2018/12/13

We have hit 300 sites.

After a bit of tireless seeking from myself and Cheren, we managed to pull off our goal of 300 sites in the listings by the end of the year. We've barely been open three months, for the record.

It's about this point we hang our heat-seeking goggles and bid you all farewell for the remainder of the year, and perhaps well into the new one. Districts has grown fast. We are the missing link to discovery, something Neocities has needed for a very long time: human curation. Search, tags, webrings—none of them solve the very crucial problem of separating wheat from chaff, finding you things to browse right now. Fittingly, right now is a good time to step back and relax. Seb certainly deserves it.

We've always operated under the thought of "would we still be useful if we stopped updating today?" It helps to keep our focus on large updates that give you all a variety of things to gawk at in one go, and on building a site not likely to degrade into dust any time soon. And, if I'm honest, I think the answer now is yes. That doesn't mean we are stopping, granted, but it does mean we have license to take our leave.

Rest assured we will be back to sort through the rubble of thousands and thousands of sites, pulling up more forgotten or underappreciated web works for your browsing pleasure. We have things planned for 2019, though that's all we're saying for now. If they take until 2019/12/13, be prepared.

To everyone featured in our listings: if you aren't already gone, keep going with your site, please. I've seen some fantastic examples of the potential Neocities grants being realized to the fullest extent around here since we started. (Especially some of what I've seen out of Arles and Silver Lake—pure talent.) It'd be a shame if you didn't stick around. Keep doing your thing, all of you.

To everyone who's followed, encouraged us, sent us fanart, detested us: Thanks for all the support. Thanks for shooting us up the first page of Most Followed like it was nothing. We're glad people are so into Districts that we're making waves both on and off-site. We hope we can be of use well into the future.

And to my staff: I have no clue where I'd be without you.

—From your internet neighbors at Districts: See you next year. Godspeed.

2018/12/02

The big thing on offer today: Districts-specific buttons! Now, you can show your support and plaster your site with the buttons of the district you happen to be in. All of these buttons were made by our good friend Neo (ily on Neocities).

A smaller but no less appreciated update to the listings are the presence of site profile links. We don't have them for sites with custom domains (I'll have to go through the JSON and fix that at some point), but that'll be worked out in time. I also hear there may be a way to view all the districts at once coming down the pipe.

The listings are up to 262 sites at this point. All this art and scripting and work looking for sites in such a short amount of time...wild. Absolutely wild.

(And yes, we've had to can our Discord server as of writing this. Admin exhaustion is a good way to put it. The site's going nowhere, fortunately, so no need to worry about that.)

2018/11/19

Another 30 or so sites added to the listings. We're at 248 sites in the listing, currently—wonder if we can hit 300 by the end of the year, at this point.

2018/11/04

Today marks the day we transition to AutoSite.

Previously, Districts had to be updated by hand, manually editing each page and navigating a frankly disgusting mess of <table> gook. If a site went in two districts, both would have to be updated separately.

And then dotcomboom entered the picture. He quickly built us a special version of his AutoSite script (which allows for easy updating of your site's design using template pages) for Districts, along with a scraper to grab listings from the live site. The entire thing is built on JSON, which allows us to add sites to any district with one easy block of data. If we'd like to move a site, just change one line and rebuild.

What does this mean for you? A few site tweaks now, but much faster updates in the future. With it, dotcomboom officially joins our team—and unfortunately, thanks to some ideological differences, Lempamo, our former backup coder, leaves it. No matter, Districts carries on.

Of course, that's not the only major unveiling we've got in store today—say hello to Oxford and Hollywood, our two new districts! Oxford is for informational sites (ones that try to teach you stuff), and Hollywood is the western counterpart to Tokyo, for movies, TV, and cartoons from stateside or Europe.

With 215 sites in our listings and counting, we're well on our way to 250 by the end of the year. I think we can breathe a bit now, though. It's been busy, and Seb's still mad at me for wrapping him up in filmstock.

2018/10/31

Fanart! Come get a big dump of fanart here!

We're getting very close to shifting over to the special version of AutoSite that dotcomboom (who has about earned his place on the team) cooked up for us. It'll take a bit to transfer everything over, but we have a ton of sites to add once the shift's been made. Not to mention—two more districts, once the art's all done. Should be good.

Happy Halloween!

2018/10/27

Two weeks and change over the launch of the site, and we're doing some internal reshuffling to get ready for a major change to the way Districts works. You won't see much of a difference, but it'll allow us to add sites much, much faster, and potentially make Districts machine-readable.

We're also working on debuting two new districts to cover sites we currently can't. Here's a hint: one will rot your brain, the other will make it healthy and smart again.

For now, though, we've added a good thirty or so more sites to the various Districts already here, added a new piece to the Seb Shrine (send fanart!), and the site has favicons now. Apologies for any links broken in the reshuffling.

2018/10/12

Welcome to the officially launched Districts for Neocities.

Everyone's been pretty feverishly working on the site lately, trying to get The Big Update™ ready for launch. Capy, our team's artist, delivered me the final art renders a few days ago, and I've spent the past three days totally rebuilding the site with CSS Grid and OpenGraph support.

(If your site isn't on Grid, you should really look into it. It's far easier to put together layouts using it than anything you've probably tried before, and all modern browsers support it. Trust me, looks harder than it is. Well, well worth it.)

Meanwhile, Cheren (on vacation out of Bugland) has stepped up as our lead seeker and has practically doubled the length of our listings in his short time of helping out. It's crazy how fast things are developing, and I have all of you and my team to thank for all the hard work and static so far.

Now, of course, we ask you to come make your spot in our districts.

So far, we've cut our ideas down to eight main categories: toys and gaming (Arcadia), animals (Petsburg), computing (Silicon Valley), eastern media (Tokyo), visual art (Arles), writing (Stratford-upon-Avon), music (Silver Lake), and God-knows-what (Purgatory), and we have plenty of room to expand, if needed.

We'll be using this updates page to keep in touch with you on anything new happening with the site. For now, though, sit back and meet your internet neighbors.

Oh, and if you're wondering, that armadillo guy up there is Sebastian. He's a bit stressed out. Don't mind him.