Webmastery
Why am I doing this?
I decided to finally start building my own website the same week that many of my Tumblr mutuals began to experience instability in the site, with slow load times and issues logging in. This came a couple of weeks after news of layoffs at Tumblr's parent company.
I have moved across enough websites: from now-defunct forums, MySpace, DeviantArt (when it was stylized as deviantART), Tumblr, the website formerly known as Twitter, Tumblr again, BlueSky. With Tumblr's instability and lack of support for custom blogs, and general dissilusionment with the shortform posting styles of Twitter and Bluesky, I decided I've had enough.
For the past year, I've been de-enshittifying my life. Scaling back on social media as far as I could (which as many of you know, is difficult as an artist that relies on commissions to survive), dumping my Discord and Spotify subscriptions in the trash, and slapping a Linux distro onto my laptop.
Is doing all of this hard? Removing all of this convenience from my life? Yes, in a way. It's time consuming to make a website, to learn how to use Linux, to build a website, to find and download all the music I want to listen to. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing; my life is richer for it.
Why should YOU do this?
First of all, it's really fun. Once you get over the learning curve of HTML and CSS (which, as far as programming goes, are pretty easy to get a grasp of), you can practically do whatever you want. In fact, the vastness of what you can do with your website is paralyzing.
I absolutely recommend looking around at other indie websites to get some ideas for what you want to do. Having a clear picture of what you want to achieve with your site will make learning web design less painful.
Learning computer skills is also more valuable than ever. There is a huge gap in tech literacy between generations due to the massive movement to mobile devices in the last decade, as well as the mystification of applications and system functions in mobile OSes.
Making a website will give you a wholly personal space that you, specifically, can enjoy. No more playing to an algorithm, no more pointless tagging systems, no more trying to make yourself palateable to others just to get by.