Questions for You and Minor Summer Update

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hello everyone!

i hope you’re having a great day and summer so far. thank all of you for being here!!! <3

i have some minor updates for you~

  • we now have way more themes and color palettes on discourse! we’ve installed the bulk of available discourse themes to help customize your experience a bit better. go to profile in your sidebar, preferences, then interface, and you can choose a new theme from there. (my new favorites are ghost and popsicle!)
  • our community guidelines have been updated to include information around disagreements (thanks to adam from omg.lol!)
  • i’m a bit behind on things at the moment (thanks to some disruptive stuff going on IRL), so code jam entries will be displayed soon on the event page! thanks for y’all’s patience with me on that.

as we move into our third (holy crap) year as a community in november, we want to make sure our priorities are still aligned, as we like to check in throughout the year. if you have a couple of moments, i have some brief anonymous questions for you here:

what are your vibes as of late?

  • EVERYTHING SUCKS
  • i’m doing okay despite everything
  • i’m actually doing good personally
  • survivin’
  • i don’t know how i am
0 voters

what do you want to spend your time with our community doing?

  • helping coding newbies on the forum & with guides
  • building collaborative projects together
  • just chatting with other website owners
  • doing events & code jams together
  • discussing internet cultural issues
  • sharing cool finds on the web with each other
  • something else! (i’ll leave a reply!)
0 voters

are you tired of hearing about AI?

  • yes, but i’d rather talk about it here than anywhere else
  • no, i’m actually glad we’re talking about it
  • yes, i want this place to be a respite from AI discussions
  • yes, but i don’t want anything to change in the cafe
  • no, i don’t feel strongly either way
  • no, and it’s relevant to our community/art
0 voters

and some more open-ended ones that you can answer in reply to this post:

  • what have you been into lately with web development?
    are you collecting cliques and webrings? are you browsing around the personal web? are you burned out from coding? have you been focusing on graphics instead? are you learning a new programming language to pump up your websites? are you struggling to figure out how to make art with code/the web?

  • what are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?

  • what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?
    if you feel weird about criticizing the community, put it into a compliment sandwich–but know that direct feedback is completely OK. just don’t be mean or make it personal. thank you!

thanks again for being here! the baristas are always looking to progress and better our community with you. <3 so thank you.

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(thanks to @Leilukin for catching my URL error!)

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To expand on the AI question: while I quickly grow exhausted of discussions of it, I don’t think my personal distaste should detract from others being able to discuss something so important to our community. Once AI is mentioned, I can dip, though I guess I would prefer if ongoing conversations on another topic never turn into AI discussions (but again, personal preference shouldn’t decide these things lol).

As for what I’m up to - mostly website improvements rather than new pages or anything. Still always eternally debating if changing my URL + general username is something I want to do lol.

I’ve been fairly quiet in the cafe thanks to an extended job hunt :’) but it’s been a nice place to check in and destress! Just talk about webbed sites and all that. Perhaps I should make you all look at Fish (my cat) more often… cafes could always use more cats.

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i’m in agreement with grubdog on the feeling, i’m personally tired of it, but i know this is a community of people who can have thoughtful convos on it. i’ll oversee if i wish, but i can always step back too :]

what ive been doing lately with web dev?
been kinda chill, my post-grad ended so i’ve been in a working crunch for final projects and haven’t had much time to dedicate to the site. re-organized some stuff around the site and i’ve made myself a new button in the process because i wanted an OC themed one … may return to beefing up my gallery soon (13+ years of art is something to organize)

what am i excited for the indie/personal web?
seeing more new people on neocities and seeing how their websites are shaping and growing to represent themselves!

what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?
i like seeing conversations!! even if the more technical ones go over my head, it’s always interesting for me to see all conversations from all walks of life, even if i dont understand it fully. im not a person who has really dislikes of things (if i do, i forgor), so it’s all good things

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Currently working on a blog post and my first ever web shrine. It’s challenging me with things like graphics but I’m using it as a learning experience on how to make a website that feels good to look at.

Really, just getting involved. Because I’ve had a lot of energy on getting the fundamentals sorted out on my new site redesign and workflow I haven’t spent much time properly getting involved. I’m looking forward to the next coding jam event or finding some web rings to join once I’m a little more settled in. It’s also just great to see how active the personal web has become in recent years. Seems like there’s more personal sites out there to get lost in now than there has been in a long time.

I enjoy that it’s an adults only space. It feels like there is more maturity and calmness in this community versus many others I’ve been in in the past. I like that there’s a big list of resources and the community is actually active. A lot of smaller or niche interest communities tend to set up front pages and community chat rooms and then when you get there it’s kind of tumbleweed city, so I guess I’m glad I got here after it had already become an established community?

There isn’t really any dislikes I have necessarily at the moment. I guess the only real downside I’ve had so far was that 32bc SSO doesn’t have TOTP support, so I have to either have TOTP for every service I use with it, or just not use SSO at all, which is a shame because I like the design of the SSO service site. But that isn’t even really a dislike with what 32-bit cafe is doing versus just being an issue I had one time with the technical side of it all.

Edit: Also agree with the above on AI. I would prefer not to see, think or hear anything AI because it’s brain poison to me but if people want to have the convo it’s not like I can’t just go literally anywhere else on the internet for a bit.

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Getting into PHP and trying to get better with CSS and front-end stuff more generally. I get the mechanics of CSS better now, but I have no sense for style or design or user interfaces. I’m a plumber at heart.

I’m mostly just glad to know it’s here. I like the way that it tends to diversity. It’s a good contrast to the homogeneity of the majority of the internet.

I like that it’s primarily a celebration of the personal web and of the things that people are doing on it. People post their sites, or their artwork, or their writing, and other people actually go check them out and say thoughtful and encouraging things. There aren’t a lot of affirming places on the internet any more and I think you’ve done something special by carving one out here.

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what have you been into lately with web development?

I’ve been tweaking pagefind settings (local, static-index/js search engine) to get the results and filters set up properly. There’s now a bit of metadata added to the pages so the indexer knows what to do with it all! I have filters set up for categories, authors, and sources.

what are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?

The sheer breadth and diversity of it. Probably the only “old web” thing I have nostalgia for was the “random yahoo link” … it was nearly always some person’s page about a subject I would never have thought to look for, and it was nearly always fascinating. And I’m happy to see personal websites spreading again!

what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?

I love the way people are friendly and helpful to newcomers!

Not really a fan of discourse though.

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Frontend wise, not a lot of new things have happened, since I am satisfied with the design of my websites, especially after having spent time in taking front end web development courses to learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

My recent focus with web development was hosting my websites on a VPS, which involved a deep dive into the terminal and Linux, which in turn paved the way for me to switch to using Linux full-time on my personal computer’s desktop as well.

About the fact that I had been involved in the indie and personal web communities for more than a year at this point. I made my own website for the first time in 2022, but did not actively participate in indie and personal web communities until 2024. These communities have changed my relationship with the web for the better.

I appreciate 32-Bit Cafe for being a community about building personal websites that is supportive of beginners and hobbyists, and does not focus on old web nostalgia. I make my own website so I would not rely on corporate web for my online presence, not for reviving old web aesthetics.

I also like that 32-Bit Cafe is an adult-only space, which means I can expect an increased level of maturity in conversations between community members.

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I am being Silenced (required to select only 4 options for the multiple choice question).

I’ve drafted a new webpage/link compilation (about websites) that I’m saving to release in October. I don’t want to hype it up too much, but I’m hoping it can spark some discussion.

Code/mechanics-wise, I’ve also been preparing another page template, this time one that makes more use of SVG CSS than I have in the past. The 32BC Tea Party this past spring was my introduction to creating page templates and it turns out I enjoy the process a lot more than I thought I would.

I don’t know if “excited“ is the word I’d choose (the feeling is more mellow), but I liked getting to see some of these recent conversations about blogging comment sections:

Show Us The Fish

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on the topic of ai, i do get a bit tired of hearing about it sometimes but i like that here its not everywhere. its not hard for me to just avoid a thread or two if i dont feel like reading about this anymore, so i voted neutral

what have you been into lately with web development?
most people know ive been working a lot on gdland lately since i keep posting updates about it, but ive also been working on some “behind the scenes” stuff like optimising my css/js to be a little less messy. im kind of all over the place with web dev lately but thats the fun of it imo

what are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?
atm i really want to hear about what makes people happy. like all of their shrines and their long blog posts about favourite things and everything like that.

what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?
i havent been here very long but i dont think theres anything i really dislike! i like that this is a relatively small space so it doesnt feel overwhelming and theres never an obligation to participate in anything if you dont want to.

edit: i looked at all the new themes and settled on www. it looks cool and works well with the darker palettes

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what do you want to spend your time with our community doing?

I don’t know, to be honest. I check in on this place because I do like the vibes of this place and I feel more at home here than I do other places. And occasionally I might ask for help for a small thing or say something that could be interesting.

To be honest, talking about the personal web itself, and making websites, doesn’t really interest me too much (besides specific techniques maybe). I’m more interested in seeing the things that people like and are interested in, and I like being here because everyone here cares about owning their presence on the Internet. I also just like being around people who are obsessed with making things.

are you tired of hearing about AI?

Yes and no. I am tired of hearing the term “AI” itself because it is intentionally ultra vague and it makes people think they know what it is and how it works when they actually don’t. I’m also tired of people being uncritical about the technologies and software that it has come to represent. But we definitely need people to be talking critically about this stuff.

what have you been into lately with web development?

I’ve been massively overhauling my website, with a fresh aesthetic evolution and making numerous improvements in responsiveness and accessibility (something I’ve been learning a bit about recently). Most recently, the complexity of my CSS has gotten to the point where I’ve been diving into making more use of Sass, as well as reorganizing it all into a more proper design system. I finally have an excuse to make a codified design system.

what are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?

It gives me hope that more and more people are getting into the personal web, lessening their dependence on social media, and even heading right into HTML and CSS. Sure, realistically it will never take over the walled gardens, but the more people who have a presence on the personal web, the better. While I have personal issues with the infrastructure of the Web, it’s what we have and this is still a huge step in the right direction.

what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?

I like that the 32-bit Café has built an active community through the forum and not just the Discord server, as someone who left Discord earlier this year. It also just helps the Café adhere to its message more consistently: own your presence on the Web, and that is exactly what the Café is doing with the forum. I also just like the environment.

Multiple people are saying that they like that it’s an adult-only space, which honestly I haven’t noticed at all, but yeah that’s probably helped.

Not anything I can think of that I dislike. I kinda wish I had ways to be more active in this community but I also have an impossible time being social anywhere.

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I love the new themes, thank you! Regarding AI, I feel like this is one of those subjects I’m kind of tired of seeing, much like blog posts about how Big Social Media is bad without anything new to add. However, this community is a good place for this, I found the recent discussion really thoughtful and interesting. It’s not like every other thread is about AI, which would be annoying.

The other questions:

what have you been into lately with web development?
Not much, I’m really just enjoying blogging again and customising stuff.

what are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?
Basically what I generally love about it, seeing people do quirky/fun things and showing their interests. I love seeing the fun code things people on here make for their sites!

what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?
I like that this is a polite and nice community without that sort of forced niceness, from what I’ve seen. It feels normal in a good way.

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What have you been into lately with web development?

I’m setting up multiple websites. I want to allow my main website to be a space for journaling and reflections, while also having spaces to explore my interests in games, animation, books, genealogy and hiking. I’ve been paying for the domains for ages, it makes sense (to me) to finally use them. However, I’m also setting them up with subdomains, should I decide I can’t afford paying for all the top level domains :sweat_smile:

Also planning my first shrines about Cowboy Bebop and Scandal. Tempted to see if I can use the Webdeck Player Cooperationiskey mentioned too.

What are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?

The opportunity for self expression and experimentation.

I’m excited to build different kinds of layouts. For example, trying to draft an answer to this thread about favourite tv series or movies I found I had ended up with a whole blog’s worth of content.. but combining it with this idea of ‘special media’ made me realise I could make a layout to showcase all my most liked media (and avoid me having to choose between them :sweat_smile: )

Adding features to my website that are unusual or ideas that aren’t fully formed just because I want to try them out.

I recently went to an in-person Homebrew Website Club where we talked about - amongst other things - viewing a historical timeline of a website’s content. That spurred the idea on the train home of the ability to scrape away the current content to reveal older content, like how you can scrape away layers of wallpaper to see the history of a house. I mocked up a quick example that I want to flesh out into a page template on my website to hide little Easter eggs in some places. I would never have even thought of that had I not been inspired by members of the indie web/personal web community.

What do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? What do you dislike?

I really didn’t like, and struggled to read, the white on teal new post counters in the old theme. So opening up the forum to the new theme was a pleasant surprise this morning. I didn’t realise there are multiple themes. I’m excited to try some of them out.

I don’t like that my go to emoji (“smiling face with rosy face and cheeks”) doesn’t have an alternaitve on the 32-bit Cafe and I keep posting the “blush” emoji by mistake :rofl:

I like that multiple people in the community care about accessibility and are keen to learn more and share their experience. I also like that there’s multiple ways to participate, regardless whether you’re actively writing on your website or doing web development (e.g. the chat or forum games like the ABC ones). I feel this is particularly important for members of the community who may have challenges with consistent participation, whether due to illness, disability or their living situation etc.

I really like the broad range of topics! I visit the share your blog posts / what did you do on your website today? topics daily but I always find something really interesting by seeing what else has been recently updated. For example, this thread about Misc pages.

I like that the community encourages community and personal projects like Good Internet Magazine, tkr and the Ianto Fanzine. It’s good to see what other people are working on.

I also like that the community encourages anyone to build their own website, but that there’s not a heavy focus on the technical side. I like that there are dedicated spaces in the forum for programming and technologies, but it doesn’t feel like a developer-oriented forum. I think this is super important if we are to welcome non-coders and show them how personal websites can be a really fulfilling form of self-expression.

I really like the way the mods are running the forum! I’m sure a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make this a safe space for everyone, but from what I do see there is a focus on transparency, fairness and wellbeing that isn’t common on other forums. It’s also cool that you have your own personal websites :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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i love the mock-up so much its a really fun thing to play with and i would love to see it used for real

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:dizzy: what have you been into lately with web development?

thinking of what I want to do on my site next. probably a collections page that will feature my notebook library. im still doing beginner javascript, for like the 1000th time.

:dizzy: what am i excited for the indie/personal web?

found lots of cool new blogs to keep up with. some people who make zines have also been in contact with me to contribute to their zine and for them to contribute to my cdworld zine (seems an issue 2 is happening). i haven’t collaborated this much with people online in years!

:dizzy: what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?

im pretty happy with everything tbh.its a very active forum with lots of interesting people who get along even if they dont always agree, what more can you ask for? i guess if i had to say one thing, some events feel like they go by quite fast, like the time to participate is a little short. but that might also just be because im so slow at literally everything.

same thoughts about (gen)AI convos as others, would love if it just left and never came back but sadly its everywhere, and im sure other artists/writers/creatives have frustrations with it they need to discuss with others so as long as its not endless discourse that doesnt really go anywhere i think there’s room for it here.

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what have you been into lately with web development?

I’ve been slowly poking away at my site, revamping one page at a time. I’m taking a pause from that to make a whole new large page about my experience with Minecraft! Its a chunkier page than I anticipated and definitely still a rough draft content wise. I haven’t been as active in the 32 bit cafe, but I have been checking up and reading what people are saying! (except the discord, I can’t keep up with that anymore :sob:)

what are you excited about right now with the indie/personal web?

I don’t really keep up with “major” events, but I like that its still thriving and growing :3

what do you like about what the 32-bit cafe’s doing? what do you dislike?

I just love this community for all the wonderful people! Different backgrounds and personalities, but everyone remains civil and can have a deep discussion with disagreements that doesn’t devolve into insults. Feels like you can talk without feeling like you’re gonna get accused of something awful, but also like you won’t attract some edgelord. Real People, not internet personalities.

The only thing I can think of that I don’t like is maybe on the discord theres a few people who talk A Lot and it feels like stuff gets buried in general chit chat. No ill will towards those people at all, we all have different levels of chatteriness but it does make me check the discord less because I feel like I can’t keep up. But at the same time its not like they’re doing anything “wrong”.

As for the AI

I don’t mind the discussion at all!! Yeah AI is shoved in our faces Everywhere, but at least here its often critical, or at least thoughtful. Plus if I am not in the mood for it, I simply just have to not click on a thread topic about AI … Not that hard to avoid

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heehee hoohoo green themes finally. :smiling_face_with_horns: :green_heart:

In the case of discussions of AI as long as it’s properly tagged so I can avoid it I don’t really care. Unless it takes over the forum threads lol. At this point I’m just burnt out.

Not much, I’ve focused on art projects I wanted to finish. I didn’t want to get distracted by webdev stuff but I guess the art motivation high I got after artfight[1] finally faded away! :woozy_face:

I have an idea for a blogpage redesign that’s more fitting to my site’s aesthetics (and more green!) that I could try working on.

Kinda related but I found out about obsidian bases recently & they’re pretty cool.

I think they’ll help with writing blogposts. Right now I’m trying to write a obsidian macro[2] that makes a slug folder with the current date & the post title, so far I need to manually write the post name like-this & then write the title property which is less annoying that it was originally.[3] (I’m using this site I found https://slugify.online/ since manually writing would be tedious.)

I need to figure out a way to make it so I can write the initial inputted value with spaces, then when it’s making the folder it applies a “slugify” filter to the inputted value that makes it web safe. Then apply the original value to the title property. :thinking:

  1. An online art event where you draw other people’s characters ↩︎

  2. Using the QuickAdd plugin. ↩︎

  3. It was worse I had to write the folder name, rename the markdown file, & manually remove the hyphens & fix the title property. ↩︎

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I’d probably say more like “I’m tired of hearing people talk about how AI is going to make them so much money”. :slight_smile: I think in terms of just talking about it, I’d put AI in the same category as other potentially depressing but still interesting topics that are nonetheless part of life and are worth talking about sometimes, like current affairs, various kinds of wistful thinking, and so on. I answered “I’d rather talk about it here than anywhere else” just because I encounter so much worryingly blind AI exuberance in other places, but the vibe here seems like one where any convo about AI would be something I could actually appreciate.

I wouldn’t want to see the cafe overwhelmed with AI talk, but to be honest I think that’s unlikely because everyone here is focused on so many other cool and rewarding things. :-) So an occasional discussion of AI seems fine (especially in contexts that are relevant to personal websites, like how to think about or handle AI scrapers and stuff).

Haven’t had time in the past few weeks, but before that I was working on dusting off a book club web app that I wrote for my friends and I to comment on passages from books we read together. My webhost discontinued the service I had been using to run it, so I decided to try to port it to a different framework and dive into the gory details of setting it up on a VPS. I made progress but still have a bit to do.

Mostly I’m excited to have found this community. :slight_smile:

I’ve only been lurking here a short while but haven’t found much to dislike. This seems to be one of the most welcoming and goodhearted communities I’ve come across in a long time.

One more specific like I’ll mention because I just saw it in the forum guidelines: I think the acceptance of necroposting is a good idea. Some places discourage it, but then wind up getting the same thing in the form of repeated separate posts about the same thing, which I think just creates more clutter when trying to read things. When discussion of some particular topic stays in one thread, it’s easier to tune it out if you’re not interested. But at the same time, I think it also gives a nice vibe to the community, like there are a series of ongoing discussions that pause and resume as the mood strikes people. It’s sort of like having certain topics you bring up with your friends off and on as they’re relevant, like “So I had another funny grocery store experience yesterday. . .” or “After we talked about gardening a couple weeks ago I went to the nursery and. . .”

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Regarding AI discussion, while I am tired of hearing it in the general media, I don’t think discussion of it here in particular is wrong or tiring. I honestly am fine with it being discussed in 32-Bit, because the community guidelines have made this place a prime example of how to conduct mature conversations about a very divisive topic.

  • I’m gonna be honest although I have been trying to do small things around my websites, I have been completely burnt out from making sites. Like I genuinely thought I was gonna do something in July. Turns out, I was more concerned with physical art/life, because staring at a screen all day and sitting on a desk was affecting me negatively. I’m gradually getting back to it, but it’s probably gonna take a while before I send out a public update for any of my sites. I’m honestly just trying to finish projects I already had for them before doing something else.
  • I’ve been taking a break from it because I was so burnt out. But from what I could gather from my hiatus is how many more people are discovering the joy of making your own space with websites again. When I first came here, it used to kinda feel like a few handful of people that were deeply passionate about making websites. Which don’t get me wrong, I still do like the small town vibe on the Personal Web, but it gets a little boring after a while when you technically know everybody. That’s why it always excites me seeing new people come in and take an interest on making their own website.
  • I don’t have much criticisms personally, I think the way things are going are fine. I mean I’ve been in this community for years and I have only had good things to say about it, both in public and in private.
  • I think the best thing of all about 32-Bit is that it does not shy away from saying what it will or will not tolerate. One of the biggest pitfalls a community (both offline and online) can have is being vague and open to the point of letting the place become a nazi bar, all because the leaders cannot put their foot down on what is expected from members. Moderation is important if you want a certain type of vibe to foster in a community, something that the staff does very well. Transparency is also usually a problem, but 32-Bit does it well. The staff make it apparent what they expect of us, and they try their best to be reasonably open about what’s been going on.
  • Like everybody has already said, the 18+ rule has done numbers on creating a mature space. As well as avoid the problem of predators using the space to be creepy to children. Although there’s no guarantee that every member has good intentions, the rule still lessens the possibility. It also avoids the issue of having to share a space with minors, which is a whole can of worms that I would probably be yapping all day about. But the gist of it is that 32-Bit is a place where I can avoid the problem of “high-school” drama and petty-infighting among peers, because it is highly discouraged.
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AI question: For some reason I never seem to tire of arguing about AI. I honestly think it’s just a super fascinating topic with so many different ethical, technological, and social dimensions to consider. As soon as I think I have heard it all, I discover a new argument (or a newly inane presentation of a familiar one) that I haven’t considered.

Perhaps it’s because the problem is big enough that you can easily project any belief framework onto it. I can see why that makes the discussing exhausting for some. I have a few posts about AI on my dumpster but I usually refrain from sharing those in the blog thread because I suspect people have heard enough.

Likes/dislikes about the forum: Fundamentally, it’s nice to have a like-minded community that is committed to civility and helping each other out. But “like-minded” is a blessing and a curse. This forum tends to gravitate around certain dogmas like that static sites are “better” (it depends on your use case) or that you can infer someone’s politics from their platform (true in some cases?), but of course there are minority voices too. I just worry that, to a newcomer, it might feel tribal or gatekeepy.

On a related note, I find the indieweb aesthetic to be a bit cliche sometimes. I would love to see more personal sites that try to be beautiful in a way that’s original or modern rather than statement/throwback pieces (although I recognize the beauty in those too). I guess I shouldn’t complain since it says “32-bit” in the name, after all—but to me 32-bit means more the early internet ideals of DIY and personal expression than a specific aesthetic or toolchain.

Re 18+: I like this rule mainly because it absolves me of the sense that I am a creep. But the truth is that I spent a lot of my early teen years lingering in internet spaces with people older and wiser than me and learned a lot from the experience. I am not so confident in the implications above that an age cutoff promotes a “mature” or civil tone of discussion–it can just as easily be taken as a license to fly off the handle. But yes, this forum feels safe and welcoming in a way that others don’t, and I hope it can remain that way without having to acquire too many rules or a super heavyhanded moderation style.

@xandra did I do the sandwich thing right

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