Devlog #4: plots.club pilot updates

21 Oct, 2025

First, I really appreciate the response I received about folks wanting to try out the pilot experience for plots.club. Your support and enthusiasm are the biggest motivators I could ever ask for!

For those of you following along looking for updates, the pilot site will be up and running very soon. Hopefully before the end of the month, in fact! And for those of you stumbling across this page for the first time, registration for my plots.club pilot site is still open! Please email me and I'd be happy to share out the join info as soon as the site goes live in what I'm hoping will be another couple of weeks.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to share a few small updates about plots.club while I wrap up some of my last changes before the pilot site goes live.

Another Markdown/HTML parsing flow overhaul

My biggest update comes from the fact that I dialed back even more of my HTML rendering strictness in order to give more control back to the users. Virtually all HTML tags that someone would want to use in the creation of a bespoke web page will be available for use, with two very specific exceptions:

• <div>s are not allowed. You can use any other form of demarcation and semantic styling in place of these, but the sanitizer I've implemented uses a parent-level <div> to navigate the HTML flow, so I cannot allow child <div>s. Since they are just unopinionated containers anyway, there are thankfully many ways to overcome this, such as using semantic HTML elements instead of the generic <div> element... but you're already doing that anyway, right? :)
• I have updated the rendering logic to allow inline style attributes for nearly all presentational elements, but a root-level <style> tag will not be allowed. This should hopefully allow for a ton of customization within the plot description space itself, without allowing for root style modifications, which is inherently dangerous to me as a host of these sites. My hope is that in the long run, I'll continue to update the way that the plot vibes theme styling of the site works so that users can achieve the styling they want with a combination of top-level themes (vibes) and plot-level inline styles.¹

Added "docs"

In the spirit of showing and not telling², I've added a small set of "welcome" pages that folks can click through when they first visit plots.club. This will hopefully cut down on a lot of questions for folks trying to explain things to their grandmothers, like what in the world a "microblog" is, and "why you're spending time talking to strangers on the Internet," and "no, sorry grandma, I can't fix your printer, yes, I know I work in tech but I don't know anything about printers, and yes, I understand ChatGPT said you could pour rice into the printer's paper intake but I assure you that did not help."

Handled folks leaving

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I realized somewhat late into development that if a person chooses to recuse themselves from plots.club, deleting both their account and their plots (which I am allowing users to do), and their plot was the only plot connecting other plots to the rest of an isle (or even an airport), that could cause serious issues down the road. I've added handling to address this shortfall, as well as our own little automated plots.club user, the aptly named "penny the plot peddler," to assist in this!

Wrap up

I think that's all I've got for now. Again, please email me if you'd like to sign up for the pilot experience and help me make plots.club the best site it can be. Completely free, no obligation, no information needed from you (outside of an email address), no weekly email marketing nonsense, no advertisements, no shady stuff at all. This is a site made by a developer and old-Internet devotee for folks who want to see more of that in their lives.

More to come very soon!

#devlog