I’m not a computer science major. Sure, I’ve done some coding in R for biology assignments, and I know how to use the terminal a little bit, but put anything even slightly more complicated in front of me and I’m helpless. So, I surprised even myself when I decided to learn HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) last year when I was sitting in a little café in Ireland.
HTML and CSS are the coding languages used to create and design websites. I’d recently found this cool website, Neocities, which hosts a number of smaller websites users create. Neocities users have put together some very wild, very impressive sites, most of which I’d never seen anything like before. These websites were certainly not possible using any website builder I’d heard of or tried before. So, curious and very much procrastinating my homework, I created a Neocities account.
Soon after creating an account, Neocities provided me with a quick tutorial on how to hand-code a very simple website in HTML. It was very easy, which encouraged me to keep going. The end of the tutorial linked to more resources, including the MDN Web Docs, which is the resource I’ve primarily been using to learn HTML and CSS ever since.
Why write your own HTML and CSS? Why not just use something like Google Sites?
The differences between using something like Wix or Google Sites to create a website and “hand-coding” a site are:
- The lack of drag-and-drop interfaces to use when hand-coding a site
- The complete freedom of expression and formatting available to you when hand-coding versus relying on simplified interfaces made for non-coders
For me, the freedom of expression is the most appealing part of hand-coding my own website. I’m nowhere near a pro (though I have improved substantially with practice), but there are some amazingly creative sites out there that really demonstrate the power of writing your own HTML and CSS. A lot of the sites on Neocities are reminiscent of the “old web,” back when the internet was populated by personal blogs and forums, not advertisements and social media designed for addiction. Almost everything is made with just passion, love, and raw determination to make a site work the way you want it to. There are also a number of Neocities sites with manifestos about the “old web” or “web 1.0” and a movement to bring back the internet as it once was, unpolluted by late-stage capitalism.
This is part of why I started coding my own website on Neocities. I’m sick of the internet as it exists today, I’m sick of what technology has become and what it’s used for, and I’m sick of everything being “optimized” for something or another. When I told someone about my site, they said I should change it into a portfolio for job hunting. Sure, HTML and CSS are useful skills to have for jobs, I’m sure. But my site is for me and my enjoyment, not for any “practical” end. To me, it comes down to the difference between “art” and “content creation.” My site is art, and I create it with passion, emotion, and creativity. A portfolio site is content creation, and it exists to be compatible with the capitalist machine’s definitions of what’s “useful” or not.
So, I’m learning HTML and CSS for the sake of art and for the sake of resisting the algorithmic internet owned by big corporations. My site is mine. Yeah, Neocities hosts it, so technically it’s theirs too, but at least I’m not relying on Mark Zuckerberg or whatever to facilitate my digital existence. One day, I hope to register my own website domain and move my site off of Neocities so it becomes entirely mine. I have great pride for my janky little site because I learned how to create it without relying on anything but the generously shared free resources on HTML and CSS others have shared online (including this helpful list from another Her Campus author!). It’s my constantly under-construction art-in-progress, and I love it.
Author’s Note: The Verge, coincidentally, also recently published an article about Neocities! Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read it, but if you have access to that, it might be worth checking out.