For clarity, I've never pretended like the code was made by me if prompted. If that makes sense. Like, if someone said, "I love how you coded this page," I'll be like, "Thanks, but it's actually based off of THIS page by someone else!"
pretty sure as long as you aren't ripping entire pages from the source and not editing them at all, nobody cares? heavy inspiration is fine, hell, i have linked credit to boothworldindustries for being a major inspiration with my index. as long as you name, you're more than fine
that's how most people learn I think and i dont see it as an issue, the issue is if you copy paste someone's whole site or obviously take like chunks of it out.
I think it's alright- even flattering for some folks when credit is given. It's the difference between "hey, your code gave me ideas on how to do my own page" and "I wholesale ripped someone's code and claimed it as my own original work". Heavy inspiration happens, learning from examples happens, picking up ideas from others is normal, and you're doing just fine by the sound of it.
I always found it flattering so long as you gave credit back? I took heavy insp from your chatbox, and honestly, no other design fits as well. And recreating someone else's layout (w/ credit) is pretty heavy flattery.
On one hand, it might strike similar to art theft and I get that, but what I think people forget is that programming is not inherently an art. Now, we make it into an art, yes, but we're programmers first and foremost, and programmers don't reinvent the wheel. We swap chunks of code back and forth, and so long as you point to the original source, I'm pretty sure it's fine.
(Assuming that the person who ran Gundham dot Neocities dot org was a roleplayer. I don't know their life.)
OR A WEBSITE ON HERE, LIKE, AS A FORM OF AN ARG. Or storytelling. Imagine, like, what seems like a random person's personal site, but then you go to their diary page and it's a story told in diary entries, updated in real time...