fansite/webhost musings
Oct. 12th, 2023 11:06 amslowly getting lawrencedane.com together - i went with liberato.io for my host and it's been a steep learning curve going from neocities' handholding to having to do literally everything from scratch. (i guess i don't have to do it from scratch since it's possible to do a wordpress plug-in thing? but when i tried installing it, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth lol.) but their customer support has been very patient with me which i really appreciate.
i decided on liberato after reading![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tempural's post about site hosting resources - the post is from about a year ago now but their tos still distinguishes between fictional content and irl harmful content in a way that gives me optimism that they won't suddenly decide to be weird about it, even though there won't be anything on the fansite dealing with (for example) fictional sexual material with underage characters. i did email them before signing up to ask about nazi iconography, since they say no hate symbols are allowed, and they responded promptly to clarify that discussions of/screenshots from media like dane's jericho episode would pose no problems. i do also like that they make it very clear that live-action sexual material is allowed as long as it's consensual, since i'm well aware of how hostile most of the internet has become towards sex workers.
i know neocities can be loosey-goosey with what kind of content they allow to be hosted, for better or worse, but i also know they have no customer support and it was absolutely a given that i would need it.
now that i've started to understand how the directories/subdirectories work in liberato's interface, including linking to images, i think my next step is going to be using a static site generator to help me with the css lol. much easier to tweak a template than code a page from nothing. i don't know if i need to be concerned about disabling hotlinking to images? it's something i thought about since one of my inspirations, the phantom of the paradise fansite the swan archives, has right-click completely disabled so you can't look at the source code for the pages or anything. i'm sure it's a bandwidth-control tactic but possibly also a copyright thing, which may be a factor i need to be thinking about in the long run...? trying to understand how to implement that kind of thing has been pretty confusing to me though, so for now my priority is just to get the site functional and reasonably attractive. then i might go back to customer support and ask them to walk me through implementing that function like i'm a five-year-old.
( thinking out loud about image hosting and site organization )
when you visit fansites/fanpages what are the first things you look for, as a fan or just someone who's curious? what kind of organization have you found helpful for navigating the sites/pages?
i decided on liberato after reading
tempural's post about site hosting resources - the post is from about a year ago now but their tos still distinguishes between fictional content and irl harmful content in a way that gives me optimism that they won't suddenly decide to be weird about it, even though there won't be anything on the fansite dealing with (for example) fictional sexual material with underage characters. i did email them before signing up to ask about nazi iconography, since they say no hate symbols are allowed, and they responded promptly to clarify that discussions of/screenshots from media like dane's jericho episode would pose no problems. i do also like that they make it very clear that live-action sexual material is allowed as long as it's consensual, since i'm well aware of how hostile most of the internet has become towards sex workers.i know neocities can be loosey-goosey with what kind of content they allow to be hosted, for better or worse, but i also know they have no customer support and it was absolutely a given that i would need it.
now that i've started to understand how the directories/subdirectories work in liberato's interface, including linking to images, i think my next step is going to be using a static site generator to help me with the css lol. much easier to tweak a template than code a page from nothing. i don't know if i need to be concerned about disabling hotlinking to images? it's something i thought about since one of my inspirations, the phantom of the paradise fansite the swan archives, has right-click completely disabled so you can't look at the source code for the pages or anything. i'm sure it's a bandwidth-control tactic but possibly also a copyright thing, which may be a factor i need to be thinking about in the long run...? trying to understand how to implement that kind of thing has been pretty confusing to me though, so for now my priority is just to get the site functional and reasonably attractive. then i might go back to customer support and ask them to walk me through implementing that function like i'm a five-year-old.
( thinking out loud about image hosting and site organization )
when you visit fansites/fanpages what are the first things you look for, as a fan or just someone who's curious? what kind of organization have you found helpful for navigating the sites/pages?
