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Fannish Website-Making Resources

This list is compiled with fans who are interested in making personal websites in mind, but I expect it may be resourceful to others as well.

I tried to focus on what I think people would find useful (or fun!) regardless of skill level, and to be inclusive of the diverse options of what fans/internet hobbyists might want for their own independent websites. Toys and tools that require you to know more about code are scaled for more ambitious projects. Use and learn as you feel comfortable.

I highly encourage you to explore each site beyond the linked page, as many of them are by other indie personal website owners and can serve as great inspiration.

I will continue adding to this list as time goes on Last updated: 21 February 2026

Table of Contents (Click)
  1. Hosting - Where your site lives
  2. Layout Builders - Build your own layout visually in your browser, and export the code instead of needing to build it from scratch. Premade template codes for art and fandom-related pages also here.
  3. Small Features - Widgets, snippets, and other smaller additions to your website
  4. Big Features - Entire pages or subprojects for you to customize with your own content
  5. For artists:
    • Webcomics - Tools to help you display webcomics on your site
    • Zines - Tools for e-zines, website integration
    • Image galleries - Different ways you can display a gallery of images (i.e. your art) online
  6. Make your own graphics - Instead of needing Paint or Gimp, you can make graphics in your browser
  7. Music/Audio scripts - Little music players you can integrate into your website and play your favorite songs like an MP3 player
  8. Tools - Helpful sites to make website-building a little easier for you
  9. Guestbooks - Different guestbook scripts you can pick from to integrate getting feedback from visitors
    • Feedback - Heart/kudos buttons, and other ways to get feedback
  10. Blogging - If you'd like to integrate a handcoded blog on your website and feel like a real old school internet head, here are some different tools I’d recommend, depending on how/what you plan on blogging about
  11. Consider - Cool fannish pages on the independent web that you might consider making your own version of
  12. Concerns - Tools that might help with any concerns you have about making a website, like blocking AI bots

The internet is inherently communal, a constant communication between network to network, person to person. Having access to people - a community - is one of the most valuable things in the world. Here are some tools to help with that as well :)

Completely new to this? Start here!

Hosting

Layout Builders

If instructions are not provided on page, right click > view source > copy & paste and edit in your own text editor to use.

Small Features

Big Features

Webcomics

Zine Stuff

Image Galleries

Make your own graphics in your web browser

Music/Audio Scripts

Tools

Guestbooks

Other Ways to Get Feedback

Blogging / Documentation / Text-Based Content Management

These are packages you would install into your site.

Pages to Consider

For your concerns

Make Your Own Webring

Fandom Communities on the Indie Web

For the true newbies

If you're really a beginner to website-making, click here for a guide written for a 12 year old from her mom (a hobbyist personal website maker!)

I believe that familiarity is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to learning something new, so even though what this tutorial teaches may not imitate some of the sites here, being able to follow the logic will give you that experience and help with your fluency when you start looking at other code.