Why I made a website

Short answer: why not?

The longer answer is me waxing poetic.

I’ve made a website long long ago, back in 2021. (In fact, you can still see what remains of it here.) HTML and CSS may not be scripting languages, but the process of making websites really reminds me of the kind of headspace I’m in while programming, minus all the cooler debugging tools.

Anyways, you can see that I discovered a love for making websites. All of last year, before I took my iGCSEs, I remembered my love of making them. However, iGCSEs existed. On the other hand, I got way too bored on day was able to set it up on January of 2024… but iGCSEs still existed.

Anyways, why was I so passionate about having a website? Especially one built mostly from scratch (not using something like Wix or Google Sites).

My answer is that your website is kind of an extension of you. Your social media pages might have all your views, and your wallpapers might all be customised, but it’s not quite you. It’s not I-built-this-from-scratch-to-my-liking. It’s you, but restricted by the limited customisation capabilities given to you by whatever you’re on.

Your Wix sites and your Google Sites are valid sites, and they can be you, but for me personally there’s some thirst to own every little piece of my website. Believe me, I’ve tried many site makers… and I was ultimately dissatisfied with the result. Responsive design something-something and the fact that they won’t do stuff I wanted etc etc.

My websites don’t have the fancy-schmancy image carousels nor the boastful animations (though my old one had huge banners with images and… oh, did I spend so much time on that)… but every little bit was lovingly put together, sometimes in frustration as I wonder why the hell an image is overflowing or being cut off.

My website is me claiming my little piece of the internet. It’s a little manifestation of me that was dreamed to life with painstaking care and hard work.

Writing everything as words pop into my head. Dreaming up that I want a huuge banner, or a cool animation for my menu item on hover, or that my website should be plain simple and effective — but it was surely me. And I love that.

And like a girl might fantasise a world set in the 1800s (but without all the bad things), where she would dance in ballgowns and fall in love under the moonlight and fill her cards, and write poetry underneath the stars with a dip-pen and live the life of a debutante… I mean, I fantasise about that too, but another fantasy of mine was the perfect early internet. People claimed their spaces. Cringy, beautiful, horribly gloriously designed websites made by teenagers without a care in the world. Not many people do that anymore besides a niche and I would’ve loved to be alive in that kind of time. Just browsing through webrings makes me nostalgic for a time I never lived in.

So yeah, I love websites. I love all the love and care put into personal websites, especially those hand-made with HTML and CSS and perhaps JS. I love how, as you browse through webrings, you see a little piece of someone’s heart and soul, and their stories, and knowing that you are entering a place beloved to them (even if that place is a website, through a screen made of reds and blues and greens)…

I think websites are poetic as heck. Hell yeah, even as poetic as the entire romantic 1800s aesthetic.