WARNING: Use of strong language and venomous ranting. If you can't handle criticism, don't scroll down. Go back here. IN THE BEGINNING I began making websites back in 1996 or so. I thought Tripod's webpage editor was the best thing ever, since I didn't know a drop of HTML. My best friend at the time owned a domain and was quite the priss. She was always so angry that I asked questions about code, and design? Well I could forget that too. I was so proud to have a webpage, and was awe-inspired by the really good ones. I went to all kinds of fanlistings and webrings, even started a few of my own, and like the crazy fangirl I was, I really loved it. I was Silver Star of FLiCKiE Island, an echidna, Knuckles' love, long before that whore, other girl, Julie-Su came along. Truth be told, I was an idiot. A popular idiot, according to an ex-boyfriend, but an idiot nonetheless. What I know now, is all self taught. I believed owning "Duo's braid" was the thing. I believed blinking animated gifs were cool. I thought different coloured, different sized, bold-italic headlines made my site special. Truth was, it made my site look like garbage. It cluttered up the internet. Especially search engines. Unlike my friend, I really have no qualms about helping people with coding problems, if I know how to solve it. I am really PRO open source. I think the only way to help clean up the net from these junky sites is to help our fellow page makers out and make them realize the cleanest of sites can be made from the simplest of code. I'm not saying my site is the prime example of what everyone should do either, so don't get me wrong. I just think there's a lot of crap on the internet that needs to be overhauled. Some content, some design, and I'll take you through it all. I know someone somewhere is going to take personal offense to this. Someone is going to whine goddammit, freedom of speech and creativity, and all that jazz but to quote Diane Patterson's "Why WebJournals Suck" -- Putting them on the Web is publishing them (and falls under all current and international publishing and copyright laws), and publications have benchmarks. So what I'm saying is, unless you're putting up a fan page FOR a reason, don't do it. And no, building a fan page just for the sake of saying you built one isn't good enough. If you are only going to design the website for yourself, to only be seen on your computer, why bother putting it on the internet? This all started with a conversation with one friend, and exploded into many conversations with many people, and has evolved into what you see now. If you have a problem with this, please feel free to email me HERE. DIRECTORY: FANLISTINGS LINK PAGES IMAGES SHEESHOEMAKI DOESN'T EQUAL SESSHOUMARU LINKS UNDER CONSTRUCTION ABOUT ME I SCANNED THIS SO CREDIT ME -- PLZKTHXBYE FONTS AND COLOURS THEMES UPDATES ON THE SPLASH PAGE PAGE TRANSITIONS SONGS CUSTOM CURSORS THiS iSN'T CooL, oKaY? FRAMES FIND THAT LINK FANLISTINGS Quite frankly, they're all crap. No matter how well the site design is, the content is still garbage. I can't describe to you how annoying it is when you go online searching for a character's profile, or images of that character and find nothing but eighty fanlistings on Kurama. Really. One is too much as is, we don't need bazillions. But- but-- nothing. It's crap. I don't care about fifteen people who really like Kurama. Really. I don't. I'm glad you like him, but you're not doing anything useful other than plugging your own crappy website. Stop it. ESPECIALLY if you're one of those types who joins the fanlisting for say, Ginji Amano, and then links their WWF site. I will smack you. I have come there probably for information on Ginji Amano, if I wanted a site on WWF I would have googled it, you jerk. I don't blame this fully on the participants who join the fanlistings, but moreso on the people who run them with their really lax rules of "You only have to like so & so to join." To join, well fine, but to link their site, alteast ask that it be related to the damn fanlisting, otherwise what's the point? And you. Yes you. The claiming fanlisting. Stop that. It was original like the first time it came out, but the amusement is over. I could easily claim something, never register with you, and be just as legit. Infact I will. I CLAIM MONKEY D. LUFFY's STRAW HAT. What's someone going to do? Flame me because they claimed it first? It's a fucking cartoon character for crype's sake. The actual hat doesn't exist, so claiming ownership to it, doesn't mean anything. It's a silly little fangirl (maybe fanboy too?) thing to do. It's stupid, it's garbage and its wasting valueable searching time. Join the anti-fanlisting fanlist today! No lists involved, or signups. No screening process. Take the button below, upload it, and use the code below it: <a href="http://www.underthelotusleaf.com/bad.html"><img src="fanlist.jpg" border="0" alt="Down with fanlisting!"></a> [top] LINKS PAGES Okay, okay.... Not ALL of these are bad, but my complaints lie with the bad ones, and I'll explain. If you're going to have a fan site about Onizuka, atleast keep the link pages related to the theme of the site. I realize you want to link all your friends, and their mothers, but I don't want to have to sort through a links page full of links that should have stayed in the bookmark section of your browser. I am there for ONIZUKA. GT FUCKING O. Not DOGS R US. If you're going to do something like that, please, atleast divide the links up with headers to make content easier to sift through. IE: LINKS ABOUT ONIZUKA+GTO; OMFG THESE ARE MY BESTFRIENDSFOREVER, and their moms. I know you think we really care about you and your friends, but the truth is the general audience of the internet doesn't. Not one drop. Piss us off and we're gone, ok? Want us to come back? Make us enjoy our stay. [top] IMAGES Please note that while you may own a T1 and can download that super huge front page image, not everyone does. Not to mention, not everyone CARES to download it. If your page doesn't start to come up (ie. the audience sees a white page) within three seconds, you've lost them. We're living in the age of impatience. Technology and it's instant delivery has completely raped us of any patience for things loading, so be considerate if you want people to stay. Which brings me to another topic. ALT TAGS. For the love of all things digital, use your alt tags people. Please. It tells the audience that there is something there, that will load. Or, if the person has disabled images (God forbid), it will describe to them what they were supposed to see. On that note, use periods, even in alt tags. While visual people may be able to handle your run on sentences, I'm sure it's mighty annoying for the visually impaired to hear sentences go on and on and on. Yes, the visually impaired do surf websites. Right up there with people still on dial-up, disabled images, and cellphones. You should try to make your site as accessible to as many people as possible. Well, the cellphone bit is slightly harder. This is only a small glazing over of what you really need to do, there's so much more. <-- See this here? Nothing is more irritating than going to someone's fan site and seeing one of these instead of a characters photo, or menu bar, or whatever. Don't hotlink. Upload images to your own server, and make sure your IMG SRC tag name matches the name of the actual file. Make sure the file actually uploaded correctly too. Nothing pisses me off more than a site with images that don't work. Unless I'm desperately scouring the internet for a hard to find piece of information, I'll leave immediately. It's like telling me to my face, sorry, I'm lazy and I didn't think you were important enough to take the time and make sure my page works. Like you would an essay, double check your page. This goes for spelling, grammar and double for links. [top] SHEESHOEMAKI DOESN'T EQUAL SESSHOUMARU On the note of grammar, even if you can't spell "homepage" atleast spell the character's name right. Please. Some newbie fan out there is going to come across your site, think you spelt the name right, and then further rape the poor character's name. I understand variations happen, but spelling Sesshoumaru like Sheeshoemaki, is just plain sad. [top] LINKS Links from your own page should ALWAYS work. If you don't have a custom 404 option, just link "#" instead of an actual html file. It will refresh the page people are on, instead of sending them to a dead end. It says, I'm planning to put something in here but currently I'm working on it. Or you could just not put the link up at all, which is nice. Saves space. [top] UNDER CONSTRUCTION Possibly the most annoying phrase (yet the most common) on the internet. Of COURSE it's under construction. It's a webpage. It's digital, it's always changing. It's ALWAYS under construction. [top] ABOUT ME What the hell is this doing on a fan page? Are you Naruto? Do you know him personally? So why the hell do you think this belongs on a fan page? Do you think we, the general masses, really give a damn about who you are? You're wrong. Maybe, if you have designed a bunch of sites, or written some fanfiction, or drawn some art, or done something other than built a random shrine to a character, I would be interested in who you are, but for the most part, no. I'm there to get the character information -- NOT READ YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [top] I SCANNED THIS- SO CREDIT ME, PLZKTHZBYE So, you scanned it. You put your book in the machine, and pressed a button. You maybe tweaked the image, saved it and slapped it on the internet. You think that gives you copyrights to it? Think again. If anyone owns it, it's the original artist, author, and all those people who published it. Nothing pisses me off more than idiots who scrawl shit all over graphics saying they own it cuz they scanned it. So, you scanned it. What was your intention when you scanned it? Sharing the file? By screwing up the image you've defeated the purpose of what you were intending originally by scanning the damn thing. What's that? You wrecked your book? Did I ask you to scan it? No. If you didn't, I'm sure someone else would sometime. Or I could buy it. If you're unwilling to share things, don't put them on the internet. That javascript code to prohibit right clicking doesn't work either. If the person has been using the internet long enough, they know they can View>Source and find the name of the image, and then enter that url into the address bar and save it that way. You're not brilliant, you just made your site even more annoying than it was. The ONLY exception to all this is if infact the work was originally yours. Made by you. Then I can see putting text on it, somewhere (hopefully not across it), and asking for credit. This is a touchy subject with icon makers on many journalling sites. Technically the images they use aren't theirs but the things they do to the images, the witty (sometimes) text they add, is theirs. Which is another thing. If you really like a graphic, save it, and take a look around at other websites. Do a lot of pages use it? If yes, it's time to invest in more searching to find something more original. Nothing says boring as the same thing over and over and over again. I don't care about seeing twenty layouts using the same Alucard image at the top of the page. If you really love that image try doing something different with it. Make your page stand out. It's just like marketting. You want people to come back, right? Make them remember you. Bottom line still is though, if you're worried about someone else putting it on their site, don't put it on the internet. You can't control everyone, all you can do is hope for the best. If you do find someone who hasn't creditted you, try asking them nicely, before you mail bomb their account. Maybe they found it off of someone else's site and didn't realize whose it was. Most problems can be solved by remaining civil. [top] FONTS AND COLOURS Can you read this? No? How about this? No? Why? BECAUSE THE COLOURS ARE BURNING YOUR RETINAS. When designing a fansite (really any site), slap together the background colour and the text colour you are going to use on a sample page with a large amount of text. Try reading it for atleast five minutes and then look away. If you had trouble reading the text at any point, or you can see floating colour blobs, or your eyes really hurt, that's a bad colour combination. This applies to image backgrounds as well. Try to stick with high contrast combinations. What I mean is, a dark colour and a light colour. A lot of bright colours can really make it difficult to read. Think about when you were younger and your mom told you not to stare directly into the sun, but you did it anyways? Remember that burning sensation? Thats what bright coloured, backed by a glowing monitor can do - cause pain. Stay away from neon coloured, or white backgrounds. If you want white, opt for cream or light grey, it dulls down the screaming pain. Black and red is a super big no-no. I can't remember the specifics but it's really difficult to read red text on black. If it's not bright enough to be burning your eyes, it's probably too dark to read in contrast to the black background. I know, this destroys your gothic looking Ichida fansite, but opt for a black site background with a light grey table background with dark red font. It keeps with the theme and still has legibility. Same goes for HUGE fonts, teeny tiny fonts, and scriptive and/or obscure fonts. Unless you have the last two specific fonts installed, you can see my point. Your browser will use whatever default font if the one set by the website maker isn't installed on your computer. That's often why pretty fonts are saved for images. Keep in mind that while you may think it looks nice, you may be frightening your audience away. [top] THEMES Since when did a websites become synonamous with being visually irratic? If you have a website, keep a theme. Establish one good design and use it consistently throughout. But YOU have several different pages with several different themes, you shout. Correct. I have several different shrines, and such, but if you'll note they are stand alone. If I am making a shrine to Sanji, and I make the three following pages - PROFILE, GALLERY & LINKS. My layout will stay the same for each page, although the content will change. The only page which can stray slightly from the layout is your splash page, the page that first greets the viewer. Otherwise, the website becomes a visual maze. The audience has enough to contend with by reading the information and looking at images, they don't need to guess if the page they're on is related to the page they were just on. Look at any book or magazine. You'll see that the layout (or section's layout) stays the same. It's a very subtle trick to clueing your audience in to what they're looking at is still related. It's very helpful. [top] UPDATES ON THE SPLASH PAGE The splash page is like your front door. In home decorating they say to make it a welcoming, nice space, that attracts people to it. So, make your splash page, if you have one, nice to look at, and easy to figure out how to navigate. That is if you desperately need one. Most sites don't usually require one. What I don't need is a note on your front door before I come in listing all the renovations you've done. Really, really irritating. I don't care. If I wanted to know what you had done with your site, I'd click the damn updates button, or I'd just discover it for myself, by browsing. Usually, the updates section gets used and abused like a webjournal in whereupon the updater rants and raves about their daily life and how good/bad things are going. That's great. Really. Just keep it off the front page. [top] PAGE TRANSITIONS Cool maybe the first time you see them, after that, annoying as anything. Really, really cliche. If you're making a photo album, a journal, or something else personal - fine, but don't go slapping it on a fan site. Really, it shouldn't be on the internet. Heck, some of the transitions shouldn't have been invented in video editing programs! It hurts the audience's eyes, it distracts from the content and personally, makes me want to leave ASAP. It says, I can't design something well enough as is, so I'll cover up my lack of design with a bunch of flashy transitions. It says the same in most videos. Rarely have I seen people use them effectively. [top] SONGS Talk about people rarely using thing effectively, embedded songs are amongst the biggest sins in webdesign ever. EVER. I think the only time I saw it used effectively was in one comic strip of an online webcomic where the guy was dancing along the panels, and they included the music. It was still annoying, but it made their point. Plus, it was a webcomic, unless you read super slow, it would take a max of 5 minutes to read the strip and get out of the site. You like the song. Great. You want to share it? Even better. Don't put it on autoplay, I beg you. If I happen to be listening to my music while I load the page, not only will you scare the crap out of me as I scramble to find the source of the extra music, but you'll really irritate me when I realize it's YOU. Put it up for download or stream it but leave autoplay=false. Please. If I want to listen to it, I'll click the pretty |>| button. By shoving your MIDI down my throat, you'll only make me hit the back button faster. If that wasn't bad enough -- there's more. It's one thing to put the music up to begin with, on autoplay, it's an entirely different one to do all that and then give me NO CONTROLS TO SHUT THE DAMN HORROR OFF. You're condemning your audience to your own little section of hell. You think you're so smart, making people listen to it, thinking, har har har, they won't be able to shut it off! Well you're right, I can't surf your site and shut the music off, so I'll just leave your site. That simple. You're only screwing your own self over, so don't do it. [top] CUSTOM CURSORS Talk about annoying things you can't turn off. Custom cursors are just plain hell. If you want to screw with people's cursors, and change the default cursor, fine. You should try and stick with a cursor that still has something pointy like an arrow or the finger, to make it easy to point and click, but custom image cursors? Stop it. It's different to make an image follow your cursor, although those get freaking annoying too.... Changing my cursor COMPLETELY to something like a rocketship is irritating, tacky, and looks ugly usually. Especially if it's out of theme with the fan site. Ie. A rocket cursor on a Fushigi Yuugi fan site. WTF? [top] THiS iSN'T CooL, oKaY? Really, it isn't. We're not in kindergarten anymore. Please remove your finger from the shift key. It's really difficult to read. If you MUST do it, keep it to the headlines/titles of the pages. [top] FRAMES Frames, while they look nice, are really bad. They can be used effectively but for anyone with an old browser, it's near impossible to use. Well, the same goes for flash and people still use that, so I guess it doesn't matter too much, huh? Regardless, I won't lecture you on how frames closes out a wide audience from those who can't see them to those who hate them, because most people have a self-righteous attitude to webpage design, stating, I made it, I can see it, so screw you. What really matters is how you use them. If you really, really must use them, keep a few things in mind. Don't use more frames than you really, really have to. And when you do, on all frames other than the main page where the content goes, disable the scroll bars and borders - make them seamless. Nothing says ugly like big grey bars ripping apart your already square screen. Keep in mind though, when you do use seamless frames, that if you design the site for a 1600x1200 layout, people who have 800x600 will have menus and such cut off. It's a good thing to design either a site with no frames to go along with it, or a smaller menu for those who have smaller resolutions. [top] FIND THAT LINK Don't bring me to a splash page, or any page for that matter, and make me hunt for a link. I don't care if you explain in your introduction to click the period in the upper left corner. Maybe I don't want to read your text, maybe I want to point, click and go. You want visitors right? What's more important? Having your text blurb and keeping your chic design without text, or having visitors? I can guarantee you won't have both. If people don't see an obvious textual instruction, such as click here, or enter, people will then default to wildly swinging their mouse back and forth in order to see the little hand pop up. If you've disabled this, or the actual link is the size of 2 pixels, people will then give up and leave. It's like telling people who are seven feet tall to squeeze through an airvent made for a kid. Make a bigger door and you'll get more visitors. [top] Somehow this turned from fansites, into websites. Boo, I say, boo!