100 Questions for Webmasters

This survey was originally created by Mouseling.

I filled it out in June and July 2026.

1.  Please introduce yourself.

Hello! I'm... the person who makes the Ratlands website. (At some point I should really figure out what I'm calling myself on here.)

2.  How long have you been making websites?

Since the late 90s. I've made quite a lot of them since then.

3.  And what got you into the hobby?

I was obsessed with the book series Animorphs and decided I wanted to make my own fansite. It was gloriously hideous.

4.  What kind of website are you most interested in?

I like personal websites. Project logs, blog posts, collections, that sort of thing. The "about me" page is always the first place I check. Most of the time I'm not too interested in the design as long as it looks nice and is easy to read and navigate. I'll only look at a website with a fun design and boring content once, but I'll keep coming back to a website with a boring design and fun content.

5.  What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?

For me, a website is always a constantly evolving creation. I try to get things out the door as quickly as possible and then tinker with them afterwards.

6.  Please link to your biggest inspirations.

Back in the day, I used to love cockeyed.com because it was just whatever random stuff the webmaster was up to – figuring out how much toothpaste was inside a tube, pulling harmless pranks, beefing with MLMs, building incredibly sick Halloween costumes. Nowadays that sort of thing would probably be a YouTube channel. But it was cool as a website.

7.  What's your favourite part about making websites?

Having somewhere to dump all my random thoughts and enthusiasms.

8.  And the thing you struggle with the most?

Organising and structuring the site. I decided to categorise everything by the format of the content rather than the theme, but I am not sure the current hierarchy works.

9.  Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?

I use a standard layout with additional CSS files on some pages, aside from a few exceptions.

10. How confident are you with CSS?

Pretty confident. I've used Sass in the past too. (I still have to check a reference every time I try to use flexbox though.)

11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?

Yep! Big fan.

12. What is your favourite HTML element?

<a> because it brings us all together. (This was originally a joke answer, but actually I stand by it.)

13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?

Write the words.

14. Do you know JavaScript?

Unfortunately, yes.

15. How about PHP?

Can anyone ever truly know PHP? I've used it.

16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?

If the theme is "stuff I'm interested in", then yes. It's a bit of a junk drawer really.

17. Are you more focused on content or design?

Definitely content. I like playing around with design sometimes, but mostly I'm happy for it to sit in the background.

18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?

I own several, but not for this website. I've thought about getting one for it though.

19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?

They can be fun. I definitely have a lot of old internet nostalgia and am happy to see some things from it make a comeback – breaking out of the social media walled garden, personal websites with actual personality, silly little vintage gifs.

On the other hand, I think there have been some great advances in web design over the years that are worth combining with the retro aesthetic, especially around improved accessibility and responsiveness. Modern web standards are a positive thing, and definitely not mutually exclusive with having a fun, playful design.

20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?

I think so, but I haven't checked. It'll be a little embarrassing now if it isn't.

21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?

Love a good button.

22. What do you think of button walls in particular?

I think they can be a fun, kitschy way to get a sense of someone's interests. I can find link button walls a bit more overwhelming (although I have one anyway).

23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?

This site's less than a year old, so I think I'd probably keep doing what I'm doing.

24. Are you envious of other people's websites?

Inspired, sure! But not really envious.

25. What text editor do you use?

VS Code.

26. Why do you use that one?

I used Atom for a while, and then that died and VS Code was the most obvious replacement. I feel like I should move to VS Codium or something less corporate, but at this point it's what I'm used to.

27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?

I host them on Neocities. I don't have a very large footprint.

28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?

I don't care.

29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?

Right now, it takes up 18.7 megabytes. I like that it's small.

30. Do you keep local backups of your files?

I work on everything locally, then push to GitHub, which triggers a deployment to Neocities. Editing the site directly in the Neocities GUI and having all my changes be instantly visible would stress me the heck out. Even back in the day, I used to make all my changes locally first and then FTP them onto the server.

31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?

Probably simple. Readability over all.

32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?

I keep coming back to green.

33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?

Nope! I'm still having fun.

34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?

There are several people on Neocities who I often exchange comments with, which I really enjoy. I like the community here.

35. Do people in your real life know about your website?

A handful of them. I wouldn't mind if more of them saw it, but I haven't really brought it up. The fear of being perceived, etc.

36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?

At the moment, roughly once or twice a week. But I go through phases of enthusiasm.

37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?

I've done one significant rework of the design, but aside from that, it's just the occasional tweak.

38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?

A combination of the first two. This is my escape from the outside world, really.

39. Do you do web design professionally?

Nope.

40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?

I don't think I really have a lot of design acumen.

I won't say what I do for my day job, but by night I fight crime in a bulletproof lycra catsuit.

41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?

My best friend and I have been consistently emailing each other for the last 20 years. It's pretty great. Sometimes I think about getting them all printed and bound, giving her a copy as a gift, and keeping the other for myself.

Aside from that, I don't really email anyone for fun.

42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?

I lurk on Bluesky and Reddit, although I'm trying to cut down as that rarely does me any good.

43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?

I'm pretty active on a few smallish Discord servers.

44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?

Almost always. Right now I am listening to This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem.

45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?

I have some old websites still knocking around on the web somewhere, but this is the only one I actively maintain.

46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?

Whatever I feel like talking about.

47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?

There's nothing fake about me on this website, but I definitely keep some things back. I like some level of anonymity.

48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?

Not this website, but I made some friends through my Animorphs fansite back in the day.

49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?

Sure.

50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?

Distracting animated backgrounds, teeny tiny fonts, autoplaying music and video, totally unoptimised 30mb images.

51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?

Designing for accessibility helps everyone! For example, giving your images alt descriptions will help people who use screenreaders, but it'll also provide a contextual fallback if those images don't load at all. And if you make your site responsive, not only is that better for people who need to zoom in to see the content, but it'll also work on a broader variety of screens and devices.

52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?

Definitely a mix. I should probably use more semantic HTML, but I often fall back into old habits (ten thousand nested <div>s).

53. Do you consider different browsers?

I usually try resizing the window a bit, but I don't bother testing in other browsers. All the code I'm writing is pretty standardised. We're not in the "Best viewed in Netscape Navigator" era.

54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.

I use Firefox because it seems less evil than some of the alternatives.

55. And what OS are you on?

Mac.

56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?

At this point, I've been using it for a while, so it's more habit than anything else.

If I had to switch, I'd certainly consider Linux, but hopefully my current machine will keep going for a long time yet. (Modern Windows can get in the bin.)

57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?

Mostly. The worst part is the menu, which loads in full at the top of every page and doesn't have any sort of show/hide function. I keep meaning to fix that.

58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?

Haaaate.

59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?

They're fun! I haven't joined any yet though.

60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?

The term "shrine" is funny to me. While it's often framed as being a throwback, I feel like the word has become a lot more common now than it ever was in the Geocities era – back then I always would have said "fanpage" or something. And at which point does a page cross the line between "page about a particular topic" and become a "shrine"? Does it need a custom design? A certain tone?

Rambling aside, I enjoy shrines and I think it's fun to see people being enthusiastic about something they love. The "I'm Going To Be So Annoying About This" section is probably the closest thing I have to that.

61. Are your websites "cliche", in your opinion?

I am not entirely sure what this means. I guess I have some stuff on my site that other people do too.

62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?

Something that's fun to come back to and has a lot of personal character.

63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?

Drawing is one of those hobbies I come back to every few years, but right now I'm definitely at the bottom of the interest cycle. I am solidly OK at it.

64. What are your favourite resource sites?

The CSS Tricks flexbox reference page saves my ass on a regular basis.

65. Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?

The aforementioned ten thousand <div>s.

66. What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?

Perfect is the enemy of good. Just get something out there and tweak it later. Also, give yourself some flexibility in your design – for example, navigation that looks great might become a burden if it's too awkward to add a new page to it.

67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?

I am clutching my pearls at the mere question.

68. What do you think of frameset layouts?

Not really a fan. Kind of an accessibility nightmare. I think we left this one behind for a reason.

69. How about table-based layouts?

Hahahahahaahahaha

70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?

I have a two-column layout.

71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?

Definitely the CSS. My HTML is pretty basic.

72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.

I have not.

73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?

Definitely the latter.

74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?

Advanced (although this website probably doesn't show it).

75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?

Sometimes. I'm nosy!

76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?

I started out making WYSIWYG drag-and-drop nonsense with Geocities and Netscape Composer, then learned basic HTML to make my own hideous table-based layouts. Made some more fansites. Customised my Neopets petpages. Learned CSS. Customed my LiveJournal layout. Discovered WordPress and PHP. Played around with JQuery. Learned a bunch of modern webdev stuff.

All of it self-taught. So basically... several decades of trial and error.

77. Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?

I respect the wishes and autonomy of my elements.

78. Thoughts on floating elements?

Unreliable.

79. When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?

An unholy blend of all three, depending on the purpose.

80. Do you have a favourite font?

Verdana, Trebucht and Courier for the nostalgia.

81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?

Maybe, but it's not something I'm currently interested in doing.

82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?

Sometimes. It's definitely a nicer way to kill time than doomscrolling.

83. Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?

I mostly just use the Neocities follow function. Bookmarks are cool though. I should use them more again. It would be nice if someone bookmarked mine.

84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?

My scintillating wit, and the overriding sense that I probably have great hair.

85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?

Yes, but also I kind of hate it. Technology used to be cool and exciting and now it is just the forefront of a naked capitalist hellscape.

I don't collect any technology, aside from CDs.

86. How often and for how long are you online?

Waaaay too much.

87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?

I don't really have one in mind. Fellow luddites with too many hobbies?

88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?

Honestly, I did not realise it was still a thing.

89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?

I do. Ruby is my favourite language, but I know a few others as well.

I've written programs for other websites, but not really this one, aside from customising Eleventy (see next question).

90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?

They're great. I use Eleventy for this website. I really like being able to write my pages in Markdown, and it makes it so much easier to tweak the overall layout. And the output is nice and streamlined.

91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?

Nope. I sometimes check the built-in Neocities one, but I have a tendency to obsess over stats, and I'm trying to avoid indulging that.

92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?

I've done a little posting in my day. Definitely prefer forums to algorithmic social media. Bring them back!

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?

Directly into the editor. The whole Eleventy/Markdown combo makes this a lot more pleasant.

94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?

I appear cool to myself. I am not sure anyone else agrees.

95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?

Ehh, maybe sometimes, but we all have to start somewhere. Your rubbish old stuff just shows how far you've come.

So far I've only deleted one thing from this website, and that was a page about my dog that I felt sad keeping up after he died.

96. Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?

I'd probably leave it up unless there was a specific reason to take it down.

97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?

Somewhere in the middle. I think someone who already knew me could probably recognise this is me, but hopefully not a stranger.

98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?

It's you, the person reading this survey!!! (I don't think I have a #1 internet bestie.)

99. And do you optimise the images on your website?

I run almost everything through ditherit.com, partly for the aesthetics, but also to keep file sizes down. Faster load times and a smaller environmental impact – what's not to like?

100. We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.

I chipped away at it over several sessions, but I had fun!