About this website

Here can be found meta-information about the website: initial ideas and concept development, resources used to build its features, roadmap for wished implementations.
Also, a further resources section for stuff and comments which doesn't fit previous sections. Possibly, just to record trashed ideas and outdated comments on implemented features, unless I decide to strike-through bullet points in the roadmap list instead -everytime I manage or discard them...

Why creating this website

Some reasons are already presented at random in the main "About" page, ...

...

How I'm building this website

This website aims to be as open-source (actually FLOSS aka Free/Libre Open Source Software) as possible as its source code can be found here.
Its contents are mostly released under a Creative Commons license (specifically the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 or Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International) unless otherwise specified, meaning it's free to share-reuse-remix with same license and without commercial purpose, as long as proper credits are given to the author(s) of the source materials (code, text, images etc...) -me included, please, as a lot here will be personal stuff I share in this corner of the Web.

Fundamental resource has been the italian website and community of LeAlternative. Their project is aimed at disseminating beginner-level open-source and privacy-friendly alternatives to proprietary software while also raising awareness on the ethics of electronics. Along with insightful resources on these topics (such as PrivacyGuides, EticaDigitale and The512KBClub LINKS!!!), thanks to them I've discovered the Neocities platform, which propted me to finally experiment into building my own basic website.

Other resources used can be found below:

• W3schools for standard HTML and CSS code plus a simple quickstart to build a static website from scratch
• Code Beautify to better re-formatting source code ripped from other websites through Firefox code inspector (yes, I know I could have looked for the source code and I did, but that's quicker sometimes...)
• Thebestwebsite for guidelines on styling -and related satire websites; this one in particular for accessibility
• The blog post "Create a simple responsive image gallery with HTML and CSS" by Tim Wells for the image gallery
• The thread "light/dark mode in html, without CSS (only html)" on stackoverflow to enable it without using a js script
• Publishing the source code on Codeberg and hosting this website via their "Pages" service so to learn basics of Git and keep a bit of versioning

What I'd like this website to have (next)

Basically the roadmap for features I'd like to improve and/or to implement in the future. Some require but a little digital gardening from time to time while others are just out of reach of my current skills (so I either learn how to do it myself or ask for help).

Further resources and comments

What-why-how I've done and/or discarded ideas and features. A sort of digital dump for record adding some stratigraphy to this site ;D
IF I'll actually fill this section here probably goes all of the changes of mind about where to host the website, which tools to develop it or not, and why. I should actually add timestamps to make it a nice timeline of my failures and a useful record for further fail-safes...
This might be just a quick list, while for the "failing gloriously" purpose I should better make dedicated webpages further explaining the context and process behind relevant choices, linked here from summarised bullet points.

Ultimately this might serve as a commented website changelog.

• 2024-04-12
  added folder for self-hosted fonts (for banner-title to display properly as svg without converting fonts to paths -which made the svg file weight more and slow down the homepage!)
• 2024-03-09
  Published first (incomplete) blogpost in the archaeology (and Narrative Medias section) category! Not exactly relevant for the weblog, but worth noting anyway, and also marking the first considerations about how and which class to give to sub-sections with momentary thoughts (or "archaeo-logs" as explained further in the Tech category)
• 2024-02-22_2024-03-07
  Trying to settle in the code decisions over navigation bar and website structure with related styling; creation and publication of first TrowelTips homepage banner; discussion over creating one-pager categories instead of nested directories and single webpages for sub-categories (e.g.: not creating a "arch-and-games" folder, but putting it all into the "archaeology" folder, so only nesting and sub-nesting sectioning elements as indexes lists for blogposts in the general category index webpage)
• 2024-02-21
  Change yet another html structure for blogposts and indexes following standards at https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/sections.html#the-section-element (improved discovering the "hgroup" tag...)
• 2024-02-19
  Finally made up my mind about how to semantically (or not) divide single blogposts and index pages through https://css-tricks.com/how-to-section-your-html/#dont-swap-div-for-a-section (with sections, divs, classes or headers)
• 2024-02-09
  
  • Added first navbar
  • Tried timeline for website changelog
  add a "Website changelog" webpage or section in about/This-website.html > put there changes in hosting and content uploading methods [from NeoCities to CodebergPages; manual commit via git (add simple guide)... idea to move to headless CMS/Hugo (more info and resources on what I tried or want to try for the website in about/This-website.html ]
  • simple unordered list with date prepended
  • full fledged but simple timeline
  • both cases: can take from git updates and related commit+comment history?
• 2024-02-06
  Actually remade website's directory structure and file placing
• 2024-02-03
  
  • Decided final directory structure by drawing site-map on paper notebook, choosing this website not to be the personal one meant at first (not yet at least), rather a blog focused on few topics and hosting some personal content to later merge in an eventual bigger website (or main domain with sub-domains for different stuff/services)
  • ultimately decide directories structure to rename/change folders and their nested organisation, move files into new folders, then fix src and href links
  • e.g.: "~~/blogs~~/archaeology/arch-and-videogames/" and "styles" where to put CSS files
  • "blogs" instead of "blog" or RATHER sections without redundant "blogs" macro-group???: main focus of this website is archaeology and tech anyway -the truly "personal website" might come later and either be separate or integrate this one
  • home/src/img/ or ~/resources/images/; ~/src/css/ or ~/resources/ styles and images and ... (for any other code and resource not to use indipendently or show as content)
  • ~/contents/ archaeology and tech and ... (for any other category of content I create and is shown on the website)
  • meta-blogpost anyway
  • index making this choice of terms (resources and contents, what they're meant to have inside, also consideration vs. "assets") and making clear reference to "blogs" kind mostly but not exclusively
  • first (and only?) inside the ~~/blogs~~ /contents folder, apart from the index.html, which further explains what I meant this macro-section to be (stemming from the very origin of the word "blog", copying the definition and initial history from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#History, to link as source for further resources on the topic)
  • make explicit (in macro-group index or first blog or tech ones?) that single blogs/internal webpages (not index/directory pages) will only have a "back-to-previous-directory" i.e.: "../" (and maybe also a "home" i.e.: "/") button so to make the maintenance/creation of webpages more sustainable (not having to add/change navbar in each html file); also: navbar is not a site-map (for that I'll provide the tree of directories in dedicated webpage!)
  • When you want the back button to go exactly one level back in the URL tree, you can use the following code:
    <a href="../"><input type="button" value="Back"/></a>
    Append multiple ../ to go multiple steps back in the URL tree. No Javascript is required to do this. https://stackoverflow.com/a/67713891
  • However, this won't work as intended for me if I add it to single html files inside a directory, as I would like them to 'go back' to the directory's main page -not to the previous containing directory
    Simply enough my workaround, as that's the structure I'm giving to the webpages, is to point at the index.html file inside the same directory i.e.: "./index.html"
  • quick blogging commentary serie on "Archaeology in anime-manga, videogames, and popular culture in general" [description] "S-parsed digital notes and considerations on archaeology as featured and represented in anime-manga, videogames, and popular culture in general!
    I know it's nothing so original, but still I wanted to compile and share my list of encounters between these topics, as I can't deny anymore I'm a nerd (for both things).
    I start this as a personal project, no expectation but to have a somewhat ordered list of observations whenever I feel like commenting these encounters, so it's by no mean a complete nor a proper research work. It may end up like a hunt for crossovers on the topics with commentaries, some written at length and some just drafted, some complete blog posts and some fragmented notes with day-by-day reactions.
    That's the idea." >>> tried anew on another website (to lift the trial off)
• 2024-01-30
  
  • make lists in about/This-website.html (and everywhere else) collapsible/accordion for better readability
  • for this: I've discovered I can use "accordion" summaries like here https://dev.to/tota11ydev/accordions-1-5-and-10-minute-versionsall-accessible-quicka11y-2d3b
  • but see also https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_collapsible.asp and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24977965/collapsible-lists-using-html-and-css
• 2024-01-15
  Getting back to the idea of a truly static and HTML-CSS pure website and finally tidying up the Codeberg repository to start adding contents
• 2022-12-05 - 2023
  
  • Notably: my confusion whether to use WordPress, headless CMS or else, or not
  • Decided to drop updating Neocities as main hosting in favour of Codeberg as providing better access to source code and chance to train with git versioning
  • Tried some Jekyll and Hugo
  • Also dropped static website generators as still too 'abstracting' processing (far less than CMS tho)
  • Another try to use WP only as a back-end, only for database management and flexibility in changing contents' categories, failed
• 2022-12-05
  Created first two (meta-)blogposts on html templates to reuse inside the website and on git basics to update the repo
• 2022-11-25
  
  • Registered account on Codeberg.org and migrating the static website to the "pages" repository to use their automatic hosting service
  • Moved to codeberg and its "Pages" service: mention I'll eventually update the neocities' page, as it's a nice project, and easier for everyone to get started if not interested to learn Git!) [also: update the "about" section when writing about git- and versioning and move to things as done]
• 2022-02-18
  Registered account on Neocities.org and created the "TrowelTips" static website with webpages drafts for Home, About, Gallery
• 2021-06-03
  
  • Note on a paper notebook with a story-telling idea, sketches of website structure, and webpage contents for a blog on archaeology named "TrowelsTips"
  • Idea dropped in favour of an simplier micro-blogging on Mastodon (short-lived...)
• 2020-04-19
  Reconstructed date of a paper draft with pencil sketches for my personal website's structure
• 2019 - 2020
  Semester when I had IT classes at Bachelor, discovered Linux, and started thinking about actually creating a personal website
• YYYY-MM-DD
  Example of a changelog