Honest thoughts on Nekoweb

So, for a little while I migrated from Neocities to Nekoweb (primarily because it's cheaper). Yet, I came back to Neocities at the end of my experience. I've hinted at a potential review of the webhost before, and well, here it is.

Nekoweb offers a lot of the same features as Neocities. Some of them are still a little wonky (I found that dragging and dropping files is kind of a pain in the ass to do in Nekoweb), but the built-in text editor works a lot smoother than the one on Neocities. Additionally, you can upload video and audio files to Nekoweb with a free account (for now, at least... we'll see if that decision remains).

Overall, everything works as long as you're using a computer. Signing up or logging in from a mobile device is a pain in the ass, because the layout of the site is not responsive. I wouldn't care were this someone's personal site, but considering this is a larger project it reeks of unprofessionalism- a problem which haunts Nekoweb, something I'll get into shortly. For now, I want you to compare both Neocities and Nekoweb as they present on my iPhone (which has a resolution of 375x812):

I know mobile accessibility is an afterthought for personal websites (I'm certainly guilty of that myself), but you should at least be able to read about the project on a site that offers a service.

It's just not really a good look, especially when a lot of updates are about stuff like...

• User-submitted styles for the main page.
• User-submitted buttons for the service.
• A WebNEKO that follows your cursor around and can't be turned off.
• The ability to see other visitors' cursor movements.
• The ability to chat with other users in real time- the messages will be displayed over the other person's cursor.

It all boils down to unprofessionalism. I kind of get it- keeping a website is fun, and the webhost should probably reflect that! At the same time, this also comes across as incredibly childish and will put a lot of «serious» (well, as serious as the indie web gets) webmasters off.

This all makes it so the community veers a lot to the younger side. I wouldn't say that's an issue, were the community hub of Nekoweb not a fucking Discord server.

Look, I'll be the first to complain about people who use the Neocities social features to be annoying, hell, I did so very recently. However, I much prefer having to deal with annoying kids from a distance rather than directly on a Discord server. Then again, if you aren't on the Discord server, you don't get to be part of the community at all, not to mention that it's one of the main ways to get customer support (the fastest way, in fact).

At the end of the day, the vibes were all off for me. However, I'd like to comment on some additional things I've learned from people who were involved in Nekoweb's development. This has less to do with Nekoweb as a service and more to do with how Dimden organized his project.

According to the people I've spoken to, Nekoweb's development was messy and filled with unpaid labor. What started out as a passion project of a group of coders and artists quickly became a huge headache, not helped by the fact that a lot of the team was often pressured to work more even during times when they couldn't. I won't get too much into workplace drama, but they could have been properly credited at least. In fact, the people I talked to weren't even looking for payment, merely acknowledgement.

At the end of the day, Nekoweb is still a cool little project. However, these issues hold it down to fulfilling its true potential. If these things don't bother you and you choose to host your website on Nekoweb, nothing wrong with that- it's quite stable. However, I'd much rather spend an extra $2 if it means I don't have to join a Discord server to have a community and better customer service.