As of now, Tesserae is retired.

I had the idea for Tesserae back in fall 2018, when we in Somnolescent were all still on Neocities and building websites was our main hobby. I wasn't happy with the state of any of the Web documentation I saw being linked around. It was either contextless (and possibly inaccurate) primers or full on, hyperaccurate, dense, and dry references. I felt there could be something in between.

We're now going into 2025, and I just don't see the import in my own attempt anymore. Don't get me wrong, there's still tons of garbage tutorial sites, but I don't have the time or desire to make my answer happen to the degree I want it to happen.

What ultimately sealed the deal for me, and what I recommend if you're one of the few who did use Tesserae, is The Odin Project. This is a free and community-maintained Web app development site, with the Foundations course being pretty analogous to how I wanted Tesserae to come out. It's very accurate and very good. I can't compete with a community of people all updating writeups on an ever-changing Web.

I am pleased with what I was able to accomplish as one person in his spare time, though. I've mirrored Tesserae over on the Somnolescent Archives as always, along with the original, 1.0 version from Neocities that didn't work as nicely or was as accurate as I intended. This one had a lot more content on it though, and it's nice to see it again. I never mirrored it anywhere until recently.

Keep building websites. There's nothing more wholly gratifying I've ever felt than combining art, writing, design, and the technical stuff under one roof with my own, from scratch websites.

-mariteaux