Leilukin's Hub

Changelog: 11 August 2024

2024-08-11T14:46:00Z

Improve the site's RSS feed:
- Make RSS feeds automatically discoverable by feed readers
- Use time and time zone to make feed items' timestamps accurate

Changelog: 6 August 2024

2024-08-06T13:20:00Z

New article: "How I (Tried to) Implement Accessible Footnotes", which is also my entry for 32-Bit Cafe's Community Code Jam #5: Back to School.

How I (Tried to) Implement Accessible Footnotes | Articles

2024-08-05T16:04:00Z

(32-Bit Cafe "Back to School" button made by Loren)

32-Bit Cafe is holding its fifth community code jam, titled "Back to School", from 4 to 17 August 2024. I have been looking forward to participating in 32-Bit Cafe's community code jam for the first time, so I am excited. This motivates me to finally write a how-to article I have been meaning to do for a while: how to implement accessible footnotes on Leilukin's Hub, or at least, I tried to do so to the best of my abilities.

On 32-Bit Cafe's Discourse forum, I made a post on 28 June 2024 in response to solaria's thread "Handling Citations and/or Footnotes" to share my methods of adding footnotes on my website. Now, I am writing an extended version of that post of mine in the form of this article, so I could share what I learned about web page footnotes on my website as well.

(Note: This article assumes a foundational familiarity with HTML and CSS)

About Footnotes

Plagiarism.org defines footnotes as notes placed at the bottom of a page, and what footnotes do is to cite references or comment on a designated part of the text above it.

My use case of footnotes is citing sources of information, particularly citing the same source multiple times on the same page when information from the same source is spread across my page. As of this writing, my website pages that use footnotes include the trivia page of my A Summer’s End — Hong Kong 1986 shrine 1 and the facts page of my Cassette Beasts shrine. You are free to look at the HTML and CSS for reference, including when you are reading this article as I am explaining how I implement the footnotes.

Footnotes are used both on print and on the web. However, maintaining footnotes on the web can be tedious, especially if you want to update a web page to add or remove them, since you will need to change the number references of existing footnotes.

Attempted to Use CSS Counters

When I was searching for how to implement accessible footnotes, I discovered Kitty Giraudel's article, "Accessible Footnotes with CSS" which teaches the method of using the combination of HTML aria-describedby attribute and CSS counters to add numbered references, to reduce the hassle of manually re-numbering all existing footnotes in case you want to update or reorder the references.

Her article also teaches adding a highlight background colour when heading to a footnote from a reference, as well as providing back links to head back to a reference from a footnote, by using the combination of the backlink Unicode icon (↩) and the HTML aria-label attribute with a value of “Back to content”. The uses of ARIA labels make footnotes more screen reader-friendly.

Furthermore, Kitty created the eleventy-plugin-footnotes plugin for the static site generator Eleventy, and wrote a blog post about it, "Footnotes in 11ty". Since I already had begun to use Eleventy to build my website, I tried Kitty's plugin.

Unfortunately, a known limitation of using CSS counter method to generate footnotes is not being able to reference the same footnote multiple times. As I want to be able to reference the same footnote more than once when I am citing sources on my shrine pages, I had to give up the plugin and look for an alternative.

Starting with markdown-it-footnote Plugin's Default Footnote Markup

Kitty Giraudel's blog post about creating footnotes in Eleventy mentioned markdown-it-footnote, the footnotes plugin for markdown-it Markdown parser, which is integrated in Eleventy by default to convert Markdown to HTML. Kitty commented on the accessibility shortcomings of markdown-it-footnote in the blog post:

[...]it’s not super accessible (let alone by default), even considering all the customisation options. That’s because the footnote references end up being numbers (e.g. [1]) which are meaningless when listed or tabbed through because devoid of their surrounding context.

That said, since the plugin is customisable, I still wanted to give it a shot to see if I could make configurations to improve its accessibility, so I installed markdown-it-footnote and looked into the plugin's default HTML markup output.

Here is a sample of what the HTML markup output of markdown-it-footnote looks like:

<p>This is a paragraph with the first footnote reference. <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn1" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup></p>

<p>Here is the second paragraph with the second footnote reference. <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn2" id="fnref2">[2]</a></sup></p>

<p>This the third paragraph, but with a foootnote reference that points to the first footnote. <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn1" id="fnref1:1">[1:1]</a></sup></p>

<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
    <ol class="footnotes-list">
        <li id="fn1" class="footnote-item">First footnote <a href="#fnref1" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a> <a href="#fnref1:1" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></li>
        <li id="fn2" class="footnote-item">Second footnote <a href="#fnref2" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></li>
    </ol>
</section>

This is what this HTML markup will look like on a live web page:

What this HTML markup does:

Adding a footnote reference as a superscript by using the <sup> tag with numbers as the content.
Using a <hr> horizontal line element to separate the main body of the page and the footnote section;
Using the <ol> tag to render the footnotes as a numbered list;
Each footnote list item has an id attribute
If a footnote is referenced more than once, the additional footnote references are labelled with colons.

(Note: the class names were added by markdown-it-footnote, but if you do not use it, you can rename the class name to whatever you want, and even if you use markdown-it-footnote, you can still change the class names if you want to go deep into it)

Next step is trying to improve this HTML markup by making it accessible.

Make markdown-it-footnote's Markup More Accessible

Clarify Footnote Reference Labels

As pointed out by Kitty Giraudel, labelling the footnote reference as mere numbers like [1] is an accessibility shortcoming, because these reference links become meaningless when being focused on by tabbing through the links, as these reference links would be devoid of context.

What I did to tackle this was changing the reference labels by adding a word "Footnote" to clarify that these links are for footnotes. For example, [1] becomes [Footnote #1], so when screen readers focus on a footnote reference link, it will be read out as "Footnote number one link".

<sup class="footnote-ref">
	<a href="#fn1" id="fnref1">[1]</a>
</sup>

Optionally, if you want your footnote labels to still display only numbers on screen, you can use a CSS class to visually hide the extra characters in the footnote label. This .visually-hidden utility class is a useful tool in your arsenal for accessible web design, as it is often used to hide a content that you do not mean to show on screen, but you still want it to be read by assistive technology.

.visually-hidden {
    clip: rect(0 0 0 0);
    clip-path: inset(50%);
    height: 1px;
    overflow: hidden;
    position: absolute;
    white-space: nowrap;
    width: 1px;
}

To make my footnote reference labels display only a number on screen, I use a span tag with visually-hidden as the value of the class attribute to wrap around "Footnote #", so on screen, [Footnote #1] is changed to [1].

<sup class="footnote-ref">
	<a href="#fn1" id="fnref1">
		[<span class="visually-hidden">Footnote #</span>1]
	</a>
</sup>

Add ARIA Label to Footnote Back Links

Next step is adding an ARIA label to the footnote backlinks, by adding an aria-label attribute with "Back to reference #[Insert reference number]" as its value. For example:

<a aria-label="Back to reference #1" href="#fnref1" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a>

When a footnote back link is focused on via tabbing, screen readers will read it out as "Back to reference number one link".

Add Heading to Footnote Section

To make it clear that the section is for footnotes, I add a HTML heading before the list of footnotes, such as:

<h2>Footnotes</h2>

Final HTML Markup for Accessible Footnotes

Here is my final HTML markup sample to create accessible footnotes:

<p>This is a paragraph with the first footnote reference. <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn1" id="fnref1">[<span class="visually-hidden">Footnote #</span>1]</a></sup></p>

<p>Here is the second paragraph with the second footnote reference. <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn2" id="fnref2">[<span class="visually-hidden">Footnote #</span>2]</a></sup></p>

<p>This the third paragraph, but with a foootnote reference that points to the first footnote. <sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="#fn1" id="fnref1:1">[<span class="visually-hidden">Footnote #</span>1:1]</a></sup></p>

<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
	<h2>Footnotes</h2>
    <ol class="footnotes-list">
        <li id="fn1" class="footnote-item">
	        First footnote
	        <a aria-label="Back to reference #1" href="#fnref1" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a>
	        <a aria-label="Back to reference #1:1" href="#fnref1:1" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a>
	    </li>
        <li id="fn2" class="footnote-item">
	        Second footnote
	        <a aria-label="Back to reference #2" href="#fnref2" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a>
	    </li>
    </ol>
</section>

As for the CSS, in addition to using the .visually-hidden utility class, I refer to Kitty Giraudel's "Accessible Footnotes with CSS" article to style the highlight background color when heading to a footnote from a reference.

Configure markdown-it-footnote in Eleventy's Configuration File

(If you do not use Eleventy, you may skip this section)

My final step was to configure the markdown-it-footnote plugin, by editing Eleventy's configuration file (I named mine eleventy.config.js), so the plugin would render my accessible footnote HTML markup.

// markdown-it plugins
const markdownIt = require("markdown-it");
const markdownItFootnote = require("markdown-it-footnote");
let markdownLibrary;

module.exports = function (eleventyConfig) {
    /* Markdown Overrides */
    markdownLibrary = markdownIt({
        html: true,
    }).use(markdownItFootnote);

    // Configure markdown-it-footnote
    markdownLibrary.renderer.rules.footnote_block_open = () => (
        '<hr class="footnotes-sep">\n' +
        '<section class="footnotes">\n' +
        `<h2>Footnotes</h2>\n`
    );

    markdownLibrary.renderer.rules.footnote_anchor = (tokens, idx, options, env, slf) => {
        let id = slf.rules.footnote_anchor_name(tokens, idx, options, env, slf);

        if (tokens[idx].meta.subId > 0) id += `:${tokens[idx].meta.subId}`;

        /* ↩ with escape code to prevent display as Apple Emoji on iOS */
        return ` <a aria-label="Back to reference #${id}" href="#fnref${id}" class="footnote-backref">\u21a9\uFE0E</a>`;
    };

    const renderRules = {
        footnote_caption: ['[', '[<span class="visually-hidden">Footnote #</span>'],
    };
    Object.keys(renderRules).map(rule => {
        let defaultRender = markdownLibrary.renderer.rules[rule];
        markdownLibrary.renderer.rules[rule] = (tokens, idx, options, env, self) => {
            return defaultRender(tokens, idx, options, env, self).replace(...renderRules[rule]);
        }
    });

    /* This is the part that tells 11ty to swap to our custom config */
    eleventyConfig.setLibrary("md", markdownLibrary);
}

If you are a fellow Eleventy user, feel free to borrow my markdown-it-footnote configurations in your own. Make sure you install markdown-it-footnote first by keying in the installation command in the terminal:

npm install markdown-it-footnote --save

Bonus: Alternatives to Footnotes

As you likely have realised, footnotes are really tricky to implement on web pages, so you may be wondering: is there any alternative to footnotes?

For extra comments and tangents, by favourite approach is using HTML's details disclosure element with the <details> tag, with a <summary> element and a sibling element wrapping the content displayed when the disclosure is expanded.

I have been using the disclosure element for additional comments or information on this website, like in my blog post, "My Cassette Beasts Fanlisting Application has been Approved". As for the styling, initially I indented the content inside the disclosure to differentiate the disclosure content from the rest of the content of the page, but recently I switched to adding top and bottom borders after being inspired by Starbreaker's website, who also has a post about footnotes, "Footnotes: No Fun to Create, Either".

More ways to use <details> and <summary> elements

<details> and <summary> have become among my favourite HTML elements due to how useful they are. In addition to extra comments and info, Leilukin's Hub has also used the elements for the following purposes:

Table of contents, like the one this very article has
Hiding spoilers, like in my Cassette Beasts shrine article, "How Cassette Beasts is Much More than a Pokémon Clone"
Content warnings, like in my A Summer’s End — Hong Kong 1986 shrine's gallery page, with its styling being inspired by another Kitty Giraudel's blog post, "A content warning component"

As for citing sources, the simplest way would be naming and linking to the source in the main text of your page, though it does mean you may end up repeating the title of the source if you want to attribute to it more than once on your page. This was once the approach of my shrine pages, though I found the pages looked rather cluttered, so I eventually chose to use markdown-it-footnote alongside Eleventy.

Wrapping Up

Creating and maintaining footnotes on web pages is tricky, so I hope my article about accessible footnotes is helpful if you want to create them.

I am still not completely certain if my method is the best, although I tried to the best of my abilities, so I am interested in hearing feedback for my way of implementing accessible footnotes.

Changelog: 2 August 2024

2024-08-02T07:42:00Z

Added my first publicly released code snippet on this website: Responsive Disability Pride Flag CSS Background.

Leilukin's Hub Has Migrated to Hostinger | Blog

2024-07-26T16:44:00Z

Starting with 25 July 2024, Leilukin's Hub and all its subsites, including its tumbleblog and fanlisting collective, have been migrated to Hostinger. In other words, I have moved hosts again almost two months after moving Leilukin's Hub to Netlify.

Before talking about why I chose Hostinger as my new website host, I want to talk about why I was considering to move hosts again.

Why Decided to Move Hosts Again

Owning Both Static and Dynamic Sites

The first major reason is that leilukin.com has evolved into more than a static site; since I have also begun to dip my toe into PHP to build dynamic sites, including a tumbleblog, fanlistings and a fanlisting.

Netlify, which previously hosted the main site of Leilukin's Hub, does not support PHP hosting, so I hosted my tumbleblog and fanlisting collective on InfinityFree, one of the very few platforms to provide PHP and MySQL website hosting for free. InfinityFree has been a decent platform for PHP and MySQL beginners to experiment with the languages, however as you might have expected, its free hosting plan comes with limitations.

Limitations of InfinityFree's Free Hosting

InfinityFree places their own security measures on websites on their free hosting plan to ensure only regular browsers can access these websites. While it is understandable to apply these security measures on free websites to prevent abuse, it can be a dealbreaker depending on your needs.

In my case, tht thing that frustrated me the most about InfinityFree's security system on their free websites is the fact that my tumbleblog was unable to provide RSS feed in usual way. Chyrp Lite, which powers my tumbleblog, includes the feature of providing blog RSS feeds, but InfinityFree's security system blocks feed readers from reading feeds from websites on their free hosting, so I had to use Feedburner to proxy my tumbleblog's feeds to get around it.

Invested in Webmastery Enough to Spend Money

Lastly, I am invested in building my own websites enough to spend money on them, as already evident in my purchase and registration of a custom domain name leilukin.com for this website.

That said, I do need to consider carefully about how much money I am going to spend on my hobbies, which factors in why I eventually chose Hostinger to host my websites.

Why Hostinger

Affordable Price with Regional Pricing

The biggest draw about Hostinger is its pricing — it is not only cheap, but also offering regional pricing. This is a huge deal for people who live in countries with weaker currencies than US Dollars and Euro, as the pricing scales to the level we are more comfortable spending, without worrying about currency conversion rates.

For reference, as of this writing, 1 USD equals approximately 4.6 Malaysian Ringgit (MYR), while the minimum wage in Malaysia is 1,500 MYR, which approximately equals to 321.03 USD, per month. Therefore, if a Malaysian like me is going to spend money, every USD counts.

Compare the pricing of the 48-month Premium Shared Hosting plan, which was what I ended up spending to host my websites, of Hostinger.my to Hostinger.com: The plan costs 7.99 per month in MYR (approximately 1.71 USD), while 2.99 per month in USD (approximately 13.97 MYR). This means I ended up saving almost 6 MYR per month by purchasing the plan on the Malaysian branch of Hostinger. This is just comparing Hostinger's own hosting plan with different currencies, let alone comparing Hostinger's hosting plan to its competitors.

As a bonus, being able to purchase Hostinger's hosting plans in Malaysian Ringgit means I can pay by directly transferring money from a Malaysian bank account.

Being cheap is not even the only reason I chose Hostinger; what is better than being cheap is to provide many, many features at the same time.

Many, Many Features at a Cheap Price

The cheap price of the Premium Shared Hosting Plan of Hostinger is jam-packed with many features, including but not limited to:

Ability to create up to 100 websites (Netlify allows you to deploy 500 sites, but 100 sites are still significantly more than enough for average users)
100 GB SSD storage
Unlimited bandwidth (InfinityFree's free hosting also allows unlimited bandwidth, but Netlify has a limit of 100GB per month)
Unlimited MySQL databases (while Infinity has a limit of 400 databases)
Email accounts included for free
Built-in Git support, which allows me to continue deploying my main site from its Git repository
And more!

On the subject of email accounts, it is worth pointing out that Hostinger's Premium Shared Hosting plan allows you to create an email account for each website you made, and you can have up to 100 addresses and forwarders for each email account.

A Birthday Present for Myself

Last but not least, another motivator for me to purchase a premium website hosting plan for my websites now is the fact that my birthday is coming soon on July 28, so I spent money on premium hosting for my websites as a birthday present for myself this year.

Domain Names Remaining at Porkbun

While Hostinger provides domain registration and transfer service, I chose to have the leilukin.com domain name stay with Porkbun, because I already spent money on the domain name, so Hostinger's hosting plan providing domain name registration for free for the first year does not benefit me.

In addition, Porkbun's renewal rate for domain names is cheaper than Hostinger. For example, Porkbun renews the .com domain extension at 10.37 USD per year, while Hostinger renews at 15.99 USD per year. Even the Malaysian Ringgit pricing of Hostinger's domain renewal rate for .com, 55.99 MYR per year, is still more expansive than Porkbun's approximately 48.3 MYR per year rate.

Wrapping Up

Leilukin's Hub's migration to Hostinger has been smooth. There was no significant change on the front end of my websites after the switch, aside from changing the theme of my tumbleblog, so my websites will continue to operate as usual, as well as improved site performance for my tumbleblog and fanlisting collective by loading custom web fonts faster to the extent I intended by preloading the fonts.

Moving hosts for my website again reminds me of one of the benefits of owning a custom domain name of making the host migration more seamless, since it saves the trouble of having to change and update my website's address every time I move hosts.

Changelog: 27 July 2024

2024-07-26T16:32:00Z

Leilukin's Hub and all its subsites have been migrated to Hostinger
New blog post: Leilukin's Hub Has Migrated to Hostinger
Change the theme of Leilukin's Hub Tumbleblog to a custom theme based on the Umbra theme from Chyrp Lite
Add a link to contact me via email to the website's footer

Changelog: 22 July 2024

2024-07-22T01:35:00Z

Add a Salad Magazine section to my Adoptables pages.

Changelog: 21 July 2024

2024-07-21T11:24:00Z

Add a section for the Kitty Friends Pixel Club to my Adoptables page, including my kitty friends!

Changelog: 20 July 2024

2024-07-20T06:35:00Z

Remake the mobile version of navigation menu by using the HTML popover attirbutes, allowing the navigation menu to be dismissed without JavaScript

Changelog: 18 July 2024

2024-07-18T04:55:00Z

Add list of web cliques I joined to the home page
Add pixel cliques I joined to the Adoptables page
Add a Joined tab to the Links page to list the web cliques and widgets of web rings I joined, as well as linking to my fanlisting collective.
Upgrade Eleventy to version 3.0
Bundle page-specific CSS and JavaScript in the <head> element with Eleventy 3.0's built-in bundle plugin

Changelog: 13 July 2024

2024-07-13T12:47:00Z

Add an inline SVG icon to external links
Use inline SVG for Font Awesome icons to remove the need of hosting Font Awesome assets
Add dark mode support for Cassette Beasts shrine based on user preference in system setting

Changelog: 6 July 2024

2024-07-06T10:45:00Z

Implement accessible tooltips that meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 success criterion for 1.4.13: Content on Hover or Focus (Level AA), by utilising Scott O'Hara's ARIA Tooltips script. (Thank you Vera for your feedback on my previous implementation of the tooltips)

Changelog: 3 July 2024

2024-07-03T00:50:00Z

Add Articles and Resources tabs to the links page.
Show visible stylised tooltips for some website buttons on mouse hover or keyboard focus (thanks to Solaria's web accessibility guide for the inspiration).
Add a list of webrings my website is part of to the home page.

Changelog: 2 July 2024

2024-07-02T14:00:00Z

The main site header now would display a Disability Pride Month blurb and the disability pride flag during July
My fanlisting collective and Cassette Beasts fanlisting launched!
Projects page:
- Reorganised pages for my video game mods into their own directory
- Add code projects, started with BellaBuffs with PHPMailer Integration
New blog post: Cassette Beasts Fanlisting and My Fanlisting Collective Launched
Links page:
- Add tabs to sort my link collection by category (thanks to Kalechips' JavaScript-free tabs code scnippet for the inspiration)
- Add webmastery resources

Cassette Beasts Fanlisting and My Fanlisting Collective Launched | Blog

2024-07-01T16:37:00Z

I am incredibly excited to announce the official launch of Land of Confusion, The Fanlistings Network-approved fanlisting for Cassette Beasts, and Beehive, my fanlisting collective! 🥳

If you are a fan of Cassette Beasts, feel free to join my fanlisting! If you like fanlistings as well, feel free to check out my fanlisting collective!

In addition, in light of the launch of my first fanlisting, I am also releasing my fork of BellaBuffs, the fanlisting script written in PHP, with integration of PHPMailer, the email sending library!

My fanlisting collective and Cassette Beasts fanlisting are hosted on InfinityFree, since Netlify, which currently hosts the main site of Leilukin's Hub, does not support PHP.

A Milestone

In my previous post, I announced that The Fanlistings Network (also known as TFL.org) had approved my application for building and running a fanlisting for Cassette Beasts.

After completing the Cassette Beasts fanlisting on 30 June 2024, I submitted a finished form to TFL.org to let them know that I have finished my fanlisting. The Fanlistings Network responded by emailing me and informing me thatthey have added the URL of my Cassette Beasts fanlisting to the list of approved fanlistings under the Games category and the Computer, Console, & Video Games subcategory (view the web archive version).

The launch of my Cassette Beasts fanlisting is a major moment for me as both a webmaster and a Cassette Beasts fan, as I am enthusiastic about the fact that the very first fanlisting I create would be for my absolute favourite video game.

First Foray in PHP

My Cassette Beasts fanlisting is powered by BellaBuffs. I was new to PHP when I started considering building fanlistings myself, as my main site Leilukin's Hub is a static site, so building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting was my first foray in learning to code in PHP.

Before starting to actually work on building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting, I tried out Enthusiast, the other commonly used fanlisting script also written in PHP. I tried Erin's fork of Enthusiast specifically, since InfinityFree uses version 8.2 of PHP Enthusiast also has extra features that BellaBuffs does not have, including allowing fanlisting members to set passwords and even managing the entire fanlisting collective.

Unfortunately, I encountered a critical issue with Enthusiast when I tried it: whenever I added a fanlisting to my joined fanlisting list in the admin panel, the home page of the fanlisting collective would go completely blank. I do not know the cause of the issue, and I was not familiar enough with PHP to be confident in attempting to investigate the entire fanlisting collective code just to find the culprit, especially when it uses MySQL database to store data, adding another complexity in troubleshooting it.

Therefore, I later tried BellaBuffs, and chose BellaBuffs as the script to power my fanlistings, then code my own fanlisting collective myself.

There were a few setbacks I encountered when I was building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting with BellaBuffs and hosting the fanlisting on InfinityFree — I learned that InfinityFree's free hosting plan does not support PHP mail() function, which is used by BellaBuffs.

Integrating PHPMailer into BellaBuffs

BellaBuffs includes the optional features to email new members after submitting the join form, email the fanlisting admin when a new member joins or email new members when their applications were approved. The original BellaBuffs script achieved this by using PHP's built-in mail() feature, which unfortunately the free hosting of InfinityFree does not support, so I had to figure out an alternative way for my fanlisting on InfinityFree to send emails.

Thankfully, InfinityFree suggested using PHPMailer, and even providing a contact form powered by PHPMailer as a sample. As a result, I spent time in trying to incorporate PHPMailer into BellaBuffs based on the InfinityFree's PHPMailer contact form code, and voilà, I did it!

I am glad that despite my inexperience in PHP, I was able to apply the programming knowledge I learned from building my main site and taking online coding courses to build my fanlisting.

After successfully setting up the Cassette Beasts fanlisting, I decided to fork BellaBuffs and release my version of the fanlisting script with PHPMailer integration, in case there are others who want to use BellaBuffs to build fanlistings, but cannot or do not want to use the PHP mail() function.

You can download my BellaBuffs fork and learn about how to use it from its GitHub repository.

Building Beehive

To give myself more practice in PHP as I built my first fanlisting, I decided to code my fanlisting collective in PHP as well.

I decided to name my fanlisting collective Beehive, since I have been using my drawing of a bee with a pair of glasses as my main avatar on the Internet, I figured it would be a good idea to name a subsite of mine something related to bees.

Furthermore, Beehive is a fitting name for a fanlisting collective, as beehives house honey bees, while this website houses all the fanlistings I created, maintain, joined and have applied to join.

Welcome to Beehive! 🐝

Changelog: 27 June 2024

2024-06-27T05:09:00Z

Added a Spotlight Crowdfunding Campaigns section to my Palestine masterlist to highlight fundraising campaigns that I have been asked to help and share by Palestinians on Tumblr, and that have been vetted by other Palestinians on Tumblr.

Changelog: 26 June 2024

2024-06-26T10:39:00Z

Added my other websites to my Projects page.

Changelog: 24 June 2024

2024-06-24T05:52:00Z

New blog post: My Cassette Beasts Fanlisting Application has been Approved

My Cassette Beasts Fanlisting Application has been Approved | Blog

2024-06-24T05:23:00Z

On 22 June 2024, I submitted an application form to The Fanlistings Network, also known as TFL.org, to build and run a Cassette Beasts fanlisting, and now TFL.org has approved my application! Cassette Beasts is now on TFL.org's approved list under the Games category and the Computer, Console, & Video Games subcategory (view the web archive version).

What is a fanlisting?

For those who do not know what a fanlisting is, TFL.org has defined fanslitings as below:

A fanlisting is simply an online listing of fans of a subject, such as a TV show, actor, or musician, that is created by an individual and open for fans from around the world to join. There are no costs, and the only requirements to join a fanlisting are your name and country. Fanlistings do not have to be large sites (although some are) - they are just a place where you can have your name listed along with other fans of the same subject. TheFanlistings.org is the original (but not only) web directory for fanlistings, dedicated to uniting fans across the globe.

This is a major moment for me as both a webmaster and a Cassette Beasts fan. As a webmaster, I have been applying and joining fanlistings since I built my own website, as I have always found fanlistings a neat idea to gather and discover other people who share your interests across the world, as listing your country is a requirement when you apply to join a fanlisting. Recently, I have been considering building and running a fanlisting myself, with Cassette Beasts being my first choice since there is no fanlisting for Cassette Beasts yet. I began to dabble in PHP, so I can use a script like BellaBuffs to build a fanlisting. With my application approved by The Fanlistings Network, the Cassette Beasts fanlisting will be the first fanlisting I build and run.

Cassette Beasts has become my favourite video game ever since I started playing it in July 2023, to the extent that not only I have a Cassette Beasts shrine on my website, I had already begun to consider creating the shrine even before beating the main campaign. I have also been tirelessly recommending the game throughout various online spaces. Therefore, I am honoured to be given this opportunity to build and run a fanlisting for Cassette Beasts that is approved by The Fanlistings Network, to add to my ongoing effort to boost the game's visibility.

The Cassette Beasts fanlisting is not ready yet at this moment, especially since I was not certain if The Fanlistings Network would approve my application, but now with their approval, I am going to work on building the Cassette Beasts fanlisting. TFL.org has a rule that fanlisting owners need to complete their fanlisting within four weeks, so stay tuned for upcoming updates for my Cassette Beasts fanlisting!

Now that I will be running my own fanlisting, I will be also creating a fanlisting collective to gather all fanlistings I own, join and have applied to in one place. Since Netlify, which currently hosts the main site of Leilukin's Hub, does not support PHP, I will be hosting my fanlisting collective, including my Cassette Beasts fanlisting, on InfinityFree.

Changelog: 23 June 2024

2024-06-23T15:36:00Z

Add Adoptables page.