Skep’s Place. | 100 Questions

100 Questions for Webmasters

So, I’m finally doing this thing that’s going around. It’s a bunch of questions created by MOUSELING.net, designed to give you a glimpse at the inner workings of Skep’s Place. I promise you don’t actually want this, but what’s done is done.

1. Please introduce yourself.: I’m Brad Pitt, famous Hollywood actor. AKA Skep.
2. How long have you been making websites?: Technically, since circa 2002! It was a single .html file that wasn’t hosted online, didn’t use styling, and probably had a grand total of 15 words. I tried to get into Wordpress blogging around 2009, but never went far with it. I didn’t achieve international acclaim until I started Skep’s Place in 2023.
3. And what got you into the hobby?: I witnessed the money and power that blogging could bring and I decided I wanted a slice of the pie. Also, I guess two other things kind of happened in tandem: I stopped browsing Reddit after their API debacle and needed something new to do, and I wanted a place to host my Classic Lit work.
4. What kind of website are you most interested in?: I like websites that have something to say. I like them more when what they say is both long and entirely trivial.
5. What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?: Design and layout first, content second. The content is usually just words. You can add words at any time so long as you’ve made a nice place for them to go.
6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.: If there was a single, defining inspiration for this site, it would probably be The Sneeze, a blog that primarily existed in the mid-2000s and has occupied some part of my brain since. I would start with either Steve Don’t Eat It! or None Pizza with Left Beef.
7. What's your favourite part about making websites?: I get to do and write all sorts of dumb, goofy shit and nobody can stop me.
8. And the thing you struggle with the most?: If I don’t post new content every 27 minutes, I feel as though I am personally letting the world down.
9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?: Generally, my site pages are pretty consistent. The home page is where I like to go really wild.
10. How confident are you with CSS?: I like to think I’m getting pretty good at it, but then I have to use the position property and my wife comes home to find me curled up on the floor in distress.
11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?: Well enough that I’m not entirely sure it should be used to format these questions like this. At least not from a semantic standpoint. Gray zone at best.
12. What is your favourite HTML element?: HTML molybdenum. Ha ha, I actually don’t know. <hr /> maybe?
13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?: Copy the code I wrote for something else so that I don’t have to make it from scratch.
14. Do you know JavaScript?: Just enough to be dangerous! I actually didn’t think I’d use it when I started out, but through bits and pieces here and there I’m starting to get somewhat comfortable with it.
15. How about PHP?: I could probably get around in the city well enough but I’ll definitely need to find someone who speaks English.
16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?: Hubris?
17. Are you more focused on content or design?: The website exists to host content and little else, but I’ve put far too much time into creating and tweaking the design to say it’s not something I actively focus on.
18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?: You could say I own skep.place, but seeing as I pay for it yearly it feels more like I’m renting it than anything.
19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?: I gotta be honest, I can’t figure out why so many people want their website to look like Windows 98.
20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?: Urk. I, uh. I should probably do that.
21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?: They can add personality to a page (and trying to capture that personality on such a small canvas size is a fun challenge), but they can also make the page look visually cluttered. For that reason, I don’t use banners at all; I don’t use buttons often, either, except on my RSS Site where they help break up the monotony of otherwise samey-looking list entries.
22. What do you think of button walls in particular?: A well-crafted button wall can be very satisfying to look at. I don’t click button walls though, and I don’t keep one myself, largely because I don’t need the anxiety of deciding who should be on it (and who shouldn’t).
23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?: I might go in a different direction with the style; I don’t have any alternate ideas in mind, but I doubt it would be too out-of-character. Content-wise I imagine it would be similar. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with what I’ve got going.
24. Are you envious of other people's websites?: Skep’s Place is the coolest site on the internet, I don’t know what there is to be envious about.
25. What text editor do you use?: I’d love to have a go-to text editor, but none of them ever swipe right on me :(
26. Why do you use that one?: Ugh, fine. I largely use Phoenix Code for my web content, although I mostly liked it for its live preview, which is irrelevant now that I’ve converted to Eleventy. Otherwise it’s got a few nice conveniences that almost make up for how often it manages to piss me off. I might look for alternatives. I sometimes use Notepad++, too, but I’ve never gelled with it and would not miss it.
27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?: I’d really love to avoid using an image hosting service ever again, if possible.
28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?: Nekoweb is… a thing that exists! I’m plenty happy with Neocities so I’ve never looked into what Nekoweb is like. I think “Nekoweb” is a worse name, so there’s that?
29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?: Estimate? I mean, I could go look it up right now. It’d be easy. But, best guess, just a couple megabytes, and that’s only for the images I throw into posts from time to time. Most of the site is just text, so it’s pretty lightweight.
30. Do you keep local backups of your files?: I do everything locally and then upload the changes. Actually it’s backed up on cloud storage, too, but that’s mostly so that I can work on it across different devices.
31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?: I lean toward simple, though I do like when a touch of personality has been applied. Make your site stand out from the others, even if it’s just a little bit!
32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?: Because I’ve worked a few sites now I’m going to say not really, but I do use that golden-yellow as sort of my personal motif. It’s my favorite—it’s bold and fun and goes with just about everything.
33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?: I’ve kind of thought about it in the long-term, in the sense that I’m not sure the kind of writing I do will be half as charming coming from an old geezer, so maybe I’ll have to pack it in someday. I’m going to keep going for now though.
34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?: I’ve made some friends doing this, but the actual topic of webmastery doesn’t tend to come up too often from my experience. So the hobby itself still feels pretty solo!
35. Do people in your real life know about your website?: My wife does, although she doesn’t read my site unless she’s invested in a particular post for some reason. Otherwise, I dunno, it feels weird to be like “I know I come across as mellow and thoughtful in person, but actually you should go to my website and read all of the dumb jokes I write”.
36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?: I probably average one update a week, falling just shy of the once-every-27-minutes standard I hold myself to.
37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?: I just recently did my first design overhaul in three years. I’m more often making small tweaks that I expect most people not to notice.
38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?: Uhh… is there another category? I don’t know what you call this mess. I don’t tend to actually focus on myself that often, but on the other hand I would think my voice is half the appeal of reading any of this (assuming there is any appeal; jury’s still out on that).
39. Do you do web design professionally?: I don’t do web design specifically, but I have been able to transfer some of the skills I’ve picked up from this hobby to my job.
40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?: I don’t think I’d want to do web design. I like having a bit of knowledge in my back pocket, but professional web development is a whole other beast that sounds absolutely miserable. I actually do work for a web-based software company, but I just write their help documentation. It’s a much cozier fit.
41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?: Not often, but occasionally! I do like emails though.
42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?: I’ve pretty much dropped out. My mental health has improved dramatically.
43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?: I am on Discord, but barely. I have a single server for a couple online friends, and I think it works well for that purpose. Outside of that one example, I don’t actually enjoy using it all that much.
44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?: If you want to know what I listen to while I work on my site, you should probably check out my home page! Currently Listening has been a home page staple since launch. It’s kind of a hodgepodge of whatever random thing happened to strike me in that moment.
45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?: Most of my writing is on Skep’s Place, with the exception of one particular niche that I keep contained over at cross goss!.
46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?: *glances at sidebar* …There might be a few.
47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?: So this is an interesting question. What I write does honestly reflect my thoughts and experiences, and I don’t believe I misrepresent who I am (except at the beginning of this questionnaire, when I said I was Brad Pitt. This may surprise you, but I am in fact not actually Brad Pitt. It was nice to pretend for 40-some questions though). At the same time, I freely admit that I’ll exaggerate my tone for the sake of the bit. I tend to assume it’s fairly obvious when I’m doing this, and it’s really all part of the fun.
48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?: Emily now knows my street address but has not yet sought to blackmail me with this information, so that has to count for something. Sorbier keeps following me around despite being way too cool for me. I also might have either been good friends or bitter rivals with Hastiest Handiwork, it was hard to tell some days. Maybe he’ll come back and let me know sometime.
49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?: HTML I’m fine with. CSS, I swear there’s like a dozen things I want to do that should be easy but end up either being impossible without Javascript or only available in a testing state in a single browser. CSS seems to be perpetually five years or so behind where it should be.
50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?: I feel as though some sites have way too much going on visually to the point of being overwhelming, or sometimes intentionally make their content difficult to read. Freedom of expression is one of the best aspects of this hobby, but it can’t be at the expense of the reader—if you’re not willing to respect them, then why even bother?
51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?: MOBILE LAYOUTS. I’m an old man, I just want to sit on my couch with my wife in the evening after work and browse some websites on my phone and read what y’all are thinking. This is way harder than it should be, since the general mindset seems to be that web browsing on a mobile device is either somehow inferior (which is both incorrect and actively hostile) or something that people don’t do often enough to bother with (which is also incorrect but at least is an innocent mistake).
52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?: I think I’m pretty good about this. I might need to stop making the site title an h1 though.
53. Do you consider different browsers?: Heh heh… no. Okay, in my defense, I don’t use a CSS feature unless MDN says it’s widely available across browsers. But I’m admittedly too lazy to cross-test in most circumstances, and I don’t support older browsers. I may look into this someday, because I have the utmost respect people who work to keep old, outdated tech alive rather than buying new, and I’d like to show that.
54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.: I use Firefox on the grounds that it is neither Chrome nor powered by it. Also the logo is cute.
55. And what OS are you on?: Windows 11.
56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?: I wouldn’t say it’s a strong opinion, but in general I actually like Windows 11. Granted, there are a number of settings you have to toggle to remove many of the annoying parts, which I agree does not do the OS any favors. But once that’s done, I have a difficult time trying to think of things to complain about. I guess that makes me a corporate shill.
57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?: Skep’s Place is tested mobile-friendly down to a display width of 175 pixels!
58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?: I would honestly be surprised if anybody offered a favorable opinion.
59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?: I think I’ve gleaned enough from context clues to have a vague understanding of how webrings work. That sentence probably tells you everything you need to know.
60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?: I don’t look at shrines. I’m laughably out-of-touch when it comes to most aspects of pop culture, and I also have difficulty letting the media I consume and enjoy become an expression of myself (an aftereffect of the raging Pokémon Obsession Syndrome I suffered from when I was 10). Probably the closest thing I have to a shrine is Tiger Tracks.
61. Are your websites "cliche", in your opinion?: God, I hope not.
62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?: Skep’s Place is already the Platonic ideal of a website.
63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?: I am not an artist, though I can occasionally cobble together simple assets in Gimp or Inkscape.
64. What are your favourite resource sites?: Oh, gosh. What qualifies? I guess I use MDN and CSS-Tricks a lot. delphitools is another set of utilities I just started using. Hmm. And Merriam-Webster, I suppose?
65. Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?: I have switched from habitually opening social media every five minutes to check for new content to habitually opening the Neocities feed every five minutes to check for new content. Usually, there isn’t any, so this is largely harmless.
66. What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?: Uh, design your site for both desktop and mobile from the start so you don’t have to figure out how to adapt a desktop site to a mobile layout. But if that’s not really what you were looking for, then I would say this: figure out your site’s purpose early. This doesn’t need to be some grand production; the end goal might be “I want a place to collect a bunch of things I like” or “I want to write in bright, flashing colors” or something equally frivolous. Just having a purpose in mind will help provide you direction as you get started planning and designing.
67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?: Good lord I think my CSS files are starting to multiply. I only do inline styling in very rare cases.
68. What do you think of frameset layouts?: Hmmwhat?
69. How about table-based layouts?: Oh, this one I know! I mean, I never did any, but I get how it works. Sounds barbaric.
70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?: I sort of experimented with this in v1 of my design, where pages could optionally have a larger “main” column for the post content with a slimmer “side” column for whatever else. I didn’t use it very often outside of the home page though, and even when I did there were times where I was compressing the width of the main content to fit a side column that was only present on the top 5% of the page. Good idea in theory, but I was happy to nix it.
71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?: C’mon, HTML is easy. That’s just the structure. CSS is where it all gets fiddly.
72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.: Your thoughts, maybe, but my thoughts deserve to be glamorous.
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 seem to be accruing sites at a regular enough rate that I don’t need to create new layouts for fun.
74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?: I definitely feel pretty middle-of-the-pack. I have a good grip on the basics, but this is still quite a lot to learn. Whether or not I want to, though, is another question entirely.
74.5 Do you want learn more?: No.
75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?: Not really. It’s like peering into something private. I even feel a little guilty digging into someone’s source code when they’re trying to solve an issue; I know I’m doing it to help out, but they didn’t explicitly give me permission to look, so I still feel weird about it.
76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?: Gradually, and over a long period of time. Got the HTML basics from a library book (back when you learned these things from library books). CSS was from messing with the Wordpress blogs. There was a big break in between, then I refreshed and caught up to the current standards with a college course on web design. Since then it’s mostly been “I want to do this, how do I make it happen?”
77. Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?: No, I always ask their permission first. But also no, I try not to do this. Semantics exist for a reason.
78. Thoughts on floating elements?: Are we talking like just positioning an element over another element, or actually using display: float in the CSS? Probably the latter, right? Dunno, it’s a tool in the toolbox. Not my favorite tool, but it has its uses.
79. When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?: Really depends what I’m doing. Trying to get in the habit of using em/rem more, I use that a lot for text positioning and sizing. % is used more for window positioning, and px for fine-tuning decorations.
80. Do you have a favourite font?: Despite enjoying the art of typeface design, I don’t think I would say I have a favorite. I like Helvetica, which I know makes me basic. I also think Garamond is really elegant, though I don’t actually have a reason to use it ever.
81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?: I have so far managed to mention both my site cross goss! and my pal Sorbier. We actually run it together! There was a lot of email back-and-forth as we built it (mostly Sorb did the design work while I bitched about wavy underlines), and then I converted it to an Eleventy setup. The idea was we’d use a shared folder so we could both run builds, but that hasn’t panned out so far. For now, I’m handling the building and uploading, but I’d like to revisit this sometime so I don’t have full control over everything.
82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?: Sometimes! Poking around is a good way to kill a couple minutes.
83. Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?: I… don’t really bookmark websites. If you’re on Neocities, I’ll follow you there. If not (or sometimes if so), if you have an RSS feed, I’ll subscribe to it. But otherwise, no, I don’t really bookmark sites for the purpose of checking back in regularly to see what’s new. That said, it’s vitally important to me that you bookmark Skep’s Place and check it for updates every 27 minutes.
84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?: “Wow, not only does this person have an impeccable sense of style and taste, but also he’s very funny, all of his opinions are objectively correct, and he’s quite handsome as well.”
85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?: Not particularly! I mean, a little bit—I built a gaming PC once, I used to run Linux many years back—but my interest in those sorts of things has waned over the years, largely because they require a level of time and effort that I no longer want to dedicate. Consumer tech, on the other hand, is less “I don’t have the energy” and more “I don’t see a reason why I should care”; I feel like much of it struggles to justify its existence.
86. How often and for how long are you online?: I used to be online all the time for long periods of time. Now I’m online all the time in really short intervals to see what’s new. I guess that’s an improvement?
87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?: Skep’s Place is fun for the whole family! Or I guess the true answer is: anybody who enjoys reading my nonsense, really.
88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?: Okay, so I want to preface this by saying I am largely ignorant of XHTML and my response is based off of wherever the hell my current understanding of it came from. But: I thought XHTML was really an evolution of HTML that meant a properly-coded page would validate as proper XML? Or at least that was the intention? Which is I think why making custom elements works. I’m likely off-base, but at the moment I’m not seeing what there is to “learn”, or why. Obviously, I’m not interested enough to look up what the correct answer is.
89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?: I dropped out of a Computer Science major, so I know the fundamentals of programming but really not much else. I don’t make apps for my website, but I did make a program in Python once for a previous job: it was a screen ruler to help me judge distance in road imagery.
90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?: In general, they all seem absurdly complex, and I don’t like how many of them rely on Javascript to pull in the parts of the page when it’s loaded by the user; your site should be fully usable even if Javascript is disabled. I’m currently using Eleventy (or whatever the hell it’s rebranding itself to right now), which is also absurdly complex but at least spits out static HTML files. I will say: it has been a huge help in managing my site since I have literally hundreds of pages (thanks, Three Kingdoms).
91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?: It might be nice if you could guarantee an accurate count, but from my understanding most hits that register are going to be from bots and crawlers, so the numbers are incredibly, incredibly skewed. Besides, this way, there’s no proof that Skep’s Place doesn’t get millions of visitors per day.
92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?: Remember when I said I used to be online for long periods of time? This is what I was doing! But that was ages ago, and forums are a dying breed. I actually tried making a simple one a year or so ago! But it wasn’t active, and then the platform decided to shut down. Oh well! Back to email.
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?: Until recently I largely wrote directly into the editor, or sometimes a note app, depending on the device I was on at the time. Recently though, I told myself “what I need is a writing space I actually enjoy using”. I vibe-coded (sorry) a simple page with a text area and a series of buttons on the side for all the goofy punctuation I use that I typically have to input with alt codes, like en and em dashes, curly quotes, and ellipses. Later, I added keyboard shortcuts for these and implemented OverType to make Markdown stand out. That’s literally all this page does; I type a paragraph and copy it out into the editor. I was planning on customizing the colors or adding some sort of rudimentary saving ability, really make this an editor I love, but I just haven’t gotten that far.
94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?: I have it on good authority that I am, in fact, cool. I will not reveal my sources, suffice it to say they do possess the necessary credentials.
95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?: The stuff that’s on my website now is kind of the extent of my work; I haven’t been doing it for all that long. I’m not particularly embarrassed by any of it, though sometimes I will revisit pieces to correct typos and improve phrasing and such because that’s the kind of thing that makes me cringe. Of course, you may have noticed by now that I have a tendency to inject a lot of humor (or attempts at it, anyway) into my writing, and comedy is one of the art forms most susceptible to aging poorly as attitudes shift over time. I like to think I have a pretty decent sense of decorum, but I’m as flawed as any of us. All we can do is try to be better. So maybe some day I’ll have to go back and revisit something to make it clear that Past Skep was a complete and utter dumbass (and let’s be clear: I am). Just know that I’m doing my best to ensure that Future Skep is a better person for it.
96. Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?: For a couple years now, I’ve been half-considering implementing an apprenticeship program to train my successor who I can secretly pass my site to someday, in a sort of Dread Pirate Roberts scheme. Assuming I never actually do this… I don’t know that there’s much reason for Skep’s Place to stick around. Personally, I feel like we place a little too much emphasis on collecting, recording, and archiving the ephemeral, refusing to allow it to stay confined to its moment in time. I’m pleased that you enjoy my site; I enjoy writing it. Someday, you will stop reading, and I will stop writing, and that will be that. And that’s okay. I’m glad we got to do this together.
97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?: You don’t actually need to know that much about me. It would ruin the magic.
98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?: My oldest online friend goes by Dani, we’ve actually known each other for… well, it’s getting up towards the 20-year mark. We’ve even met in person a couple times. She doesn’t have a website, though I really need to see about getting her to write for The Reading Project.
99. And do you optimise the images on your website?: Wow, random-ass question for Number 99, but all right. Uh, I have learned that I probably shouldn’t use uncompressed .pngs for posting full-size screenshots. I'm more likely to use .jpg or .webp than I used to be, and I do resize images where needed so they’re not obnoxiously large. But I don’t put any special effort into it.
100. We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.: Well, this took a lot longer than I would have liked. I… wouldn’t say that all of these questions are winners, but it is what it is. It was an interesting diversion and gave me a chance to talk about some things I don’t normally get to talk about. But for now, it’s time to get back to what makes this place Skep’s Place.