Long time no post! Lately, I’ve been busy exploring a hosting platform that I recently discovered, and I honestly think it’s pretty cool. I came across it while browsing Reddit and was surprised that I had never heard of it before. The platform is called Neocities.
Once you start browsing sites hosted there, you’ll quickly notice a community full of active developers and creative people building amazing sites. What makes it interesting is that it brings back the feeling of old-school websites from the 90s. Nowadays, many modern websites share similar layouts and styles, but on Neocities, every site feels different and unique. It can feel overwhelming at first, but in a good way. If you're running out of ideas for your own website design, you'll definitely find inspiration there.
Another thing I noticed is the large number of artists and creative individuals on the platform. Their websites often reflect their personalities and interests, making each site feel personal and expressive. Instead of following trends, people create websites that truly represent themselves. You should definitely check it out if you enjoy discovering unique corners of the web.
What is Neocities?
Neocities is a free website hosting platform that allows users to create and customize their own websites from scratch using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It focuses on creativity, self-expression, and giving users complete control over their site's design and content.
Pros and Cons of Using Neocities
After using Neocities for 4 days, I’ve gathered my personal pros and cons based on my experience with the platform so far.
Pros
- You have complete freedom to design your website however you want.
- No ads or watermarks are forced onto your website.
- You can meet many people in the community and exchange website buttons or stamps with other users.
- Great for short blog posts, personal websites, and diary-style content while staying relatively anonymous.
- Free users receive 1 GB of storage and 200 GB bandwidth upon registration.
- Encourages creativity because you're building your site yourself rather than relying on templates.
Cons
- If you're planning to create long-form articles or use many heavy scripts and assets, the free storage may eventually become limiting. Upgrading to Supporter may be necessary.
- Free users can only create one website unless they upgrade.
- Like Blogspot's subdomain system, your website URL includes "neocities" unless you connect a custom domain.
- Unlike platforms such as Blogger, customization isn't automated. You often need to edit pages individually.
- You have to manually create pages like your homepage, posts, custom pages, and 404 pages.
- There is no built-in search widget.
- Features such as RSS feeds often need to be coded manually.
- Organizing files can take extra work. For example, I have separate folders for CSS, scripts, and page files like
index.htmlfor the homepage andnot_found.htmlfor the 404 page.
- Creating a new blog post means manually creating a new HTML page each time. It's very different from Blogger’s built-in post editor.
Because of this, I ended up creating a Post Generator to make posting easier and speed up the process.
Is Neocities Worth It for Blogging?
I think it depends on what you're looking for. If you enjoy creative freedom, customizing everything yourself, and building a website that truly feels personal, then Neocities can be a fun and rewarding experience. It feels less like using a traditional blogging platform and more like creating your own space on the internet.
But, if you prefer convenience, built-in tools, and a simple publishing process similar to Blogger or other modern platforms, you may find the manual setup frustrating.
For me, Neocities is perfect for amazing artists and people who enjoy writing personal diaries or simply venting their frustrations. It gives them a space to express their creativity, personality, thoughts, and individuality while creating unique sites that truly reflect who they are.