Buttons and Adoptables
There’s so many kinds of graphics you can have on your website! The possibilities are endless, but lets narrow it down a little so that you can find what’s going to be applicable for you.
The first thing is the trophy cabinet, quiz results, and promo events. If you’re following the fandom calendar on dreamwidth or are prone to partaking in fandom events and exchanges, this is your chance to promote anything you’re taking part in so that people know what to expect or can join in! It’s also your space to show any rankings you got after the event! Or to show that you took the same quiz 15 times until it spat out that you were your blorbo and you can show that off with whatever graphics they provide (or you make).
Let’s Get Some Buttons
So, the primary way to really find stamps and buttons is to go to other peoples pages (random users, other fanpages, other people in your webring) and just pinch them off their site to put on your own. There’s a lot of common ones letting people know if you’re a desktop primary site or if you’re hosted on NeoCities or your favourite type of BL. A lot of these ones have been floating around and you’ll be free to grab whichever ones speak to you and your site.
Another place is deviantArt. There’s a lot of stamps on deviantArt because that was the fashion at the time and we all used them wildly. You can go on deviantart and put “stamp” after whatever you are into and if it existed pre-2014 you can hope that someone made something for it. Alternatively, you can search “stamp base” and get the base to make your own and play pretend like its vintage. Shhh no one has to know. Unless it has the anime of the season - then people might catch on. I highly recommend putting a link to the creator of the stamps somewhere. I don’t know how people feel about their old stamps but people didn’t like them being taken without credit when they were in fashion, so I maintain the same respect I did then. There’s a lot of graphics you wont have the opportunity to credit, so you may as well credit the ones you can.
GifCities is an Internet Archive project that has created a library of animated gifs. You can search for anything and see what it pulls up, and GifCities will provide a link to where it was archived from. It’s a great place to go for your vintage gifs and find fun stuff for things that aren’t as popular now. Or you can find a strange collection of spinning food gifs and maybe that is what your website desperately needs.
Blinkies Cafe is a new site that you can use to create your own blinkies with their pre-existing templates. You can pick the text, font, scale, and an emote. It’s super easy to use so you don’t have to worry about animating or designing something yourself. You can just quickly make something and have it ready to show off on your site. You can also submit templates to them, if you’re the creative type! The admin also runs a tumblr where they reblog blinkies and other graphics people have made, so it’s worth checking it out for anything that may take your fancy!
Tumblr in general is also your friend. While it’s very poorly optimised for small graphics, there’s a lot of users on there that enjoy making them and care about projects relating to building personal websites. That link will help you find more creators on there.
Adoptables
Ah, the great joy that was the adoptable. What purpose do they serve? Nothing, but people can look at them or click them and I don’t know some sites let them “feed” them. Just a cute silly little guy to have on your page.
As much as I’d like to promo some sites, listing their specific attributes, that’s not what this is about. I’ve gathered a list of some and you can find if there’s any that take your fancy. You’re also welcome to share any others that you love!
- DragCave - Hatch and raise a tiny dragon!
- GPX Plus - Collect and hatch Pokemon eggs!
- Gify Pet - Create your own pet that you can feed, wash and play with!
- Adopt a Shroom - Protect your site with a fungi! Be careful however.
Be careful however. I got sucked into playing one of these and got distracted from writing this. Now I’m thinking about how to code my own for on my site.