Contact
Like many other people on the internet nowadays, I have email! You can email me at k [at] kalechips [dot] net, and here's my PGP key (more information on PGP keys). Alternatively, you can publish a comment in the guestbook below.
If you want your own guestbook like this, my code is available for public use!
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hello! just wanted to say that your site is so sleek and makes your website so easy to read! Your code snippets and css layouts have really encouraged me to experiment and learn more than I already do. Always love coming back to check if there's something new :)
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This is so nice, thank you so much! I'm always happy when people find stuff here useful.
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Hi :) I'm sorry if this is a silly question but how do you maintain both your website on neocities and on a different server? Is it a duplicate or do you redirect it or ??? Do you have to manually update both? Sorry for bothering you with this, I want to get proper hosting eventually and you're the only person I follow who talks about the logistics of hosting off neocities!
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Not silly at all! My Neocities "website" is just a copy-pasted version of my front page that redirects to this one (you can do that with one line of code, see W3's documentation). The only thing I ever mess around with on Neocities is the front page whenever I update - I list everything there anyway, so it's a reliable enough way of communicating changes without having to mirror the entire thing. I know some people do maintain copies in two places at once, but this website has way too many pages for me to want to do that.
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hiii kale :3 just wanted to say it makes me so happy that you still have Audrey on your homepage. its just like..................audrey jumpscare whenever you update and i love it
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Hiiiii I'm glad he still brings you joy! He brings me joy as well. I had a lot of fun drawing him.
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i found out sif was dead through your blog and i went through the five stages of grief even though i havent played in years... i wish i could've taken a look at my dia + nozomi collection one last time but if that EU rule is true im screwed </3 i stopped playing around 2019/early 2020 because of how bland the art was getting but i still have a soft spot for the URs and SRs from 2014-2018. thank you for the trip down memory lane!
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I feel you - I was also pretty bummed about it despite the game having gone to hell a long time ago. It was really surreal opening it up for one last time before it died. I collected Umi and Dia cards, so I spent the last few weeks trying to finish those up for some weird reason. The only good thing was how easy it was to get all the old cards towards the end...
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Hi! I was just perusing my hostees' sites (which I do once in a while out of habit), and I saw your post about neocities and recommending teacake. I guess that explains the huge number of signups I got once I rebalanced the stock availability for the plans! Thanks for your kind words.
I agree about the subdomain hosting (and it being the charm of the old web days), and wish I still offered the free plan, but unfortunately I had too many random signups that didn't do anything after signing up. If I could be reassured people actually used the space, I'd bring it back. You're free to tell people I can make accounts if they really want a little space to experiment with. They'll just need to contact me directly to chat. -
Wow! Thanks for dropping by! I'm surprised and mildly terrified that I apparently have enough reach to cause a noticeable bump in signups. (Does that make me an influencer now? Yikes.) I get the frustration with the random empty accounts, so I'll amend the information I've been giving out accordingly.
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hey !! stopping by to say that i really enjoy how well designed your site is <3 i love seeing how people are using php in their sites now !!
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Thank you for the kind words! I'm always pleased to see PHP users in the wild as well.
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hey! you suggested teacake hosting for a good hosting service, but signups for every plan seem to be closed/out of stock, are there any other hosts youd recommend?
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Thanks for letting me know - I had no idea! I'm pleased to see it so successful - reseller plans are expensive as hell and the owner is paying it out of pocket, so it's good to see they're recovering some of those costs. I hesitate to recommend things I haven't used (mainly so I don't wake up to pitchforks if something I mentioned ends up being shitty), but I put together a list on the web hosts page for you and anyone else who's looking.
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thank you for the thoughtful reply! i really appreciate it. i've de-anonymized myself and i'll likely email for any further advice - i just thought it'd be nice to send a follow up for anyone else who might be curious abt the topic.
you were right, i'm using neocities; i was really attracted to its social aspect & casual, hobbyist feel. it's sad to know i won't be able to achieve the efficiency i'd like here, but i think i'll take your suggestion and use my account to redirect to a main site hosted elsewhere. i also embarked on a hugo crash course in the day between my question & your response, so we'll see where that goes.
i have one last big question: what exactly is up with iframes? i've used them but disliked how i couldn't figure out how they worked. like i get the concept, but i don't know what it is they're doing in the code/server/??? to achieve that, or why experienced web designers tend to dislike them. -
I'll be sure to keep tabs on your progress, and for sure feel free to email if you'd like to pick my brain for any reason.
On the topic of iframes, they're a tool, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them. On a base level, what they do is load a webpage inside of another webpage. There's nothing else happening on your end at that point - the iframe basically just tells the browser to load another webpage in the space that you've designated. There are perfectly good reasons to use iframes. If you want to put, say, a chatbox or a weather widget on your website, it makes much more sense to embed a website that already does those things onto yours (unless you really want to code those by yourself, which I doubt).
They're also not necessarily bad if you build your website around them. It's not ideal, but if you're stuck with plain HTML, I would prefer a lightweight website built with iframes to the Javascript hell that I mentioned in my previous response. The main reason most web designers don't like them for that purpose is because it's not what they were made for, and they make your website kind of clunky to use (especially if you end up in a nested scrollbar situation). Overuse of iframes is also an accessibility nightmare because they're cumbersome for screen readers to navigate, and you're also just forcing your browser to load a bunch of pages in one. -
I've read your blog posts about indie web (and the posts that you link, like "Nostalgiamining vs Forging the Future") and they gave me a lot to think about and worded some feelings I've had for a while but haven't seen anyone talk about.
I hate social media but I'm also weary of this obsession with going back in time ("retro web", "yesterweb" etc.) instead of forward, and of the complete oblivion to the fact that in a lot of ways Neocities is exactly like social media - it's slower atm because there are fewer users but the dopamine mechanics of likes, follower counts etc. are all there. I saw someone in your guestbook talk about "weird twitter like popularity contest" and I'm wondering what that's referring to because I would love to hear your thoughts on it! -
Hi! Thanks for writing! "Obsession with going back in time" is how I feel about the current state of discourse as well, and I think it's a shame that people aren't more invested in building something better instead of uncritically worshipping the past. There are good things about what the internet used to be like, but a lot of it was complete garbage that should be nuked into oblivion.
As for the "popularity contest" thing, I have no idea what's being referred to specifically. I live under a rock and never look at Neocities outside of updating my mirror and occasionally checking up on acquaintances!
Philosophically, I think the desire for followers and fake internet popularity points in general has definitely saddled Neocities with the same problems that most of its users say they're trying to get away from. The way the interface emphasizes followers, pageviews, likes, etc reads pretty disingenuous, considering its entire marketing identity is that it's not like othergirlswebsites. -
hello! i've casually admired your site from afar for a while and finally got around to trying to make one myself - i'd like to ask, how do you go about stuff like adding new sheets to your styleswitcher div/changing your navigation div, and having that change apply to all your pages without using iframes or going insane (manually pasting it across all pages)?
this feels like one of those super basic questions but nobody on the internet is answering it for me besides making me feel like i should look into static site generators, which ii'd rather not do if possible -
Hello and congratulations on your new web project! I had to write an entire separate post about this because my answer got comically long-winded. Keep me posted!