Some very good resources for basic HTML and CSS learning:

www.w3schools.com/html/default...
www.w3schools.com/css/default....

It's not easy, but it's not as hard as you probably think it is.

Think of it as an aspect of your professional work that's just as important as advertising or networking. Yeah it's a time investment. It's worth it not to be up a creek without a paddle next time a billionaire gets bored.

Again, not discouraging you from using this place. It's nifty! But it is not a basket to put all your eggs in. Learn some basic HTML and CSS, build your own site, and become substantially less reliant on giant for-profit companies who're happy to sell you and me up the river sooner or later.

But that means that the inertia stopping you from making your own site is, what, two days? Three maybe?

If you're already starting over, now is the time to make sure the foundation is laid right. Bluesky may not be cool forever. It may be! It also may not. You don't want to go through this again.

A lot of those people have been forced out. And that sucks and I don't mean to belittle it. A lot of freelancers are in very real, very dire straits, because the tool they've used to make a living just exploded. That is awful and I feel terrible for the folks dealing with that.

I am taking this opportunity to point all of this out because this is the perfect time to do it. A lot of people were trapped on Twitter because they built up so much of their online presence with it that transitioning to a personal site was prohibitively cumbersome.

If Neocities ever goes under? I still have all the files that make my personal site run. I can go to another host, upload those files there, and bing bang boom, it's like I never left. Nobody controls that website but me. Elon can't buy it, nobody can take it away.

THAT is the security you want.

Is the website that will create EXTREMELY basic? Yes. But if you understand that, you can understand the more advanced concepts. You don't need those now, you can learn them later, and they will let you eventually make sites like this. (Quick plug for my personal site, thefeedbackloop.neocities.org)

"But I can't afford web hosting!" Neocities is free. (neocities.org)

"But I'm not a web developer!" You don't need anything fancy, a simple HTML page with your portfolio and contacts is fine. If you can understand this HTML screenshot, you know everything you need to in order to make a site.

But it is not your portfolio, it is not your main site, it is your storefront where you get foot traffic and get customers but it is NOT your online heartbeat.

You make a personal site for that. One YOU control. It's whatever you need it to be, and no billionaire can take it or break it.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't use it, I wouldn't be posting this on here if I thought that. But it DOES mean that if you use social media for business, don't let this be your home base. Let it be a place you talk to clients, interact, find work, and sure keep some work here as samples.

The nice thing about this place is that it's a lot like Twitter used to be.

Thing is, that means it can easily become Twitter again. It might not! It might stay cool! It might also fall apart in 8-12 years like most social media sites have after a decade or two, and then you're back to square one.