Maitimiel's Archive

How can I create my own archive on Neocities?

Intro

Here's how you can make a Neocities archive of your very own to put your fic/art/whatever, if you'd like to do something similar to what I did. This isn't the only way to make your own archive, however - do check out other guides, and don't be afraid to experiment! Before you dive in, however, you might want to consider a few things:

At its most basic, all you gotta do to create a page on your Neocities site is to upload an HTML file (we'll get into that below!). Each file is a page, and you can have as many, or as few pages as you'd like. You could in fact simply put every single work on your landing page and call it a day. Of course, that might result in a very long page, and it won't be the easiest to navigate. But it's your site! You could do that.

I like having a little bit more structure, by making each work be on its own page, and then create landing pages so that people can find and access those works. If you'd like a similar set up, your site should take less than an hour to put in place, plus however long it takes to archive all your works. Read on for detailed instructions!

What you'll need

Technically that's all you actually need. There's a few other things that might be nice to have open, however:

Getting started

The first thing you need yo do, if you haven't already, is to create your website:

  1. Access neocities.org and fill in the sign up form with some basic info about your site:
  2. Select Create My Site
  3. On the next page, you'll be asked whether you'd like to continue with free account, or to become a subscriber for 5 USD/month. This tutorial assumes you're using a free account
  4. Now, you'll be asked to confirm your email. Log in to your email account and you should have received a message titled [Neocities] Confirm your email address. Go ahead and confirm your email.

Congrats! Now you have a website. At this stage, Neocities will link you to a few resources to help you code your own website. These are good resources! Feel free to check them out if you'd like. I'll also link some further resources at the end of this guide. However, if you have zero knowledge of HTML and CSS, I recommend you save these links for later -- I'm writing this assuming you don't know anything, and I'll show you the essentials. Don't overwhelm yourself with learning how to code if you don't want to, I promise you'll be fine for now.

You can browse neocities.org to check out other people's websites if you want to. Whenever you're ready, select the Edit Site (or go to neocities.org/dashboard) to see your Dashboard and start creating your personal archive.

Site structure

Let's start by having a look at the Neocities Dashboard. This is where you'll add pages to your website, and also edit existing pages. Each page will appear here as a .html file. To add new pages, you'll add new files. I'll show you how to do so below.

You can also upload files to use on your site if you want to, such as images, but be careful! on the free plan, you'll only be able to host 1 GB worth of content. That should be plenty for text, but if you start uploading images or other media, you'll probably run out. Consider hosting media elsewhere and embedding it on your Neocities site instead.

When you first create a website on Neocities, you'll have 4 files on your Dashboard:

In this tutorial, our goal is to:

  1. Create a good landing page for your archive, with some basic information about you, that people can use to navigate your site.
  2. Create a work page to archive your first work.
  3. Create a work listing.
  4. Customize your 'not found' page.
  5. Add other pages, if desired.
  6. Add some styling to your archive.

Site index

Work pages

Work listings

Other pages

Mapping and navigation

Updating your site

Making your site pretty

Basic coding resources

HTML

CSS