Not sure if Neocities changed Special Sauce again but I believe the TabF5 Growth Miracle has concluded, though I'm plenty happy with somehow having almost half a thousand followers in my first 6 months on here. I really appreciate knowing that there are people who will be willingly look at anything I make, it's a huge source of happiness in my life
I did notice a lot of these followers are brand-new to Neocities, so
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I want to talk about how to find your place on here, instead of getting discouraged and abandoning your site. The creative fulfillment potential on Neocities is way higher than anywhere else, but learning HTML/CSS/JS can be tough, and all one probably wants is to get good enough at it to be noticed by others. It's tragic when I find abandoned profiles of people who never find friends, especially because you SHOULDN'T
feel like you need to catch up to the mega-talented users on Special Sauce to feel valued. But something I've noticed I've been doing is following people if they regularly leave comments on my feed posts or other's, regardless of how their site looks. I've also found it helpful whenever someone I follow leaves a comment under that auto-generated thumbnails post saying what changes they made, as it helps me find
what's new that I can interact with and reply to. You can also leave nice messages directly on people's pages, but I've found it feels 1000x more affirming when someone comments on existing posts, since it's a reminder that someone is listening and actually cares. If you show everyone you're listening with the comments system, you are bound to finally find that feeling of belonging on here.
You should also still keep working on your site design and manually finding new sites to follow too, but I hope this extra advice helps anyone new on here to find great people. So if you're feeling discouraged, please keep trying because Neocities is worth it!! (Sorry this is so long but this is REALLY important)
Yesss this is absolutely the creative spirit of neocities and the indieweb as a whole. Community >>> popularity
well said, even though i sometimes feel guilty when i follow a new website without leaving comments. maybe because i haven't got used to this social media aspect of the neocities, much less i used one before. but discovering sites and using them as inspiration is what kept me doing this for two years (unbelievable!), even if i update my site sparsely.
Yes! Talking to people and being supportive is such a big deal! Everyone here is so nice, there's no real sense in being shy.
also hey dont feel pressured to push out content all the time. just Interact with ppl and shit and you'll get traction. but also yknow the sites not going anywhere. take your time.