Let’s Make A Fansite

Please Note, this is almost a 1-to-1 of the original zine, released in 2023. Some sites may no longer be operational.

Fansites are back and better than ever! More than that, it’s easier than ever! We have all these sites that give you bases that you just click and drag elements into and do whatever you want!

As long as you stick to the terms and conditions you didn’t read (whoopsie!)

But for me - and a lot of people - the true new hub is

NeoCities and sites like it. Sites with no elements to drag and drop, where you’re going to learn to code if it kills you!

That isn’t to say you can’t use the click and drag type. This guide offers plenty of insight into simply populating your site, so don’t worry that you didn’t take the handcoding route.

We’re all fans; let’s have fun!

Scope

Let’s Build a Fansite isn’t going to tell you you have to start from the blank page and you will get guides for filling your fansite. But, it’ll also offer pointers for people who are wanting to build from the ground up. You can decide if you want to play it safe or push yourself to learn something new.

This zine will have two parts; information on what to put on the pages themselves and how to structure the page and information on how to build it with HTML/CSS, including templates you can use. If you just need to know what you should be putting on a particular page or how to structure your manifesto, you can skip to the relevant sections and ignore anything that is irrelevant to you.

This zine is going to be offering tips to people who aren’t that familiar with HTML/CSS or, like me, hadn’t touched it since they last made a neopets pet page. This will be kept simple and will be workable without knowing what you’re doing. If you want to know more, there will be explanations and signposting for further reading.

It’s also worth knowing that we’re not working with Bootstrap or similar libraries. I know, I know, why have a dog and bark yourself, but we’re just going to get people warmed up and running the basics before they start looking into fun customisation. We can address a couple of things, but we’ll primarily be talking about the likes of flexbox itself when dealing with responsive design.

Who Are You?

I’m Marine! I didn’t have a fansite as a kid, I just messed around on neopets! I’m not a web developer, I don’t have fancy titles, and I came into this not knowing what I was doing! So, I taught myself with a load of online tutorials and just took a stab at it!

My current site is on Neocities and that’s where I put all my fannish stuff. I started using neocities because I quit twitter for the mental health benefits, but I had been using twitter to liveblog shows for years. I wanted to close my twitter (then never got to because the world of advertising depends on twitter) but I needed somewhere to backup all those liveblogs because I loved revisiting them. Enter NeoCities and throwing myself in the deep-end of building a website! It’s a long story how I got there and you probably don’t want to know it, but I spent time forcing code to do what I needed it to do until I had… 135 liveblogs uploaded (and counting, I’ve now moved on to Tumblr)! I believe the tweet count was around 13,000.

So what’s my qualification to teach you? If I can bulldoze my way through it, so can you. We’re going on pure faith, it’s you and me.

My goal is to keep this simple and work with the everyday person. I might not be able to reach the level of the completely tech illiterate, but I’ll aim for the willing to try. That way, we’re trying together! It’s also like when you get a new job and you’re then when they get a new hire it’s your job to train them. It’s newbies teaching newbies so that they don’t have overly high expectations of what someone will be able to do.

As a fan, I’m one of those weebs that does things like volunteer on fanlore to preserve fandom history and writes meta that reads way too deep into a children’s show! I’m a shipper who has a whole page on their site for showing off their ships and rambling about them! I’m the cringe fail man people are embarrassed by! I’m a fanfic writer, I’m an artist, and I sell silly little badges at cons that say “uke” on them! I got banned from iScribble for roleplaying obscure Death Note characters! I’ve done my time, I promise, and I approach this topic with something simple.

I love fandom and I love when people are willing to show their love for something without caring about judgement. I want your fansite to be something you make without caring what other people think.

Unless they’re complimenting you for your rad skills!