"100 Questions for Webmasters"

idk if i am the target audience for this questionnaire? but i like doing quizzes and such so we will see

source: https://mouseling.net/100webmaster

1. Please introduce yourself.
hi !!! you should probably look at my main page, i try to do that there
2. How long have you been making websites?
genuinely unsure, probably 13-14 years (as of writing this in 2026/08)
3. And what got you into the hobby?
messing around in iWeb on my parents' computer!
4. What kind of website are you most interested in?
uh , personal website i guess? right now i like the idea of a site i can throw random things onto without caring too much.
if this is asking what type of site i enjoy reading, i really like tiny blogs run by other queer people! particularly cybersecurity ones, those are very fun to read
5. What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?
in the past i've made mockups in figma then implemented them in html/css/js (i worked at a web agency one summer where i was paid to do exactly that!) but these days i just iterate on some html until i've shaped it into something friendly
6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.
hmmm ,,,, idk what my "inspirations" would be specifically? but here are some cool sites of varying kinds i like a lot:
7. What's your favourite part about making websites?
it is a very fun and effective way to express myself and share potentially useful information with the world!!
8. And the thing you struggle with the most?
getting the design to feel like i want it to can be tricky ,,, sometimes i don't know how to make it anything other than a wall of text!!
9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?
right now, same layout given i am writing this site as a wiki
10. How confident are you with CSS?
very! if you give me an image of a site or a design mockup i can probably recreate it
11. Do you know how to correctly use [the dl tag]?
now i do!
also , this question exposed a bug in kittywiki ,,, when i save this page with ampersand lt semicolon dl ampersand rt semicolon then try editing it again, it gets decoded into the actual characters. very weird
12. What is your favourite HTML element?
take a guess
13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?
write some main page content, put it in a container with max width and margin x auto, add more css
14. Do you know JavaScript?
yes, i have made many web apps
15. How about PHP?
i have used it once to make a wordpress plugin for a client at the web agency i worked at? i don't know it super well but can pick up stuff like that pretty fast
16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?
yes, very much so (the wiki engine makes this very easy)
17. Are you more focused on content or design?
content - for me, content tends to shape the design of the page, not the other way around (although design is very fun!)
18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?
yes! you are currently on one of many
19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?
they're neat! idk if i would want to make one myself but i like that others do
20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?
no i do not ever check. however, i just put the front page of my site through the w3c validator and it said my page is not valid because i have style elements in my main element and because apparently , i use the "projection" value for the media attribute of a link element
21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?
very fun!!! i have plenty
22. What do you think of button walls in particular?
if you have too many then they all lose significance a bit ,, it becomes hard to tell which are important to you!! maybe narrow it down to a bunch of friends plus ten to fifteen unrelated buttons
23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?
probably the same, i made this pretty recently
24. Are you envious of other people's websites?
maybe a bit? idk if envious would be the right word ,, there are so many people with very cool website designs and i look up to them for inspiration! and even if my side won't have such a design, i can still admire their artwork
25. What text editor do you use?
emacs, or the kittywiki built in one
26. Why do you use that one?
emacs because it's customizable and extensible, kittywiki because it's fast and convenient!
27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?
on my own server! in the same backing git repo actually
28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?
idk sorry!!
29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?
very little ,, probably a few megabytes
30. Do you keep local backups of your files?
no, but i do keep cloud backups and my site is also version controlled. maybe i should be doing local backups too....
31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?
mix of the two!! lots of visual elements is fun but don't let that get in the way of the text content
32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?
yes, and it is very much on purpose (see /theme), but i do also like purple a lot
33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?
i don't really think of it as something that has to be actively pursued? i make pages and edit when i want to, and when i don't i won't
34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?
yeah!! check out the awesome 88x31 buttons on my homepage
35. Do people in your real life know about your website?
yeah! a lot of the people linked on my homepage are irl friends
36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?
maybe once a week or so? idk, usually small edits
37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?
no, it's not the main focus of my site and it is harder to change that than add or edit content
38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?
me-focused i think
39. Do you do web design professionally?
used to (specifically, implementing mockups made by a designer)! but now i do hardware
40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?
i'm a hardware engineer - i make schematics, design PCBs, architect embedded systems, write some bits of firmware for the software person to build off of
41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?
yeah, a fair bit
42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?
yeah! fedi
43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?
i use IMs extremely frequently!! i mostly use discord and signal and occasionally use matrix. discord works alright but is owned by a big evil corporation. stoat is a neat alternative but doesn't have feature parity, has had some troubles scaling, and lacks as big of a user base so having it isn't very useful. it's also still centralized which doesn't seem ideal! matrix is neat in concept but horribly janky in practice. i like signal a lot but there are some design decisions i find frustrating and it really is not good for groups of more than 10-15 people
44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?
sometimes! see /favoritemusic.
45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?
mostly just one site. i also have an old out of date portfolio website that i won't link to here, whenever i need to look for a job again i will probably make a new one of those. i like to have a bit of separation between my online/unprofessional identity from the one for work stuff, family, etc
46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?
many! whatever i feel like
47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?
yeah, this is probably my real self i guess?? but that is constantly evolving and changing and i continue to learn more about myself and self-actualize in new and different ways! and the self isn't really a thing - certainly not a continuous, unchanging one
i guess what i mean to say is that i am not intentionally constructing some kind of separate persona on purpose, i.e. whatever persona/identity/self/etc is presented here isn't any less real (or at least, not that much less real) than any other i ever present? with the main difference being that it is probably slightly out of date (although with short time differences that probably won't be too significant). i will likely continue to, through various mediums and in real life, have many of the attributes and exhibit many of the characteristics of the person that this website gives you an impression of

wow i spent way too much time on that one. did not expect this questionnaire to ask me a bunch of silly lighthearted questions then hit me with something that requires me to read passages from some sutras to figure out how to even begin to answer??? and i still don't feel entirely happy with my response ,,,,
48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?
i don't think so (ok yay an easy one to answer)
49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?
yeah! there are plenty of features i want to add to kittywiki but the html and css are pretty good
50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?
don't make things overcomplicated unless you understand the implications. many times in my past i have built personal sites and CMSes and such that are complicated to the point of making content updates a bit annoying
51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?
wikis are good!! use something that lets you edit your site and write new pages on your phone! that's what i'm doing right now!
52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?
i think it's fairly semantic? it's much easier to do when you're not building a big complicated web app. this site is basically just a bunch of text content in a lightweight shell
53. Do you consider different browsers?
a bit? i mostly just target the web platform baseline
54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.
firefox, because it is extremely customizable and because it isn't chrome. mozilla isn't great but at least they're not google. the servo project gives me a lot of hope
55. And what OS are you on?
opensuse tumbleweed!
56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?
i think it's pretty good! stable, up to date, has nice quality of life features
57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?
yeah! mostly at least
58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?
bad
59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?
they are fun! but i am not in any
60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?
idk what exactly that is ?
61. Are your websites "cliche", in your opinion?
no i don't think so
62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?
i'm not really sure, i don't think there's something i'm striving for but not achieving? this is just a small cozy space where i can put information about myself and other things. maybe having more elaborate and cute graphic design could be fun, but i'm not sure how that would work with my existing content
63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?
i'm not really a visual artist. i don't use many assets on my site, it is mostly just text and css!
64. What are your favourite resource sites?
not sure if this counts but there's a great site full of 88x31 badges that i have linked on my homepage!!
65. Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?
i think i might slightly overuse bullet point lists?
66. What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?
experiment a lot! use a publishing system that lets you very easily modify your site!
also, if you're having trouble getting started, it often helps to draw out a mockup of your site (in a graphic design program or on paper) before writing any code. doing this makes it so you don't have to design the site at the same time as you write the code!
67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?
by "hard-code" i assume this means adding css to the style attribute of an element? i don't really do that, although on this site i do semi-frequently add style tags in the middle of the body
68. What do you think of frameset layouts?
kinda annoying since it breaks the url bar!
69. How about table-based layouts?
please just use flexbox and css grid!!! table layouts often end up combining content and presentation to a very bad degree
70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?
huh? "subscribe to the ideas"?
idk, this website is just a single column. i like one-column layouts because they make it very easy to make your site work on mobile!
71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?
if we don't include writing actual content as part of html, then definitely css. the html is just a very simple skeleton on most of the sites i've ever made
72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.
yeah, but i will usually end up adding just a bit of css to make the layout work better. i might also use something like water.css (which my friend lexi made!!)
73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?
many years ago i did this a few times? but i haven't done this recently, not really a thing i'm currently interested in
74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?
generally i would say i'm advanced, but there are plenty of more specialized areas that i am not as good at. i'm extremely familiar with html, css, and javascript, but i'm less good at some aspects of design itself
75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?
yeah! if i'm curious how a site does something interesting then i might use inspect element to find out, and if a site is broken i might try to figure out why
76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?
when i was very young i was given a book that had a page explaining how to make a very simple html page in notepad. the book was titled something like "50 things that boys should do before growing up", but it turns out i wasn't actually a boy, so maybe i wasn't supposed to do that?? but oh well, here we are now,
77. Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?
kinda? i don't write entirely spec-compliant html. i put style tags in the body of my pages because it works nicely with kittywiki (and no browser ever has complained!), and i think sometimes i put block elements in inline elements (can't think of an example though). i do try not to do anything that might mess with accessibility!!
78. Thoughts on floating elements?
sure, just don't put too many of them, they shouldn't be distracting
79. When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?
rem
80. Do you have a favourite font?
atkinson hyperlegible


but also, kosugi maru (i have a version i sometimes use with slightly modified spacing), 0xProto (monospace font i currently use in emacs), and JetBrains Mono (monospace font i used to use for coding but i still think is nice)

81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?
maybe? that could be fun but idk what the site would be about
82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?
no, not really
83. Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?
i don't really use bookmarks, i've tried i but never end up going back through them. if someone bookmarked mine that would be neat i think !
84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?
my custom wiki software, probably!
85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?
yeah! i do many things with computers, i work in the hardware industry and have made projects with software and hardware for many years. i don't really collect technology
86. How often and for how long are you online?
i think it's hard to define what being online means these days, it's not a binary thing anymore! if i get notifications on my watch throughout the day, am i constantly online? i am actively using my laptop or my smartphone for a large portion of the day
87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?
people who are in similar circles to me online or who have similar interests , and who want to get to know me better or learn about one of my projects that i have written about here
88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?
i think the general idea is interesting but i don't think i would actually use it. i do like how it requires that all tags be closed though!
89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?
yes, i have a degree in computer science and i wrote the wiki software this site runs on!
90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?
ssgs are nice in a lot of cases but i do not use one! i find it very cumbersome to have to go through the whole process of
  • editing a source file from a device that has a copy of the repo
  • recompiling it
  • then, pushing it to whatever service is hosting the static html
especially if i'm just making a small change or if i'm editing it from my phone!
91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?
no, i never thought of doing so. maybe i will add analytics of some kind at some point?
92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?
not really. sometimes i will check various subreddits related to hobbies (as of writing, i fairly frequently look at myog, homelabsales, and trackballs, although the latter is mostly just to check if kensington has finally released the tb900 yet). i occasionally lurk in the dangerous things forums to see what they're currently up to (sadly, the answer is often just ai slop) or if they've released a version of the vivokey thermo with unlocked ndef records
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!
94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?
i've had a few people tell me that they think i am cool/that they look up to me/etc!! this always surprises me (in a good way, it makes me feel really nice), i don't think of myself as cool or as someone to look up to but maybe i do not give myself enough credit
95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?
somewhat? i don't keep the websites i made in elementary/middle school online. i try to not feel shame about stuff like that though, it's not like they were anything morally wrong! they just don't represent me at all anymore and i don't want to be associated with them
96. Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?
probably would leave an archive? i'm not entirely sure what this question is asking. i doubt i will ever decide to never update my website ever again, and i'm unsure in what situations i "couldn't" update it where i could take time to close the site down
97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?
i reveal a lot about myself, but i keep some details more private (like employer, full name, address, some other links). i don't want an employer, coworker, or family member to be able to easily find this site (i'm sure there's a way somehow but i don't want them to stumble upon it)
98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?
i don't want to do that without their permission!
99. And do you optimise the images on your website?
i try my best! eventually i would love to add support to kittywiki for automatically doing that
100. We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.
sleepy,,,,,,,,,, oh wait that's the same thing oops