(Warning: Nothing major beside me mentions burnout and my fear of abandonment.)
One year ago to this day, I updated my Neocities website to Website 3.0 after getting bored of using the Sadgrl layout that I used in Website 2.0. I know that sometime after upgrading their website, people feels unsatisfied and decided to do more updates to their websites. Not me however, my current website looks roughly the same. Unless it’s the holidays, that’s where I end up changing the Index and the Home page to match said holiday. I also moved the Guest Book link to the bottom of the Home page and even added a RSS Feed there as well.
As of recently, I start putting iframe links on the Directory section of my pages to make it easy on me if I end up having to get rid of the links there and not have to change ALL the pages. I also put an iframe link in my Cool Links page as I have too many linked buttons, which was starting to slow the loading time and made the page laggy.
Then early this year, I finally completed the missing links for the Collection section of the Misc. page, which was great! I said that this means the Misc. page is now (I would say) 80% complete!
But other than that, I started slowing down on updating my pages. This happened from time to time as executive dysfunction comes in and forces me to do other things that aren’t my website. Then I sometimes worry that I might not come back here at all and I end up like the many who might abandon and (and maybe) delete their website for whatever reasons.
If you saw my blog on me celebrating my one year anniversary of making this website last year, this was one of my biggest fears. Like, I’m worried that I all the sudden lost the motive of creating this website and want to move on to other things. And that if I do abandoned this website, will I be able to come back and not cringe at it due to my style and taste at the time of creating this site?
Now, you’re wondering why I would be nervous about abandoning my website. That’s because since the one anniversary blog, some pretty big names here on Neocities left. Which is not related to Kyle Drake (Neocities’ owner) liking Gen-AI, which drove people away from Neocities last October. Instead, most of them left around this year and last month, five of them were GONE when I was checking the links to make sure they still work!
It was like one day, they were done with making their website and just basically…vanish.
One of the big one was Swirl, a teenage Romanian girl who had a cute, Japanese style website that was very popular and everyone loved it. She was one of the first websites I visited when I first discovered Neocities. Then last August, she announced that she would be leaving Neocities due to a mixture of burnout and stress due to so many people keep stealing her website code and not taking it down when she said so. That devastated me that people can be cruel and causes a random teenage girl to leave because you keep stealing her code.
Another big one who left is Sugar for Brains, who was known to have a cool, cartoonish art style that drove me to his site. He was another website I visit when I discovered Neocities. Just three months ago, he announced that he would be leaving Neocities as he doesn’t find web mastering fun anymore. Then a few days later, he deleted his account and website, which made me and majority of people on the indie web very sad as he was one of the most popular site on Neocities and now he's gone.
Then right before both of them left, there was Catcakes, whose 2000s themed and circular website, helped me inspired my current Neocities website layout. She even joined the Cat Folk Webring, which is a webring for those whose website has a cat themed or has a cat persona themselves. She then deleted her website right before my one year anniversary blog due to her mentioning to someone else here that she was burned out or something on the line.
Then there was another (and somewhat) well known person on Neocities who left is Cherry, who made a Windows XP theme layout on her main page. Last month, I checked on her website and was greeted with, “This user no longer exists” page. That made me sad her layout page was one of the few websites that inspired my Window 7 themed Nekoweb website and now it’s gone.
Sigh, it’s a cycle.
A cycle where you make a website, it becomes big and then one day you had enough and you decided to deleted it for whatever reason. Even if didn’t have big followers or many views, it’s still sad for someone to deleted their website for whatever reason. I know that Neocities/Nekoweb isn’t the only place where this type of cycle happens.
As a person whose Neocities website has over 360,000 views and 260 followers, I’m worry that one day I MIGHT have enough and decide to delete the hard work I made on my website!
I hope I don’t as I enjoy being here. More than the remaining social media accounts I have thanks to what’s been going on in the past few months! Still, I hope I don’t end up having burnout that’ll cause me to flee and (even) delete my website. Like the many whom I mention above and currently on my 404 Graveyard section of my Cool Links page.
Hopefully I can last long enough to make it to my two year anniversary for my Neocities website. And maybe even to my five year anniversary if I can get real lucky! Now that will be the dream.