How Not to be a Web Hoser

by LF (8/98)

I spent Labor Day weekend drinking 2.5 cases of beer, and undoubtedly assorted other stuff . . . I'm going off the number of 12-pack hulls on my floor here.

Got all sloppy, pissing-off at least a few, meeting others more cleanly. Talked to some broads (one I remember, the rest are with the empties). But sadly THE thing that sticks out painfully are the six or eight hours I utterly wasted surfing. Gawd, I hadn't realized how bad it'd gotten out there. Uhh. Ehh. Now I'm really starting to hate poking around on the Web.

Of course, this is coming so late. I should've written it years ago. Even then, those of you who care would've already considered it old hat. But I have to mount this rotting horse.

Simple Rules for Not Creating a Worthless Web Presence:

• If the first thing people see or hear on your page was swiped from someone else, you're an asshole.

• If the ONLY things that people see on your page were filched from a bunch of somebody-elses (except for that adorable picture of your cat Fluppy, of course), you're a total asshole.

• If all you have to offer is stolen stuff, don't bother to send your URL to any of the search engines. Stroke your ego by pestering your friends with your dullness. They're probably your friends because they're dull too. That, or you must have a lot of money and failed to keep it a secret. Or maybe you smell good.

• Please always remember that each animated graphic that you add to your page will force everyone out there to hate you just a little more. Cool it on the obnoxious sound FX files as well. I mean, how old are you, twelve?

• If you're doing a fan site, make us feel the obsessiveness! I caught a ton of horror flicks when I was growing up near Cleveland (the local stations maintained warehouses stuffed with the things), so I occasionally prowl around for movie-related sites. Most of them are sadly dull, containing only a couple of public domain images tarted-down with lame text like "I think Boris Karloff was real scary in X, Y, and Z." Who cares? I'd much rather be made to feel uncomfortable, thinking like you maybe carry around a picture of the guy in your panties, or track the whereabouts of his great-grandkids.

• If the instruction manual that comes with your spanking-new HTML coding tool from Best Buy offers advice on how to make your site look sexy and fresh, ignore it. Too many tens of thousands of other losers have already taken those exact recommendations to heart. Trust me.
  

  Better yet, do the initial rendition of your page by hand with an ASCII text editor. It may not be jazzy, but you'll be amazed at how jazzed you'll get if you manage anything at all in the first couple of iterations. HTML is a baby language. Shit, it isn't even a "language", just a simple collection of tags. Kindergartners can learn it. Pick out what you need to get the job done, and ignore the rest.

• Ask yourself: Is there anything wrong with simple? A big benefit of uncomplicated sites is that people anywhere with "basic" equipment (whatever that means these days) can more easily reach them. Personally, I'd rather get an incomprehensible but eager e-mail from a kid in Belmopan or Aden than a dozen tossed-off notes dropped by SOTA propeller-heads just passing by.
  

  I'm running at 28.8, and if a page takes more than sixty seconds to load, I generally skip it. I haven't upgraded my modem yet because I consider this "shortcoming" a handy guide to quality design. I can forgive a crappy site that pops right up, but if it turns out to suck after I WAIT, then the venom starts percolating. Hey, links to lower bloated pages of your own are fine, just don't put that crap on your main index.htm, and provide some prior warning before tossing innocent surfers into a twenty-minute tarpit.

• Buy at least a cheapo graphics-processing package! This will allow you to squeeze your images down to a reasonable size. I was just at some dude's site, and every single one of the dozens of photos was uncompressed. Zzzzzz. If you have 256-color GIFs, try knocking them down to 64 (the common "Optimize Palette"-type command can work wonders here), and JPEGs can be squished pretty far before any noticeable image loss occurs. Use your eyes and your head when puzzling-out a proper compromise.

• Red text on a pink background may look sweet on your box, but it will probably piss everyone else out here right the hell off. Please, have a couple of others with more vanilla machines take a gander at your stylistic atrocities before inflicting them on the rest of us.

• If all your site contains is a paltry collection of links, be sure to give it a descriptive title like "Becca Keener's Neat Links Page." Then the rest of us will know to stay away. It cranks me off to wait for somebody's astoundingly-ornate wallpaper to finally display before discovering that there's JUST NO CONTENT!!!

• If you plan to take the time to create a decent site, please do NOT get on GeoShitties. They are hateful, annoying, and a waste of bandwidth. If I HAVE to get onto a certain GC page for whatever reason, I'll kill the pop-up ads and persistent cookies until my browser crashes. Then I get real mad.

• Folks who've read my stuff know that I'm as pro-Capitalism a guy as there is. There are now a lot of folks struggling to make money off the Web, and that's fine with me. But far too many are trying to weasel content out of others upstream of them for free. That ain't the way the game's played.
  

  Bunky, if you want my stuff for your commercial site, be prepared to pay me for it. Not too long ago this Dick asked to reprint a couple of my articles. I stopped by his place, felt sorry for him and said okay, then forgot about it. Two weeks later a friend let me know that I should take another look. The Dick was sticking my bits in as humorous segues leading into the ugly-ass pages he'd started constructing for some gun dealers. I called bullshit on that.

• Correspondents have asked why I don't copyright my material. Well, I'd bet that over 90% of those "C-in-circle" emblems that you see on the Web are utterly bogus. Who's got the time? Please allow me a moment to inform y'all that if you steal from me, you might find your dog's head in a bag on your front step some morning.
  

  And I will find out. My stuff seems to have particular resonance with creepy armed loners, and they'll tip me off. Or just cap you themselves.

Now go forth and be interestingly fruitful.