I wrote this document last year. It was basically a disguised rant targetted at my classmates. I was studying MBO Computer Science, and boy, does that come with a lot of clueless idiots who think they know everything.

It was originally written in dutch (as "De Slechte Thuispagina HOWTO") and intented for use on the WWW. Something may appear somewhat broken due to missing outside links.

I tried to be as accurate as possible in the translation, but some things just couldn't be translated. These were rants on how clueless idiots are polluting the dutch language with english terms (I believe "homepage" is an official dutch word now. I believe it may as well be "thuispagina" or something like that). Everything that could not be translated is marked "Translation Problem".

Update: I wrote a bit on the Dutch/English problem later on. It's in Engelands, in case you care.

Appendix B and C have been omitted. B because it consisted entirely of outside links, and C because it was purely aimed at my classmates of the time. These are still available in the original, dutch, document.


Contents

  1. Preface
  2. Prerequisites
  3. The 10 Commandments of Bad Homepages
  4. Software
  5. Frames
  6. Pictures
  7. Javascript
  8. Search engines
  9. Content
  10. Colours
  11. Fonts
  12. Links
  13. Sound
  14. The Finishing Touch

Appendices

  1. Thank you ...

1. Preface

If all your friends, classmates, parents, pets, and <insert-things-here> already have a homepage, and you want one too to put more of the same on the WWW: this is the HOWTO to read!

You will be guided through the process of creating a Bad Homepage step by step and you will receive tips on how to make sure your homepage stays a Bad Homepage.

2. Prerequisites

Before you start, you must meet all of the following conditions:

  1. You may have no idea as to what a UN*X-system is.
  2. You must use a bloated browser like Netscape Communicator 4.x or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.
  3. You may not know what `bloated' means in this context.
  4. You may not know that there are other browsers out there besides Communicator and Explorer.
  5. You must be able to read (i.e. you may not be blind)
  6. You must be able to hear (i.e. you may not be deaf)
  7. You must own (and use) a mouse
  8. You must use Windows 9x/2k
  9. You must have an account with AOL or a free webhosting provider
  10. You must own at least an ISDN connection.

If you meet all these conditions... Carry on!

3. The 10 Commandments of Bad Homepages

Alright, you must know the following 10 commandments by heart. If you have to, make a hard copy with your little Deskjet printer and pin it to the wall.

  1. You rule. Anybody who tells you differently is an asshole.
  2. Correct spelling is for wimps.
  3. If anybody comments on your homepage you must answer with something resembling: "Shut up! I rule!"
  4. The W3C is an organization of wimps. Correct HTML stinks.
  5. Everyone is just like you (see the list of prerequisites above).
  6. Your page is yours. Nobody can copy anything you've written.
  7. Other people's pages are yours too. You can copy them.
  8. 20MB for your Homepage is way too little.
  9. Translation problem.
  10. Translation problem.

Now that you know these rules, it isn't hard to apply them.

4. Software

First, you must download a homepage-building program or copy it from your local warez-supplier.
The best programs are "WYSIWYG" programs. BEWARE: Never, ever, use the word WYSYWIG around others!
It doesn't really matter what WYSIWYG means, just as long as you remember nobody may know that you use it.

A good WYSIWIG-homepage-build program would be Sausage's Hotdog Professional, a rather expensive program. You can apply commandment number seven to this one.
If you choose to do it the legal way, don't let anybody know! Tell them you downloaded it.

Alright, know that you've copied, downloaded, or silently bought, a copy of a program we can start this thing.

5. Frames

The first thing you should do is make frames.
This is an essential part of every homepage.
The following frames are the absolute minimals:

NOTE: The "content" frame may not take up more than 40% of the browser window!

The reason why frames are so important is simple. You have to do less work, because most of your work remains on screen. Secondly, people with an old or text-only browser (under MS-DOS, because UN*X systems don't exist) can't render them, so they will download a new browser (like Communicator, or Explorer). Now they will see all they beauty on the WWW. You're doing humanity a favour.

If you use frames on your homepage you can also make a "noframes" page for those people who use an MS-DOS browser to view your page.
You may not place any information here!
The only thing you may do is place something this on the page:

Your browser does not support frames.
Download the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator.

Optionally, you may add pictures à la "Download Netscape NOW!".

6. Pictures

Pictures are an important part of every homepage. Especially GIFs and BMPs are good. Important is that you never make your own pictures! You gather pictures on the WWW. Preferably from your friends' pages. Commandment number seven also applies to pictures.

Gather as many pictures as you can. At the very least you will need a picture for your background (approximately 1000x500 pixels in size). You will need a picture to indicate that people can send you e-mail. The most suitable e-mail picture is an animated GIF of a rotating envelope or a mailbox.

You will need a different image for each section of your homepage in the navigation frame. They may look like a menu, but that's not mandatory or anything. The best thing here would be to use Javascript to all the pictures light up when you move your mouse over them.

It is required to have a Communicator or Internet Explorer picture on your homepage! Preferably both.
You should place these pictures at the bottom of your main page (or in the copyright frame) under the heading: "Best viewed with:"

7. Javascript

Javascript is an important part of your homepage. All browsers support javascript.

The most important use of javascript are so-called "pop-up windows". This is an absolute necessity on your homepage.
Of course, building this your self requires a lot of work, but no sweat, there are solutions to this problem. The easiest thing to do is to go to a web-forwarding-provider like go.to and pick an address for your homepage.
They will provide you with a totally free pop-up window for your homepage!
Another method, which requires more effort (not recommended!) is to make your own pop-up window. Here commandment number seven also applies.

Also very important are the "alert" windows. There should be at least one alert window per section on your homepage. NOTE: In the alert window only the exact text found in the navigation image may appear! If you absolutely want more, be sure you have something like: "Hi, welcome to the links!" at most.

8. Search engines

Search engines will be the way all your visitors will come to your page. This is why you will have to register your homepage with at least 200 different search engines. Of course, it takes a tremendous effort to this yourself, therefore you should download or copy (commandment #7 again) to do it for you.
The only search engines you are allowed to use yourself is Altavista!

If you choose to make a description for your page it should be something that describes your homepage. If you have some space left, repeat! A good description for a homepage would be something like:

warez, adult, mp3z, crackz, warez, hot, xxx, porn, warez, crackz, mp3, warez, warez, warez, adult, xxx, porn, crackz.

This way all your visitors can see what your homepage is about and especially what makes it different from all the other homepages on the Web (which, for example, only have "warez" in their description twice).

9. Content

Many people think you need something to say when you're building a homepage. This is absolute nonsense.
Things you need to look after when doing the content:

  • It can only be about you (commandment #1)
  • Nobody may copy your page (commandment #6)
  • You can only bitch about other people.

If you did your frames properly, it shouldn't be hard to fill a page or two with this.

You may only have the following sections on your homepage:

Some people may have a section called "photos" too. These people are obviously lousy bad-homepage-builders (pronounce: webdesigners).
Except when they're pictures of other people. Like pictures of naked women (pronounce: hot babez).

It is crucial that you don't use words like "crucial" on your homepage. If you do this, people will think you are a "nerd", and you don't want that to happen.

Translation problem
Use slang wherever possible. See commandment number five. If you know what you're jivin' about, others will too.

Replacing the letter 'a' by the at-sign is also very important. This will make many people believe you know a lot about the WWW. For example, e-mail becomes e-m@il and software softw@re. Use the '@' as much as you can!

Also try to avoid words with more than eight letters.

10. Colours

Use many different colours. The best is using coloured letters on a black background. Black-on-white and white-on-black can be found on paper enough already.

The best colours are bright. It makes the text stand out, and it will be read by the people who visit your homepage. Bright red, bright green, and bright yellow are usually the best bright colours. If you're using a bright green background, you will want to use a bright yellow text colour. That really makes your page stand out.

11. Fonts

Use many different fonts. Preferably in different sizes. Assume everyone has these fonts installed on their computer, and is able to view them.

If you need a special character (like © or ß) on your homepage, use a font like Wingdings. ISO-8859-1 is for wimps.

For so called "fixed width" fonts use a font like "system". You will usually want to avoid this type of text because it looks like text on an ancient DOS-computer.

12. Links

For your links you use pictures or small portions of text. How to use pictures is described somewhere above. If you use text for your links it may not be a description of where they point to. A link like:

For your links use pictures.

would be pure evil. Something like this would be good:

If you want to know what links are, click here. For pictures, click here.

This is to make sure people will read the entire sentence, and that's a good thing. You spent at least one minute typing that sentence, so it deserves to be read.

The best name for a link is, without a doubt, "here". Most of the time, this is preceded by "click", which is a good thing, because everyone owns a mouse and uses it to click with. From a didactical viewpoint it is also better, because people who have reached your homepage may not know exactly how to use their browser. You're doing humanity a favour again.

For links which refer to outside sites (i.e. anything you didn't write) you open a new window. This is so people do not get distracted and keep on reading your homepage. One of my classmates told me you should do it like this:

<a href="http://www.thisisnotmysite.com/" target="new">

See also "The Finishing Touch" about adding HTML to your homepage.

13. Sound

Even though it is less common these days, sound can be a vital part of your homepage. A WAV-file or a MIDI-file can cheer up your page. Especially if you play it in an infinite loop people will visit your homepage for longer periods to enjoy the music.

14. The Finishing Touch

The bad thing about WYSIWYG programs is that they add that they built your homepage for you. This can be remedied though: Start notepad and open your newly made homepage. Now find everything that says "WYSIWYG" or the name of your homepage-build program. Remove all this. Be sure to leave no traces!

Now put the following in every page of your homepage:

<!-- This site is Copyright (C) -insert-name-here-
        Do NOT copy! -->

This is to protect your intellectual properties (see also commandment #6). Now nobody will copy your page. Just in case, you should download a "mailbomber" to mailbomb people who still copy your page.

Now go and find something like this:

mg src="hot\ babez.jpg" width="500" height="1000" alt="Hot Babez!">

This is really bad for your homepage. Remove everything starting at "width" so that only this remains:

<img src="hot\ babez.jpg">

As you can see your homepage has not changed, but a long line of text you don't understand is the trademark of a bad bad homepage.

Now that you have changed your homepage with notepad, go find a "created with notepad" picture to place at the bottom. Your friends will then respect you, and honour you. Also put the following lines in your homepage so that everyone can see you are a fully qualified bad homepage builder.

<meta name="generator" content="Notepad">
<meta name="author" content="-insert-name-here-">

Congratulations! You are now a fully qualified bad homepage builder.
Have Fun!
Oh, just for extra coolness; print business cards with your go.to/-me- address on them!


Appendices

A. Thank You ...

Remco "Korsa" Kooijman
For his always bad (and now even 404-ish) homepages.
Marco "Booth" Gordijn
For his always bad, and mostly half-stolen, homepages.
Dennis van den Berg
For his excellent explanation on how TCP/IP works (start->configuration->...)
Debbie van Berghem
For her excellent lecture on how not to do it.
Kar-Lok Wong
For giving me the idea that this HOWTO is useful.
Ferry "toDSaH" Boender
For the conversations about what an idiots these homepage-builders are.
Astrid "Poes" de Wijn
For the first chuckle on this HOWTO, and her ultimate bad homepage.

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