Why make my own website?
To put it simply, I wanted my very own little corner of the internet where I could truly just be me, show what I've been up to creatively speaking and dump my thoughts and ideas on things that would otherwise be eternally stuck in my head. Yes, social media exists, yes, website builders like Squarespace and Wordpress exist and yes, they can make things look very modern and pretty (not to mention the fact they're much easier to learn how to use), but a while ago I I stumbled upon the website of Yann Van der Cruyssen, the composer of the soundtrack for Stray (2022), and nothing beat the feeling of going through it.
It's a very bare bones website, probably just pure HTML, and yet there's more personality in it than any social media page could ever offer in my opinion. You can see that this website is completely and truly his, no fluff, no SEO, no cookies or trackers, no ads, no generative AI slop, no trying to appeal to anyone for likes or follows. Just a simple "Hello. My name is Yann van der Cruyssen. Here is what I'm doing with my life". I spent hours on it, looking through all of the frankly insane amount of small and large projects this man had undertaken, some in English, some in French - not even the language was consistent across the website. He had done everything from audio to video to programming tools to books to games and much, much more. It was humbling, inspiring, and incredibly interesting to see a uniquely unfiltered view of what I consider to be a truly creative man. And he got to present it exactly the way he wanted to.
Just two months later I would discover neocities, and I instantly fell in love with it and the websites I saw on it. Every site I browsed through looked like a personally crafted and designed labor of love. As someone who is still learning the ropes of HTML/CSS, I was very impressed with the sheer variety of websites on neocities, as most people on there got creative with the tools that they had and crafted their own little corners and experiences free from any rules or conventions of modern web design, and it really felt like there was a community of people who were trying to bring the old web back. So here I am, inspired and making my own little static website, and I hope I can give you a similar feeling to the one I got when I came across Yann's website. Even if I like the look of modern web design too much to abandon it as completely as my neocities counterparts.