Happy birthday Ratlands
It's this website's birthday today, and it's 1!
That means only one thing...BRING IT IN, GUYS!!
*every animated gif in my /images directory come in with everything for a HUGE party*
Seriously though, it is cool that this website has existed for a year. Signing up to Neocities was definitely an impulse decision, and at the time I figured there was a good chance it'd keep me amused for a week or so before I moved on. One year later, I've got 216 commits in my Git history, 45 blog posts (including this one) and 55 non-blog-post pages. That is a hell of a lot more website than I ever thought I'd make.
According to Neocities' built-in stat counter, I've also somehow racked up 37,326 views. I can only assume most of those are bots, but to the actual humans who have looked at this site: thank you! Some of you have even looked at it multiple times, which is even more amazing to me. The community is definitely one of the best things Neocities has going for it. I've found a lot of really cool people with really cool websites. While we're all puttering around in our own individual sandboxes, it's nice that we can visit each other and see what we're all making.
One of my hopes when I started this site was that it would revive my childhood love for the web – the excitement and freedom I used to feel back when I was making silly fansites on Geocities, or customising my Neopets' pet pages, or figuring out CSS to pretty up my LiveJournal. I think it has absolutely done that. I've been surprised at how great a creative outlet this site has become for me. It's a space where I can be enthusiastic and playful and expressive. And that is a pretty wonderful thing.
So thanks, Ratlands. Here's to another year. I hope we still have fun.