to create something, anything. I’m also working on some other projects I hope to eventually show here.

4. What kind of website are you most interested in?

Sites with very dense content and unique ideas. Something that transcends the basic blog structure.

5. What’s your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?

My site has hundreds of small pages which I generate from Markdown and JSON files with Python scripts I wrote myself.

The content for most pages comes from combining my daily journals I’ve kept since 2015. Sometimes I directly write pages, like this one.

6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.

Maybe none are particularly big, but I can think of:

• https://gwern.net/ is a favorite. Extremely deep and professional research of many cool topics. And the site is a marvel of advanced HTML and CSS.
• Derek SiversDerek Sivers has great writing on his site, and in particular https://sivers.org/counter suggests there is value in, instead of “comprehensive articles”, writing down just “the thoughts you didn’t hear anyone else say before”.
• https://apenwarr.ca ends each article in two “related” and one “unrelated” link. It makes browsing quite fun.
• Websites explored as graphs:
  • https://notpron.com/notpron/ Notpron is an ancient (2004) HTML based puzzle where you need to do use tech skills to figure out passwords to advance to the next level, which is just a different URL on the website.
  • There are quite many artsy websites where you click around links in order to explore the site “manually”, without any flat listings. Most of them are quite gimmicky, perhaps worth one browsing, and haven’t stuck in my memory.

7. What’s your favourite part about making websites?

Sharing cool stuff with others.

8. And the thing you struggle with the most?

Letting people know my site exists and writing English that doesn’t betray me as an ESL.

9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?

All the pages all created with the exactly same scripts and CSS. I want the user to be able to navigate comfortably from page to page.

10. How confident are you with CSS?

Haha, I can’t do the simplest thing without asking an AI to write the code.

11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?

I hadn’t heard of it before but looked up when writing this page. Seems a bit too specific to be useful for me.

12. What is your favourite HTML element?

The <hr> horizontal line. It’s a great way to add pacing to the pages besides using titles. I use it on the top of this page too.

13. If you’re making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?

Write or collect the text content. After that, decide on what images to put on the page.

14. Do you know JavaScript?

Not really. I’m a programmer by trade so I can write it if needed but I try to avoid it at all costs.

15. How about PHP?

No one should know PHP, it’s terrible.

16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?

Yup, same CSS on every page. It’s the Tokyo Night Moon theme from folke/tokyonight.nvim, intended for text editors. I thought I would make some “deeper branches” on the site use a different theme but haven’t gotten around to do that yet.

17. Are you more focused on content or design?

Content. But I try to improve my visual skills by working with the design also.

18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?

I do own it.

19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or “retro” websites?

I love hand-made websites of all kinds, but sites that only try to look retro without any real content feel annoyingly superficial.

20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?

All the tags are generated by scripts so they should be balanced, but HTML/CSS has some rules about which tags can appear inside others and those sometimes break on my site. I do use the browser “view source” option quite often on my and others’ sites.

I sometimes run my pages through https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and similar sites.

21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?

I didn’t browse many websites in the era they were popular so they look too retro for me.

22. What do you think of button walls in particular?

If it fits with the style of the site, why not.

23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?

I started so recently that I haven’t yet realized the mistakes I’ve made.

24. Are you envious of other people’s websites?

Sometimes.

25. What text editor do you use?

Vim, more specifically the modern version Neovim (nvim).

26. Why do you use that one?

I’ve been using vim for over a decade, enough to make me unable to write text in any other program.

27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?

On the same web host as the HTML.

28. This might not be relevant to you, but what’s your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?

Never heard of Nekoweb before. I think it’s good people with less technical ability and time have multiple options to make their own websites.

29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?

Quite exactly 700MB. Lots of high resolution images and their previews, plus some videos.

30. Do you keep local backups of your files?

Daily local backups (to separate storage medium), less often remote backups (other than the web host server).

31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?

To consume information simple is best, but very visual websites can be more fun.

32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?

The colors of this site are exactly the same as I have used for my desktop programs for many years now (terminals, programming, I’m a Linux nerd). See 16.

33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?

I think I might at some point pause to focus on other work but would keep the site online. If the website stays up and relevant then it’s not really quitting in my opinion.

34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?

Nope.

35. Do people in your real life know about your website?

No.

36. Do you update your website very often? How often is “very often”?

I update about once a week currently.

37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?

I make improvements whenever I can think of any, latest today when writing these answers. But maybe the design is nearly complete now and might stay stable for a while.

38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?

The textual content is almost directly from my journals that I originally wrote entirely for myself, so that’s very me-focused. But with the images, design, and other stuff I’m definitely constantly thinking about how to make the site useful for others. The topics are entirely about my interests and stuff I find intriguing. I never write about politics or news for example.

39. Do you do web design professionally?

No.

40. If not, would you like to? And if you’re comfortable answering, what do you do for work?

I work on math-heavy software (under titles like algorithm developer or research engineer), mainly with C++ and Python. Web Frontend development seems quite tedious to me, I wouldn’t like it.

41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?

For work, yes. I wouldn’t mind using it more also for personal communication.

42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?

I have never used social media in my life. I treat them as marketing channels.

43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?

I chat with friends using whatever platform they prefer.

44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?

Sometimes. My music taste is not very refined.

45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?

I made one other at neocities but it doesn’t seem like it will last.

46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?

My site covers every topic I think about and have made notes about along the years. A lot of fun in creating the site has been figuring out the connections between the topics and how to best organize the site.

47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?

I tend to write about topics in a way that does not bring my persona into focus, but surely my writing anyway reveals quite a bit. I self-censor a lot because the modern audience is so sensitive. It’s just not worth it to be completely honest.

48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?

Not yet.

49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?

Sufficiently. They are tools with no alternatives so unfortunately it doesn’t matter what I think.

50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?

Using lame blogging platforms without writing HTML/CSS on their own.

51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?

Using CSS to place components of the site in an interesting way. On my site I use three columns in landscape mode, which get squashed into one column in portrait (mobile).

52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?

I guess I use them more than the average frontend developer. I even have <nav> on every page!

I also put https://json-ld.org/ on every page.

53. Do you consider different browsers?

I consider them, but test only rarely.

54. Speaking of, what’s your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.

Firefox. Using open source software is important.

55. And what OS are you on?

Arch LinuxArch Linux

56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?

Yeah, I refuse to use any other OS than Linux. Open source is crucial, and personally I’ve customized my Linux environment so much along the years that I can no longer use any other system without losing all of my productivity.

57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?

I test them on mobile regularly, but there are still some rough edges.

58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?

Annoying.

59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?

I’m on the Lainchan webringLainchan webring because I thought it might be a good way to get some exposure and comments from like-minded people.

I wonder if I’m the only one who clicks open all the webring links and browses every site…

60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?

I’m not currently serious enough fan anything to build such a page, but I understand the appeal and think they can be quite cool.

61. Are your websites “cliche”, in your opinion?

I don’t think so.

62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?

It’s when the user feels like they have entered a new world, and there’s enough stuff in there to explore so that they can stay and get immersed in that world. I hope to accomplish a part of that, but websites are not the ideal medium for it.

63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?

I consider myself an artist, but visual art isn’t my strongest suite.

64. What are your favourite resource sites?

The background for the website is from https://www.transparenttextures.com/ and the fonts from https://fonts.google.com/.

A large majority of the images on the site I have collected from various imageboards.

I show art by others on my site without explicit permission, but I do make an effort to reverse image search the original authors and display the sources clearly (but sometimes I fail or forget, please email me).

65. Is there a habit you just can’t get away from no matter how hard you try?

Regenerating my whole site just to see one typo fixed.

66. What’s your biggest advice for a new webmaster?

Focus on the content. I also earlier wrote this article with miscellaneous advice: Website best practicesWebsite best practices

67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?

All CSS.

68. What do you think of frameset layouts?

Not sure what that is.

69. How about table-based layouts?

Nor that.

70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of “one-column”, “two-column” and “three-column” layouts? Do you use any of these?

I guess I use columns, not sure if in ways those terms imply.

71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?

CSS, I never write HTML by hand (more on that later), but the CSS I have to often manually tweak.

72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It’s useful for your thoughts.

It’s not a bad idea, I know several websites seriously made that way in this day. A less serious site: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?

I always make content first and only think about layout if for some reason it doesn’t look good enough.

74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?

I guess advanced, I’m almost never blocked by not being able to do something technical I want.

75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?

For indie websites, yes.

76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?

Googling one thing at a time. And lately, asking AIs.

77. Do you ever force elements to do things they’re not supposed to?

Maybe, sometimes I seem to get in a loop where I need to add more and more lines of CSS to make a “tiny” thing to work.

78. Thoughts on floating elements?

I haven’t used them ever so far. I like my images to be as big as possible.

79. When you’re sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?

Quite random, I haven’t yet figured out the best practices.

80. Do you have a favourite font?

On this site I wanted to use a serif font for the main text, and to balance that I decided on a sans-serif for titles. I compared a lot of alternatives before choosing the ones shown.

For programming I always use https://fonts.google.com/specimen/DM+Mono

81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?

I can’t collaborate on anything artistic. I need to have full control of everything.

82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?

Not really, but when I randomly come across good websites I consume them thoroughly on the spot. Sometimes it takes hours or days to do so.

83. Do you bookmark other people’s websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?

Recently I do check some personal websites regularly. Would be cool knowing someone cared enough of my site to bookmark.

84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?

Interesting ideas and art collected with good taste.

85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?

I’m not too interested in hardware, though I do select mechanical keyboards carefully and run a powerful self-built PC.

I know more about software than I care for…

86. How often and for how long are you online?

Always?

87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?

Deviant guys I guess.

88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?

XML sucks.

89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?

The Python code to generate this website is some 2k lines of code.

Besides work, I program quite often for various personal projects, mainly using Rust and Python.

90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?

I wrote my own static site generator for use on this website only. I don’t much like websites that have been generated with recognizable software (Bear, Wordpress, Substack, Medium).

91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?

I use https://www.goatcounter.com/ in hopes of understanding which pages get most visits and might benefit most from improvement. Most visitors seem to block such trackers, so in practice I’ve found information on Google Search Console more useful for understanding my traffic.

92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?

4chan. Maybe it’s not a forum but not a social media either, so I thought to mention it.

93. Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document?

I write the text in Markdown files, which is basically plain text with basic syntax for headings, italics, links, that kind of thing. My website generator converts them into HTML (using program called pandoc), and then I programmatically modify that HTML to the final form on the site.

94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you’re cool?

No.

95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?

I haven’t worked publicly much before, but I guess I have deleted a thing or two…

96. Would you close down your website if you couldn’t update it, or would you leave an archive?

Let it stay up as-is, I think.

97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?

I try not to reveal too much. Not that anyone is really interested.

98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?

I don’t have any friends ;_;

99. And do you optimise the images on your website?

Yeah, I have a quite elaborate scheme that automatically downscales all the images (to AVIF), putting the full resolution files behind the image links.

100. We’re out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ….other than exhausted.

It’s quite a fun format that really made me think.