MicroBlogPost: Personal websites inspiration and notes
april 9, 2024
- https://anhvn.com/ Has beautiful art, sorta like a comic strip?
- https://skip.house/ Love the 2005 internet vibe, attention to detail with type, silk icons and color.
- https://versary.town/ Incredibly chaotic, a bit more retro than skip’s site. Only dislike is cursors can be a bit jarring.
- https://neonaut.neocities.org/ Each page has a unique theme, also has a sorta chaotic retro vibe. Not as much as annie’s site tho.
- https://breq.dev/ Goes in a completely opposite direction to the retro sites and incorporates 3D animation.
- https://freeplay.floof.company/ Full of completely no-js interactive features.
- https://rsms.me I took a lot of inspiration from Rasmus’s site in my own. Namely A links using backgrounds and arrows denoting links.
Some stuff I like about my own site:
- Certain pages such as my train icons showcase and twitter embeds bot have modified themes. The twitter embeds bot page also has a border similar to the icon of the bot.
- The 404 page has some cute witchy artwork
What makes a site memorable:
- Unique and personal touches
- Interactivity
Some guidelines for creating sites (not necessarily personal sites): sorta a modern version of https://github.com/adryd325/ethical-web-design-practices
- If you must display banners or popups make sure they don’t obstruct content and are easy to dismiss.
- Popups for a newsletter are annoying, keep them as a banner.
- Do not force sign-ups or login to view content, if you must prompt logins, use a banner.
- Cookie popups banners be easy to dismiss or ignore with no slowdowns or additional menus.
- No, you don’t need a cookie popup on your site.
- If possible, respect prefers-reduce-motion.
- Transition animations may look pretty, but often serve to slow things down, keep them quick if you must have them.
- Do not mess with scrolling smoothness or direction.
- Do not mess with the users cursor, particularly the motion of the cursor.
- I do not want a cursor with smoothing. I do not want a dot with that smoothing following my cursor either.
- If you chose to replace cursors, please replace them with one that has a point at the top left.
- Do not play sounds or video without the user expecting them or having the chance to disable them.
- If you choose to use analytics, keep them 1st party if possible.
- If you choose to use advertising, use unobtrusive ads. Carbon Ads seems to do this alright.
- Ads should never pretend to be site content.
- Do not prevent users with ad-blockers from accessing your site.
- If you choose to use advertising, try to find a privacy respecting provider.
- Respect Do Not Track.
- Javascript is fine actually. But try to use it only where needed though; and reduce bundle sizes when possible.