Welp, guess it's time for the fith redesign.

I've been thinking about this site a lot in the recent few weeks as I've been getting that Neocities itch again. However, I've also had little energy to work on this site, and honestly, I have to say - this project has backfired, and in more ways than one.

I wanted to make a site that was simple to work on and maintain. For that reason, I kept it simple in HTML and CSS, plus I was quite inspired by Gopher sites and CLI at the time, so it helped shape the aesthetic of ValHut - an aesthetic which, honestly, I really enjoy. I think it's really cool in it's own really simple way.

But what I didn't understand is "simple to make" doesn't mean "simple to maintain" - and I massively screwed up in this aspect. Adding things like a "last edited" header and a changelog and a version numbering system and such means making a small update means updating multiple pages at once. For example: to make a new blog entry, I have to write the blog, make and/or add the ASCII art, add last edited timestamp, add that to the sitemap, update the last edited timestamp on the sitemap itself, and then log it in the changelog. And the entire time I am banging my head against the table going "wtf was I thinking!?" when doing all this.

And honestly, I've tried multiple iterations of the same format of site here, which is just a simple "site existing for the sake of existing with cool looks and a blog or something". That's cool and all, I love sites like that and it beats a social media page by miles. Back when I started in 2021 and uploaded that joke site to test my HTML skills and when the prospect of web development was a new thing to me, I enjoyed it. But I don't think it works for me and it hasn't worked for me since I decided to rewrite my more serious "WidePop" site in the prospect of having a website I'd keep up with (which was YuaHut, which suffered a similar fate to Valhut, Widepop and NowNet - aka it died from innactivity).

So, I've decided that, whenever I return to this, I'm probably going to make this website nothing more than a personal site to link to places I am and other projects. I probably will also end up renaming this website again, potentially back to WidePop like old times, but I haven't decided yet.

Oh, about "other projects"...

I want to do a few things independent of ValHut for a bit. I'm considering reviving Now!Net, since I've returned to less powerful systems, and noticed my 2009 iMac doesn't run OpenBooks well sadly, and I want a more retro skeuomorphic as a start page in my browser. Next best alternative I could think of is Districts, but Districts is long gone. So I may just try make my own new tab page, and I'm probably gonna reuse the Now!Net name for it.

I also have a similar issue with my Sharp Aquos flip phone, so I'm also thinking of starting a more ambitious project called K!Mode (in referance to iMode - the exclemation is to add a bit of parity to Now!Net and also partially related to an older abandoned project of mine, and also just because why not?) which would be a mix of a start page, a website repository, and a collection of legacy browser and D-pad friendly site templates.
But whether I execute these depend on an even more important factor: my personal life.

I'm now 18, out of college, in the real world, running free and as a result dealing with the stress that comes with it. My mental state has been rocky ever since I first started Neocities and arguably even before that, so that also doesn't help. So chances are I'm not going to execute these things for a while.

But one thing for sure is: since the last few iterations of my Neocities site has led to the same fate (innactivity and lack of interest from me), I'm probably going to change how I use Neocities and what I use it for. And ValHut is probably going away. I appologise for the few who enjoyed my site - I might take the effort to actually preserve Valhut this time. But this is simply the end of a chapter and the start of another one.

Cya in the next one.

-Val_screamz/Yua