So uhh, one year of Nekoweb! It’s not even a while since I have joined Nekoweb and migrated my site from my very old, very underpowered free Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine instance where I was getting worried of shutting down because my debit card had no funds, to being one of the most popular Nekoweb users with over 200 followers and one of the most respected people on the Nekoweb community, and I am really grateful for everyone that supported me along the way.
How did we end up here?
Now, I have said this already on my 1 month Nekoweb review which you can read by clicking it, but the gist is that I have found Dimden (a really talented developer that made things like OldTwitter and OldTweetDeck) from a video of an AI techbro that I should not name1 and found Nekoweb through searching their project list there, and the rest is history.
The timeline
The start of jb’s Nekoweb journey
I have started jbsite3 a while after I registered on Nekoweb, and during the development of it, I have written my very first Nekoweb-related tool, svelte-adapter-nekoweb , which is used by many Nekoweb webdevs now if they are using SvelteKit. My first announcement of it got some reactions from other users and from Dimden themselves.
I am still new to Nekoweb back then but I have made some friends since then, and I would say the Nekoweb community, if you removed the bad parts of it back before the rules rework, is one of the best communities I have ever participated in. Of course there is the usual issues of it back then which I already said on my 1 month review of Nekoweb, but after the rules rework and some changes on Nekoweb, I feel like the Nekoweb community cares not just for me, but for everyone and that makes it feel more fun to do my site.
Then… jbsite4 approaches
After a while, I decided to do jbsite4 and finished it in just a week of development. Of course, the layout got some minor changes on some updates, but if you compare the layout jbsite4 has before and today, you will see the same thing, 2 dark bars (or almost white bars on light mode) with a sidebar on the left and the main content on the right. I wouldn’t say jbsite4 is the first modern site on Nekoweb, but I would say that it is one of the few modern sites on Nekoweb that people say is really fun to visit and does not feel like a corporate website.
Nekobox… oh Nekobox…
Shortly jbsite4’s release (and on the same day as my 17th birthday), I started development of a tool that I found missing. We have Remi’s Sitebox Previewer back then, but there is nothing for editing the feedbox, so I made the first version of Nekoweb Feedbox Previewer, which looks like this:
After it, Rice and Xan both asked for a Nekoweb sitebox previewer alongside the feedbox one, so I created one! Here’s how it looks like, alongside the feedbox previewer:
Now, on the first versions, both are on a seperate page, so someone (I think its duducat ) suggested to me to merge them to a single page and add things like a file size counter on it, which I did and added more features like a better editor for it, and Nekobox is born2.
I think I got popular because of this thing…
After Nekobox has been released, my view count in Nekoweb doubled, and more and more people that are new to Nekoweb or even people that already have a Nekoweb site followed me because of Nekobox, which has both upsides and downsides. For me, I don’t really care much about follower counts but I am really happy if I have reached a goal, and Nekobox is the reason I am here right now.
I am not going to be in this position in my life without Nekoweb
After I found Nekoweb, I am increasingly getting exposed with how great a community Nekoweb is and the things around it, I have found some really great and loving friends because of Nekoweb, I became part of the furry community partly because of Nekoweb, and I have increasingly getting some love with my social circle here on Nekoweb, and both of my socials on Bluesky and the Fediverse.
Thank you for being part of my online journey from being a friend, a supporter, or even just a reader of this post, I appreciate you all for the love I am getting here, like really, thank you all.
The elephant on the room…
Why did I say “and there’s something I need to tell you all…” on this post’s description? Even though using Nekoweb is one of the most fun things I ever done, I am going out of Nekoweb and going back to self hosting. Of course, I will still going to maintain every single thing I have on my Nekoweb, from some of my tools like Nekobox, to being there in the community. I will still be there for everyone in the community. I am so thankful for everyone, and I am not going to go radio silent because I left Nekoweb and gone to greener pastures for my site.
Finally…
Thank you for Toasty for helping to write this post with me and thanks for you for reading my post!
I also have been developing the new version of my site on v6.jbc.lol , but it’s on really early stages, so yeah… v6 is the version of my site that I’m going off Nekoweb on and going to self host, so don’t worry, I’m not going off Nekoweb for version 4, until version 6 gets released.
Why not comment? Comment your experiences with me and stuff, or things you want to say! I will read all the comments here, and I got back to my previous comment implementation just to have comments, but v6 will get it’s new comments, which is coming soon alongside v6!
Now finally, I have made a Ko-fi for donations to be easily done for one time only! If you can and want to donate, please donate! It will help me a lot! Thanks!
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*cough* theo at t3 dot gg *cough*= ↩
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All of those 3 are made in a single day… wow that’s pure dedication past jb ↩