The Archives of Stupidity Guide to building a web page

Let' get something clear from the start shall we? If you are considering making a page about you or your friends, don't.

Don't make a tribute page to a pop star you fancy, or even worse to an ordinary person you fancy. We have all had enough of D**e's 'I love S****h O**n' Homepage.

Ignore what I just did up there, never make a comment about people you know. It might be funny to you & your friends but not to the odd other 600 million people surfing the net.

Never use the term 'Surfing the net', stop & think about how stupid an analogy that actually is.

Follow the following steps & then apply to join the Archives web-ring.

If you have any comments then mail me

 

  1. Have an idea that makes your web site different from the other 6million out there. Just gonna put up some links & downloads were you? Well forget it, people take just 7 seconds to decide whether to look at your page or not, so you really have to grab their attention with something different. If you are setting up a fan site for a band or sport then you needn't worry too much as people will seek you out. The same applies if you are going to build a site for your own games, you will need to advertise but you will have it pretty easy going. Try to provide a site that no one will have thought of before, like Revenge.com or some of the stuff in the Archives.
  2. Grab that pile of magazine disks happily decomposing in the corner, & seek out a trial copy of something like Dreamweaver for actual site design, & a copy of Fireworks for graphics.
  3. Mess about with them a little & learn the features.
  4. Bare in mind that this will be an expensive hobby, in terms of money, sanity & time.
  5. Still here? Right. Open up that copy of fireworks & design the gif's for your page (these can be converted to Jpeg's later).
  6. Now take a good look at that copy of Dreamweaver that will expire in 30 days time. Good isn't it? Now uninstall it. This program costs £399 & you can't afford that now can you.
  7. Knock the dust off that copy of word hidden in the start menu. Word? I hear you scream. Yep, that's right word. Find the option for creating a web page in word & go for it.
  8. Gasp in horror at the word web design tools. Now try & find a copy of something called FrontPage on your system. While largely useless, it will fix some of the problems you will have with word.
  9. Now turn off the computer. Why? I'll tell you why. You want to have your ideas roughed out on paper first because it is so much easier than trying to wrestle with it on screen. Don't believe me? Well, you'll see.
  10. Now get about six bottles of Booze (or whatever else you fancy) & arrange them around the computer.
  11. Take the phone off the hook & give tranquillisers to any family member who may be tempted to 'just come & watch for a bit'.
  12. Bang an audio CD in the drive, & away we go.
  13. Put your site together, remembering a couple of major points. Firstly, split your site up into several sections, there is nothing worse than one massive page containing everything. Try & keep the loading time for each page below 30 seconds (there is an indicator in the bottom right hand corner of FrontPage that tells you this). Split your site up into directories, although it might be small at the time, it will soon grow into a vast sprawling mess. Is your site particularly graphics heavy? If it is then consider doing a low quality graphics version of the site for people with slower modems. This might seem pretty pointless to you now, but it will greatly increase the number of people who actually stay to view your site. Keep the filenames short & simple, this will make things much easier come upload time.
  14. Finished? Right. Now show your site to someone who you can imagine viewing it out of the blue on the web. Don't tell them anything about it, just show them & leave them to it. If you aren't happy with their reaction, back to the word processor for you.
  15. When you signed up with your ISP you would have noticed some free web space as part of the deal. How much? If you have anything under 15MB then forget it, believe it or not you will soon fill this up. Second consideration, does your site contain anything that your ISP would not like? If your site is likely to offend anybody, in any way then forget it too.
  16. If you have concerns about either of the above then go to one of the site's that will host your page for free. Either WWW.Fortunecity.com or WWW.Geocities.com should do fine.
  17. Find & download a program called Terrapin FTP. Dial into your web space & upload your files. Congratulations, you are now a true idiot.

This guide will get you started but believe me when I say that this is just the tip of the Iceberg. If people express an interest in this guide then I will handle things like mailing lists & web-rings in a future page.

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