Newbie Web Design Skilled Web Design Web Hosts Website Add-ons CSS JavaScript Game Design Free Books Communities Metalcraft Blogging Dumbphones Cool Sites My Fav Artists

Neopets HTML Guide

Highly recommend you go through this first!  Probably the best beginner’s introduction to HTML there is. The chapters focus on one goal at a time, so you can actually build a mastery of HTML with each step.

Lissa Explains It All

The original HTML and CSS tutorial website for kids—Lissa tutored a whole generation of webweavers, including yours truly. I recommend going through this after you finish the Neopets HTML Guide, as this is a bit more advanced.

MelonLand Wiki - Free Code Templates

Variety of website templates to get started with. Best used after you master the basics in at least the Neopets HTML Guide. The rest of the wiki has some general advice articles, too.

One Terrabyte of the Kilobyte Age

Browsing through the Geocities archive released by the Internet Archive Team. Each post has tags such as anime, starbg, and last updated 2003. This particular post on Web3 propaganda is especially poignant. I list this under the Newbie Web Design  category to provide references and inspiration to people new to making their own websites.

32bit.cafe

TONS of website weaving resources. Frankly, all this is overwhelming for the newbie, and the sheer amount of information presented is enough to scare away most people for good into Carrd.co forever. Once you get past the high barrier of entry, it’s a great resource, however.

Can I Use...?

Using cutting edge HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, or WebAssembly features? Gods, do I pity you. You can check cross-browser compatibility here.

CSS Grid Garden

Learn how to use CSS grids step-by-step by watering a vegetable garden in this tutorial game. Cute, fun, and easy to grasp. Great if you’re entirely new to CSS grids and HTML tables.

Learn CSS Grid

By Jon Suh. Vegetable gardens not your thing? Want to go straight to examples of webpage layouts, not carrots? This guide isn’t interactive like the garden game above, but you can learn at a faster pace if you prefer tinkering in a real website editor.

W3Schools

Interactive reference manual for everything HTML and CSS, along with many programming languages used in web development. There are fantastic beginner’s resources here, but unfortunately, they’re not organised in such a way that wouldn't intimidate or boggle an actual novice. Use this when you want to look up something specific.

Nekoweb.org

Free static websites! No file type limits for free, you can invite others to edit your website, customise your sitebox on the Explore page, and the Supporter tier is cheaper at $3 per month instead of Neocities’s $5.

Neocities.org

Making the web fun again! Free static website host with a Supporter tier at $5 per month. Has social features that allow you to easily interact with other webweavers, if you so choose (and they allow). It’s like social media for personal websites.

Guestbook/Comments with Replies

Want to add a Guestbook, or even Comments to multiple pages on your site? This widget is fully customisable with CSS, and even allows for Replies to individual comments! Just download the .CSS and .JS, follow the instructions on the download page, and have a Google Sheets account ready. Note that for Neocities, you will need the Supporter tier for your site to be allowed to pull from Google Sheets.

Chattable Chatbox

Free livechat compatible with free Neocities sites! Fully customisable: style it with CSS, set custom notification sounds, and add custom emoji via their dashboard too, too.

Animate.CSS

Fun CSS animation you can add to your website. Just copy and paste!

Hamburger Menus

By Jon Suh. Free animated CSS hamburger menus you can add to your website. Just copy and paste! Afterwards, you can customise aspects like line thickness, colour, and animation speed.

Pure CSS Animated Bubbles

By Mark Bowley. Mess around with the CSS attributes, and add floating bubbles to your own website.

GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform)

Cross-browser animation library that offers a free licence, in addition to its paid commercial licences. If you want something slicker than CSS, here you go. Check out their free pens and templates on Codepen.io!

MelonLand

Community centred on indie web revival and digital creativity. Just an amazing treasure trove of website crafting resources. Highly recommend joining the forum! Pleasant general discussions on a wide range of topics, and highly customisable post appearance. Closed on Mondays.

Newgrounds

One of the biggest havens for online creativity in the 2000s, and still kicking! Videos, animations, music, and art all find a home on Newgrounds, and the platform has features specifically to foster and publish creative collaboration between users. Public art and audio submissions are screened via a trust-based system, with “Scouters” manually approving works submitted for public display. Once a user has been scouted, they gain Scouting privileges themselves.

Reject Convenience Forum

Tech-centred forum based on mindful usage of technology. Lots of discussions about Linux, online privacy, and iPod modding.

status.cafe

Microblogging site (think Twitter) that lets you customise your status page and subscribe via Atom.

Blacksmiths Association of Missouri

Free book downloads! Numerous manuals and volumes that have entered the public domain.

Blacksmithing for Beginners

Facebook Group note with guides on hammers for beginner blacksmithers. Note that you have to be part of the blacksmithing for beginners / teachers group to access this.

Damascus Steel—A Rediscovery?

Article from R&D Innovator  vol. 3, #10. Account by Dr Oleg D. Sherby, Stanford Professor of materials science and engineering.

Ivan Kirpichev

Official Facebook page of bladesmith making genuine watered (“wootz”) steel in the Russian tradition.

Making Damascus Steel (RU)

German metallurgist Achim Wirtz describes the process of making crucible watered steel.

The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades

From Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society,  vol. 50, #9. Research paper by J.D. Verhoeven, A.H. Pendrav, and W.E. Dauksch.

Military and Classical Sabre Group

Facebook Group for historical sabres and fencing discussion and media. Get yer sword porn here.

Moose Forge

Archived on the Wayback Machine. Blog of a blacksmith.

The Mystery of Damascus steel appears solved

From the New York Times, 1981 September 29. Article on the efforts of Dr Oleg D. Sherby and Jeffrey Wadsworth.

Nick Thomas’s Flickr

Hundreds of sabre photos by the co-founder of the Academy of Historical Fencing in Newport, Wales.

Peserey - Circassian Handicrafts

Official Facebook page of Turkish smithy making beautiful sabres, knives, axes, and more.

Raiders of the lost steel

From Chemistry World. Article on the history of wootz steel and attempts at historical reproduction.

Reproducing crucible steel:

A practical guide and a comparative analysis to Persian manuscripts. Paper by Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani.

Rietveld Knives

South African bladesmith famous for his forge-welded “Dragonskin Damascus”.

Types of Polish War Sabres,

from the XVIth to the XVIIIth Centuries. English translation of the research paper by Wojciech Zabłocki.

Wojtysiak Weapons

Official Facebook page of Polish blacksmith who specialises in forging sabres. Beautiful axes as well.

What Happened to Community In Blogging?

Blog post from 2016 that reflects on the social changes within the blogging scene from 2011–2016. It’s great for giving a feel of blogging in its creative heyday; I don’t know if or when that kind of activity will find life again, with most communication, short-form and long-form, taking place on platforms designed to fester (not a typo) and exploit a competitive attention economy.

Very Simple Blogging - Directory

Overview of blogging platforms for those who are new to blogging and want to give it a try, with lots of free and paid options briefly reviewed. If you want to focus on just blogging, or you want to use a CMS (content management system) that makes blogging organised and intuitive as opposed to building an entire structure on a static website, I recommend trying out a platform. You can learn more about blogging from the other posts on the website.