finding your community

why this even needs explaining

most of the internet you grew up on shows you things based on what you already clicked. neocities doesn't do that, there's no algorithm deciding who sees your site, no feed sorting things by engagement. it's just a browse page, a search bar, and whatever links people choose to leave on their own pages. that's genuinely a good thing! it means nobody's site is buried because it's "not popular enough", but it also means community here is something you build by hand, not something that gets handed to you.

where to actually find people

a few starting points that worked for me, roughly in the order i'd try them:

• the neocities browse/tags page. sites can tag themselves by topic, so searching a tag close to your own interests (art, coding, a specific fandom) surfaces sites run by people into the same things you are
• webrings. a webring is a loop of sites around one shared theme, each site links to the "next" and "previous" one in the ring, so clicking through takes you on a little tour. joining one instantly connects you to everyone else already in it
• neighbors & affiliates lists. almost every personal site has a page (or a little grid of buttons) linking to sites the owner likes. if you land on a site you vibe with, check their neighbors list, chances are you'll like some of those too, and it snowballs from there
• guestbooks and comment boxes. lots of sites have one somewhere. signing them is a genuinely nice way to say "hi, i was here", and it's often how owners notice a new visitor and end up checking out your site back

taking inspiration from someone's site

looking at sites you admire and picking up ideas from them is completely normal, honestly it's how most of us learned! the line to be careful of isn't "was i inspired by this?", it's "did i copy the actual work instead of learning from it?". most people find it very disrespectful to have their work used as a base for someone else's code, which is understandable, as it's their work, and they have every right to set boundaries you shouldn't cross. something being posted on the internet doesn't automatically mean it's public domain, free for you to claim and use however you'd like.

• fine: liking how someone laid out their nav and building your own version of that idea from scratch, in your own code
• fine: using a coded layout/theme someone released for others to use (like this tutorials layout, built on a theme by seyche), as long as you follow whatever terms they set and credit them, same as i do for everything i build when taking inspiration from people i admire
• not fine: right-clicking → view source on a custom, not-for-reuse layout and lifting the code wholesale into your own site
• not fine: reusing someone's original graphics, custom cursor, or hand-written css as if you made it, even if you tweak the colors after

knowing what's actually free to use

this ties directly into the last section, but it deserves its own space: not everything sitting on someone's site is f2u (free to use) just because you found it there. a background, a cursor, a little decorative graphic, a script that makes something move a certain way, all of these can just as easily be something the owner made themselves and never offered up for others to take. if there's no note saying it's free to use, the safest assumption is that it isn't, not the other way around.

i say this from experience! some of the materials decorating my own blog were made by me on photoshop, not pulled from somewhere else, and i've had people copy and paste my scripts straight off view-source without so much as an ask or a mention afterward. it stings a little every time, honestly, because there's a real difference between someone learning from how i built something and someone just lifting it wholesale and presenting it as their own. i'd genuinely rather say yes to a message asking "hey, is this okay to use?" than find my own work sitting uncredited on another page.

• check for a terms/f2u page, a credits section, or a note near the file itself before assuming something's free to grab
• if nothing says either way, ask the owner directly, most people would rather answer a quick question than find their work taken without one
• graphics made in photoshop, illustrator, procreate, etc are original art, treat them with the same respect you'd want for your own
• a script "working" when you view-source it doesn't mean it was released for reuse, code can be just as much someone's original work as a drawing is

how to credit properly

a lot of sites keep a dedicated page for this, something like /credits.html, or a #credits section tucked into the index page, listing out where fonts, scripts, graphics, and layouts came from. that's a great habit to have, and honestly the right thing to do regardless of anything else in this section.

but i'd also gently push you to go one step further: when a specific page was inspired by, or built directly on top of, someone else's specific work, credit them right there on that page too, not only buried in a general credits list elsewhere. a guestbook page based on someone's guestbook layout, a button wall using someone's icon set, that kind of thing. i just find it a lot more respectful this way, and it's easier for visitors to immediately see who deserves the credit, right as they open the page, instead of having to go hunting for a separate credits page to piece it together themselves.

linking their buttons

you'll notice a lot of sites, including my own, have a whole section of their blog dedicated to their neighbors (a button wall of sites they admire and/or are affiliated with). those are usually 88×31 pixel buttons, a size that's basically tradition around here, small enough to sit in a neat row, big enough to fit a name or a little icon. linking one back to the site it belongs to is the standard way of saying "i like this site, go check it out":

<a href="https://theirsite.neocities.org" target="_blank">
  <img src="/media/buttons/theirsite.png" width="88" height="31" title="theirsite">
</a>

the important part here is src="/media/buttons/theirsite.png", that button image should be saved into your own site's files, not pointed at their server. more on exactly why in the next section, since it's the same reason people care about hotlinking in general. you'll notice that most sites have their button set with a "click to download" message (like i did on my index page), or already provide their link with the button hosted somewhere else (catbox, imgur, file garden, etc). i still prefer to host my neighbors' buttons on my own server, but it's also fine to reuse links that aren't hosted on their own server (you just want to be mindful of hotlinking).

• save the button image to your own computer first, then upload it into your own /media folder
• link the <img> to that local file, and wrap it in an <a> pointing to their actual site
• if they have a specific button they'd like used for linking to them, use that one instead of grabbing a random screenshot or making your own version

what is hotlinking, and why people dislike it

hotlinking is when you use <img src="..."> pointing directly at an image hosted on someone else's site, instead of saving that image and uploading it to your own. visually the picture shows up on your page either way, so it's an easy mistake to make without realizing it's a problem at all.

<!-- hotlinking: pulling the file straight from their server -->
<img src="https://theirsite.neocities.org/media/button.png">

<!-- correct: the file lives on your own site -->
<img src="/media/buttons/button.png">

the problem is what's happening behind the scenes: every single visitor to your page silently downloads that image from their server, not yours. that's their bandwidth being spent every time your page loads, for an image that isn't even being seen on their site. a few people visiting isn't a big deal, but a busy page hotlinking a bunch of images can genuinely rack up real cost or slow things down for the original owner, over something they get zero benefit from.

• it can break without warning. if the owner renames the file, moves it, or takes their site down, your page's image breaks too, and you won't necessarily know why
• it can be turned against you. some people who notice hotlinking will swap the original file for something embarrassing or unrelated, so the "stolen" image on your page suddenly changes to whatever they replaced it with. this isn't rare, it's a pretty common and very deliberate response to hotlinking specifically
• it skips crediting entirely. saving your own copy at least gives you the chance to add proper credit near it; hotlinking usually means the image just appears with no attribution at all

the short version

none of this is written down anywhere official, it's just stuff people pick up by hanging around long enough, so here it is all in one place:

• credit tutorials, themes, and coded layouts you build on top of, the way you'd want credited yourself
• ask before heavily basing your own site on someone else's not-for-reuse work
• never hotlink, save images to your own /media folder instead
• sign guestbooks, follow webring rules, and link back to friends who link to you when you can
• be patient with people who are new to this, everyone's coding skills started at "beginner" once, mine included

none of it is complicated, it mostly comes down to treating other people's little corners of the web the way you'd want yours treated. do that, and you'll find your people faster than you'd think. at the end of the day, you just need to remember to be kind and respectful; you'll find your people soon enough. ♡