My Recent Web Journey
Took the time to revamp my forum recently. I was proud of my first rendition but it was nowhere near how I wanted it to look. I finally took that dive and now it looks exactly how I wanted. It's a darker theme, looks neater, moved the shoutbox to a more noticeable location, made a custom page, and even made another Bluesky profile for when I update the forum. Now my only obstacles are advertising it and the fact people don't use forums as much as before unless it's Reddit or the Discord forums system.
It was definitely not easy though since it's different than coding a website to a degree, at least for me. Had to figure out what was labeled as what to edit certain things. The biggest issue was the font size where I'd fix it in one place and it would be wrong in another. Had to add in some code for certain sections too that was just pulling the font size from the base forum font size since it didn't have it's own. After several days of on and off fixing it and coming back to it because it still wasn't fixed I finally got it down. It's definitely not perfect but it's readable and doesn't look insanely odd like it did originally so I'm happy with it. The colors also match a lot more now and go with one another better.
There's something cozy about using an actual forum space to hangout and exist. Making and engaging in discussion posts has always enjoyable to me especially after joining the Melonland forum. A lot of parts of my forum and even the creation of the forum itself was all thanks to Melonland and web revival. I wish I was old enough at the time of early 2000s internet so I could experience it in it's originality. Since I'm unable to do that though the next best option is pushing for web revival to become a larger topic again. Human crafted websites and forums are more important now than ever thanks to the rise of AI. We really need more human-made content than slop.
Along with revamping my forum I also started another side-project known as the Phantomhive URL Gallery. I haven't personally had the energy to fully code at the moment but I still want to collect, organize, and share resources I've found. I discovered Rentry through Tumblr users who use it similarly to Carrd. It's a simple markdown syntax rather than full blown code. On top of this it also has a table of contents feature that will create links to different sections separated by headers all the way down to sub-sections if you use different sized headers. This feature made it really easy to organize all my resources into individual categories and sub categories. I'm also using this as a resource to spread resources about web revival along with links relating around other stuff I find important, fun, helpful, etc.
Speaking of which I also added a category in the URL gallery for non-mainstream social media. Mainstream Social Media now days is rampant with AI, bots, messy algorithms, and shitty people. Lesser known social media websites are usually on the nicer end, are against AI, and more human. I've also noticed most of the better ones don't even have mobile apps except for a small few and are just websites, like Pillowfort. Recently though I've been using Blips for random status updates. I also still use Status Cafe but that's more so for status updates that I want posted on my website.
Of course while working on these projects my motivation for idle games came full circle yet again. I checked in on my old ones and actually started a few new ones as well. I decided to try some new ones I wasn't sure about trying before because I made a post on my forum revolving around idle games I've played and recommend! Though there is also one section for games I just don't really recommend but that section is tiny. So far the ones I've liked the most out of the new ones I've tried are DECON Protocol and, oddly enough, NGU Idle. I really didn't think I'd enjoy NGU idle not because of the mechanics but because it has crude humor which can be hit or miss with me. It's not bad though and I enjoy it as much as I enjoy Wizard and Minion Idle which I believe got inspiration from NGU idle with the way it plays so I knew I'd enjoy the play-style.
I've also finally started playing AdVenture Capitalist. I've been tempted to try it for years but kept putting it off because I didn't think I'd enjoy the play-style of that one. Come to find out it's now one of my favorite idle games. The balance of it is enjoyable and the events for getting gear with permanent buffs is really nice. It doesn't feel like a cash grab or too slow like other mobile idle games and the ads are all optional. Alongside this I started AdVenture Ages which is also pretty fun but some of the mechanics are different. It's a good buffer for when I'm letting AdVenture Capitalist idle while closed.
Anyway that's all for todays update!
Thank you for reading. <3
