These updates are for July 2025!
- I’ve completely redone my Sovereign Web subdomain. I’ve changed up the layout/colors, on the main page as well as the other pages. I really like the cyberpunk vibes! I’ve also made some aesthetic changes to the About section, and completely redid the Resources page. The resources page is built more like a step by step guide now, which I think will be a lot more helpful for people just starting out. It also has a table of contents so people can easily jump to whatever section they want on the page. So if people are just there for certain things it’s all really easy to find. I also cleaned up some of the links so not everything is on this page that was on the last resources page. Just the best stuff. I’ll continuously add to this resources page over time and continue to improve it.
. - Added a Sovereign Web banner to the Free Speech Webring page. I feel like it’s something that will align with a lot of the members there and anyone who may be interested in joining.
. - Updated my Resources page on my Sovereign Web subdomain, added a BUNCH of cliques to the cliques section.
. - Finally got around to creating a webring for the Sovereign Web! My hope is that the webring will help it gain momentum, and also help folks who align with freedom find each other. It can be considered an extension of the Free Speech webring, in a way. I think a lot if not most of the people within that webring would likely align with this one too; but it’s really broader than just speech. There’s a lot of gatekeeping within the small web movement and I genuinely just want to create something that helps break those barriers, is less toxic and more inclusive overall. If anyone else would also like to see this change for the better, consider joining!
. - I’ve decided to republish a lot of the posts I had from my marketing campaign. Some people had recommended the Webring Wednesdays section to others as a source for discovering new webrings, so that was something I think people found valuable that is worth keeping up. I may continue to expand on those features in the future but as of right now I’m still restructuring things, and whatever I do with social media going forward I just want to be set at my own pace. One thing I really need to do before I do anything social media related again is set up a solid automation system. The automation I configured for my marketing campaign was clunky and so much still needed to be done manually. I’ve kind of gotten it started in the right direction, but I need posts to automatically distribute what I publish them on my website. It surprisingly takes a lot of extra time to schedule posts on several different platforms, even when doing it in bulk. So that’s something that needs to be worked on and polished before I consider doing any of that on a somewhat regular basis again. It’s honestly such a cool thing though to be able to post something on your website and it just automatically gets posted to other places. While I don’t align with everything indie web, they did inspire me greatly and this was one of the things I learned from them early on – was the concept that my website could be the silo that houses all my content and can be distributed outwards to social media, instead of social media platforms owning everything I post. I don’t necessarily want to get rid of social media altogether. It’s genuinely a fantastic tool to reach people with. But the challenge is utilizing it in such a way that my content goes to it but I also don’t have to spend all my time on it either. I want to spend my time here. So the less time I can spend manually distributing my content, the better.
. - Added some new songs to the front page ‘About Me’ section of my Cottage subdomain. My husband and I watched Kpop Demon Hunters a week or so ago and now we’re OBSESSED with all of the songs and have been listening to them all on repeat. 🤣 They’re REALLY good. So I added all my favorite bops to my playlist, and a few others.
. - I’ve officially started my journey of self hosting my website! This is such an incredibly huge deal to me, and something I have thought about doing for a long time. My website renewal with Hostinger is coming up in November… and they want to charge me $150+CAD/year from that date forward to host my website. When I first got my hosting plan, it was cheaper of course. That’s what hosting providers do, they reel you in with a super discounted plan, and then when it comes time to renew, they jack the prices x2-x3+ the cost of the first year. Anyways, it got me thinking about my options moving forward, and also reflect on how serious I am about my website and what it is worth to me. I’ve been working on my website since March of 2023, and as time has gone on I’ve only become more passionate about it, more in love with this hobby. It’s my favorite hobby, in fact. My website means A LOT to me. I spend A LOT of time here on a daily basis, so it got me thinking that now seems like the right time to make the leap to self hosting my website, and truly owning my website and everything that’s on it 100%. No middle men. The initial set up of my little hosting machine was a decent chunk of money. Not crazy, but, a little steep given our current financial circumstances. But to me, this investment was worth it and in the long run, will be so much cheaper than using a 3rd party hosting provider. I am so thankful to have had the means to be able to do this.
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Now that I’m self hosting, I am facing a lot of unique challenges I’ve never had before. So if my site ever goes down temporarily, I didn’t delete it. I probably just ran into a snag and am working to get it fixed.
. - I’ve added a little notice above my guestbook comments section and have chosen to delete all comments complaining about how I create in my own space. I don’t think it’s worth giving my energy to. I think ultimately, there are people on the personal web who feel what everyone else is doing needs to follow a specific code and they need to be in charge of policing. This side seems to be extremely toxic in general and always has something negative to say about something and live off stirring up drama – be it lolcow or smallweb forums and chatrooms. I’ve been conflicted the past several days on how to handle these situations. My first response was to defend myself, but after thinking it over for a few more days, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that going forward, I will not be responding to any comments or even emails of this nature. I’m completely cutting off the energy supply from parasitic visitors. They’ll get nothing from me anymore. So I’ve gone ahead and deleted comments that don’t bring me peace in my own space. I think there needs to come a point where I need to just rise above it all and not give so much weight to people who don’t approve of what I do in my own space for one reason or another. These things don’t serve me, I don’t feel anything positive is coming from them, and it seems like no matter what I say or do, the way others perceive me or treat me is something I can not change. I’ll always been seen as the villain to these people. But I can change how I respond to it, and how much energy I direct towards it, which will be none from here on out. Hopefully with time it’ll get easier. I think just trying to rise above it is the most positive thing I can do for myself as I continue to evolve my own space, even just trying to grow as a person, and also help cultivate a truly healthy space building up the Sovereign Web as an ethos within the personal web-building niche. I want the Sovereign Web to be a really positive space for people to come as they are and grow in whatever direction they feel to. That’s how it should be to begin with, being the nature of the personal web is, in reality, a decentralized system.
. - Added a Features Showcase image in the Features section of my Sovereign Web landing page. Following up on the last point, I decided to create this and get it set up so people can start submitting their own sites to be featured in that space. I’ll just do features whenever I get time instead of on a strict posting schedule. I’m still working on completing this. I’ve been really busy outside of the internet lately getting ready to move, and also preparing for our upcoming trip to the US. But I’m aiming to have this completed before August 1st.
. - I’ve figured out how to bypass the character limit on status.cafe. The past little while I have noticed a few people making long statuses that obviously bypass the character limit, and discovered that they are doing it via browser developer tools. Apparently if you inspect the text box what you can input your status, in the developer tools window, you can change the character limit. I didn’t think status.cafe would actually allow the client side modification, but it does. So for anyone else who may be wondering how to bypass status.cafe’s 140 character limit, that’s how!
In addition to this discovery, I’ve also added an overflow scrollbar to my sidebar statuses to allow for me making longer statuses without overlapping my speech bubble graphic.
. - I’ve completely redone my landing page and I’m absolutely obsessed with how it turned out! 😍 It has puffy clouds, stars, and the image at the top of the page changes depending on the day of the week, the time of day, and the season! Pretty neat eh? I plan to expand on this in the future and implement a weather system later on, that will trigger other easter eggs site-wide. I have A LOT of plans. This is kind of just starting to lay down the foundations for them. I also added my mascot as a fun little interactive NPC at the top of the page, integrating it with the scenery. I’m just having so much fun creating and making this a more magical, interactive space.
That’s it for June updates for now! I’m not entirely sure what my next big project is going to be yet. I kind of want to redo the layout on the rest of my site to match what I have going on with my landing page, but I have no idea where I even want to start with that or how I’m going to set each space up yet. I’ll figure it out.
To anyone who reads these updates, I hope you’re having a wonderful July and feel free to let me know what you’ve been working on lately! I’d love to come check it out. 🙂