Webmaster questionnaire

11 Mar, 2026 ⏰ 18 minute read

Mood: 🧙‍♂️ wizardly

I found this fun little questionnaire on MOUSELING.net and decided to fill it out. Here’s a blank version if you’d like to fill it out yourself. Please let me know if you do, and I’ll read it too!

1. Please introduce yourself.: Hi! I'm Veronica, the developer and maintainer of this humble website.
2. How long have you been making websites?: Hm, it's hard to say! I think my first Neocities site was made approximately six years ago, also with the Hugo static site generator, but I had bad file management and ended up losing all my source files to hard drive failure about a year later, so I started over again with this site last year.
3. And what got you into the hobby?: Before actually making my own website, I dabbled a lot with making custom Tumblr themes (in my youth), customizing websites with the Stylus browser extension, and writing various ArchiveOfOurOwn site skins and workskins for fun as a way to avoid actually writing fanfiction (I procrastinate on projects by creating other projects for myself). But ultimately, I thought that although testing the bounds of what I could make another website look like was fun, it could be eben more fun to create a website that was entirely up to me in its design and content.
4. What kind of website are you most interested in?: So even though this is just a personal blog site, I really like the sort of site that's super themed around something and dedicated to a "concept". I like that sort of dedication and monomania. But I'm always changing my mind!
5. What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?: I come up with the basic concept pretty thoroughly, but then after that I end up incrementally updating the design and content as my whims come and go. For example, with this site, I wanted to focus on broccoli flowers so the side-art was intended from the start.
6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.: Dilbert 2, Leisure Town, Cameron's World, Gwern.net, Keith Conrad, Richard Evan Schwartz, The Bozhos Site, V I S C E R A, JERK YOUR OWN ADVENTURE, Kittens Game, Nested
7. What's your favourite part about making websites?: Well, it's silly, but I make a site that I would want to look at, so my favorite part is once I've rendered the page and get to look at my creation. Maybe that's a little vain!
8. And the thing you struggle with the most?: Coming up with stuff to live inside my pages... I don't want to just have style without substance.
9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?: Yeah, I'm a bit lazy, so I use the same base layout for my pages. It's a holdover from the Tumblr days... I like that sort of single column. There is actually secret blogpage-specific CSS but it isn't for changing the layout. And I have a secret page with a completely different theme, but you'll never find it! Mwahaha!
10. How confident are you with CSS?: I am confident, but there are always new things to learn.
11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?: Yes, but I rarely have an occasion to use it. Thanks for setting up this interview format like this so I have an excuse to.
12. What is your favourite HTML element?: Oh, how difficult! I think it would probably be <head>. That's where all the fun stuff that makes my site what it is lives!
13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?: I try to visualize the gestalt of the page in my mind
14. Do you know JavaScript?: Yes, but not as well as CSS.
15. How about PHP?: Yes, but not as well as Javascript. I'm better with SQL.
16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?: I think it's a very loose vegetal/pastoral theme, but with other elements (like the Pikmin, haha) that I hope will add some flavor and contrast.
17. Are you more focused on content or design?: For all I say that I'd like to focus on content, I think this is a pretty design-focused website.
18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?: I used to own a domain name, but it expired because I didn't have much to put on it. Maybe I'd go back to hosting my own site and buying my own namespace, but it was a bit annoying to keep track of.
19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?: I like it, but I feel like a lot of nominally retro websites end up anachronistically mashing together stuff into some sort of nostalgic soup. Sometimes this can create a fun effect, but other times it just ends up making me crave the real thing instead.
20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?: It's mostly valid. But there are some errors and warnings that I'll fix someday in my static site generator automatic output.
21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?: Cute but I get irrationally mad when they aren't aligned well. I prefer using buttons as links to specific things so I don't care as much for the ones that are just like your zodiac sign or something.
22. What do you think of button walls in particular?: I like to use them to check out other sites, so it's sad when they fall victim to linkrot.
23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?: Probably something similar. My taste is my taste.
24. Are you envious of other people's websites?: Not really, my site is my own, and if there are elements from another site that I'd like to incorporate, then I'll incorporate it. But obviously I wouldn't want to use someone else's design wholesale, I'm thinking more like "Hm, it could be nice to have all my pictures be one-bit" or something like that.
25. What text editor do you use?: I use Sublime Text.
26. Why do you use that one?: Force of habit, it has a good syntax highlighter for Ren'Py so I was using it to write a visual novel like 10 years ago.
27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?: I definitely host my image files on my web server; if something happens to my site it doesn't really matter if the images are still there, but if something happened to my image host and my site was still there everything would end up getting completely broken!
28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?: I feel like Nekoweb users care more about this? Which makes sense, since they are the younger brother. I like Neocities' social features more, but like Nekoweb's RSS feeds. Now if only my posts would actually show up on Nekoweb's global feed, then maybe I would use it more. Or if I could get their CLI to work at all.
29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?: Ughhhhhhhhhh I have all the Pikmin images so probably a ton.
30. Do you keep local backups of your files?: Yes. I keep a backup on a cloud drive too, so that I don't end up losing all my source code to a hardware failure again...
31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?: Hm, I don't know. I guess I would prefer a website that loads quickly.
32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?: I only do this subconsciously, but I gravitate a lot to yellow.
33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?: No, but I do take breaks from updating.
34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?: This is an entirely solitary hobby.
35. Do people in your real life know about your website?: My husband reads my website.
36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?: The fever of updates comes and goes... sometimes I'll update several times a week, other times it could be months or even years.
37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?: I'm happy with the concept for this overall design, so I don't think I will change the shape of it. I think this sort of long-scrolling column works well for the sort of blogposting that I want to do.
38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?: Sadly it's a completely narcissistic me-focused website. But I also like to think about my hobbies and the outside world...
39. Do you do web design professionally?: No, my day job is something completely different.
40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?: No, my skills are only at this sort of silly thing. I work as a biostatistician, which I also enjoy doing and can perform at a much higher level.
41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?: Only people at my university.
42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?: I'm quite bad at keeping up with social media. Actually for Lent I made it so that I couldn't even lurk on social media sites anymore. I also get sort of weird and anxious about having a social media profile so every so often I try to get banned from websites, which of course has given me a rather weird and bad reputation...
43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?: I've recently started using Matrix to chat.
44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?: I work in silence lol
45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?: I'm a serial monogamist for websites.
46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?: Well, unfortunately the topic for this website has been my disease. But I think as my life moves on, this site will move on too.
47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?: I'm bad at constructine personae, so I'd like to say that I'm presenting my real self. But that's what someone who's putting up a front would say, isn't it?
48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?: No lol
49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?: I'd like some of the experimental features to become widely available cross-browser but I'm generally satisfied.
50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?: Using inline styles for everything: great recipe for your site being really fiddly and annoying to update. Giant embedded images. Unresponsive design. Links that are hidden under invisible elements that render the link unclickable. Super long and drawn out DNI pages... though I guess I don't really want to waste my time on the site of someone who wants to dedicate so much time to people they hate.
51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?: I think people should try their best to create interesting responsive layouts. I know that it's like creating 2 different websites, but that just means twice the fun, lol. And this isn't just for phone users, I often use split-screen viewing with my browser, so desktop users can benefit too. So try it out!
52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?: I love semantic HTML! Yippee!
53. Do you consider different browsers?: I consider Firefox first and foremost and then Chromium based browsers I guess, but I am guilty of not really keeping Safari in mind because I can't test it out (due to not owning a Mac). But I don't try to do anything that should be deeply incompatible with any particular browser.
54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.: Firefox has a functioning version of uBlock Origin. Delete ads from your life.
55. And what OS are you on?: Microsoft Windows 11.
56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?: It's just the OS that came with my computer... I suppose I like Windows because I can play a lot of computer games on it, but I've used Windows, MacOS, and various Linux distributions before and had a fine time no matter what.
57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?: Yes.
58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?: It's annoying. If you have a music player on your website, I'll click it on my own and enjoy it more than if it's imposed on me.
59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?: I'd like to join one but to be honest I don't like the webring grpahic design most of the time.
60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?: I guess I have my Pikmin page, but hm, that's more of an image dump. I like it when people actually write about the thing they love. I should do that. But I just can't find the words to do it justice yet.
61. Are your websites "cliche", in your opinion?: I'd like to hope not.
62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?: Hm, my ideal website is something where I could get lost in the links forever. I think this site is a long way away from that.
63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?: Yes, but I only draw once every blue moon...
64. What are your favourite resource sites?: To be honest I usually just google "[X] png site:neocities.org" or something.
65. Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?: I cannot break the habit of using MS PGothic for everything...
66. What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?: Make a seperate CSS file for design stuff. Well, this is pretty basic, but I think it's a good habit to start doingn from the very beginning.
67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?: Everything lives in the .css file except for the datetime stamp, because the blog template I started from had it that way and I don't really feel like changing it...
68. What do you think of frameset layouts?: Fun except when you forget to set the target attribute properly and end up with someone else's webpage stuck inside the frame.
69. How about table-based layouts?: Fun except on mobile devices. Let's use grid instead in 2026.
70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?: I guess it is a one column layout. I just think of it as an infinite page... I've seen two-and three-column Masonry layouts in the Tumblr context (ahhh, it always comes back to Tumblr...!) but I didn't like them much.
71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?: I use a static-site generator so these days all my changes are mostly to the CSS, though sometimes I will edit the base HTML template.
72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.: Yes, but I always think "Wouldn't it be fun if I did something with the CSS..." and add it.
73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?: I only make layouts with some sort of use case in mind. But of course there are a lot of layouts in my graveyard that have never seen the light of day...
74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?: I'll always be in the middle. There's a lot of webdev stuff outside of the CSS-JS-HTML beginner world that I don't know about at all.
75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?: Yes, haha, and I also inspect the network tab and force refresh the page if I like a font.
76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?: This is actually insane but when I was a kid I learned AIML to customize a chatbot and later realized it was really similar conceptually to HTML.
77. Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?: Yes, that's part of the joy of it.
78. Thoughts on floating elements?: I think they're a bit fiddly but do create a nice effect if you set them up right.
79. When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?: For fonts, em. For images, % (but only when they're inside a container that has some definite size). For divs and stuff, I'll probably combine vw, vh, and px to create something that is at least a certain size and at most a certain size so that the layout can be responsive.
80. Do you have a favourite font?: My Beloved MS PGothic.
81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?: Probably not. I already hate file management with one person.
82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?: No, but I'd like to do it more, to be honest.
83. Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?: I probably should, but instead I just try to commit the URL to memory.
84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?: I want people to be impressed with the broccoli flowers and how they can overlap the text while keeping everything clickable.
85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?: I suppose I'm interested in computers in general, like the theory of computing and Turing completeness and so on, but I don't keep a collection of items.
86. How often and for how long are you online?: Agh, too much. It's my procrastination mechanism to doomscroll, but it's a bad habit.
87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?: I think this is a site for the somewhat chuuni 30 year old.
88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?: Not really, but I think following the strictness of XHTML leads to good HTML practice.
89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?: Yes, I usually use Stata, R, and SAS. However, I have not used these in conjunction with my website.
90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?: This site is made with a static site generator.
91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?: Yes but it actually counts the number of times someone pulls a file from the Neocities server. I just thought it would be fun to keep track of.
92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?: To be honest I make accounts on forums and then never post on them. It's a bad habit.
93. Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document?: I write my page content in a Markdown file that the static site generator turns into HTML.
94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?: People actually do say that I'm cool but I don't believe it.
95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?: Of course I am, and I delete things constantly.
96. Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?: I'd probably leave a fairly scrubbed archive. If there were important resources I'd like to leave them up, but anything too personal or embarrassing I will remove.
97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?: I have the bad habit of oversharing.
98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?: Well, my best online friend doesn't have a website, so I shan't link to it.
99. And do you optimise the images on your website?: I use Imagemagick to reduce the dimensions. I guess I could also optimize the number of colors... maybe someday.
100. We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.: That was fun! Ah, I realized just how much impact being a Tumblrina had on my web design mentality... It's a little silly. I don't actually have an account there now. But it left its mark on me. Oh! I forgot! I also got used to HTML by making Dreamwidth layouts, haha. Lots of blogger sites in my past...

Thanks for getting to the end! Wow, lots of navel-gazing. Maybe I’ll find some more questionnaires and subject you to another one!

#Q&a