Hints for your homepage
(Only for beginner)

Updated in 20 November 1999

Steps to make and promote your homepage :
1. Sign up in a web page provider. (they will give you chance for uploading your page in about two weeks)
2. Make your homepage.
3. Test it in your harddisk.
4. Log in to your account.
5. Upload your homepage files.
7. Log out and test it again (this time in web, of course)
6. Promote your page in popular search engines.
7. Wait and hope that your page is lucky enough to be listed.

Things to consider about your homepage :
- Think carefully if you're planning to add music to your page, no one wants to hear "disturbing music" while surfing. Don't use a big size music. Your visitors would have gone somewhere, when your 200K music is start playing. Also, use a related music. Your page is about Sailor Moon, but you use Jurassic Park's music........don't do that.
- Don't use many and big size pictures. Same as above, your visitor would have gone somewhere, when all of your pictures finished loading.
- Use thumbnails if you want to show many pictures. But don't use "stupid thumbnail" (Showing a picture, then make it small by configuring it's properties). Make thumbnail using some software like Adobe PhotoShop 4.0 to make a picture smaller and save it. Then use it to link to your real picture.
- Your text is blue, your background is blue too. Or your text is yellow, and your background is white. Wow, what a great page.....
- Don't steal someone's logo !
- Use a readable font size.
- Test your page with a different browser. May be your page looks good in Internet Explorer, but what about in Netscape ?
- Many browsers can't handle JavaScript. (I don't understand JavaScript either. Oops.....)
- Never promote your page to search engine if it only have a welcome page, and many broken links. Who will come back again ? But it is good if you ask some advises from your friends.
- Use your creativity as much as you can.
- Consider about others modem speed. May be your page load faster because of your 56K modem, but how about your visitors who are using 28.8K ?
- Make your page in 640x480 resolution. It's not a problem when you or your visitor view it with 800x600 or 1024x800. But trust me, if you make it in 800x600, other visitors who use 640x480 may have annoying problem. If you make it in 1024x800, both visitors who use 800x600 and 640x480 may have problem. Try it if you don't believe me :).
- Some browser don't support Upload. For example : Internet Explorer 3.0. Look for the newest browser, otherwise you must use FTP to Upload your page. 
- Add counter/tracker in your page, so you can know how many people visited your page. But don't cheat ! Don't change it's number to 9999999999999 just to show that your page is popular because you think visitors will come back again to your "great" page ( even Microsoft aren't that popular ). Everybody will come back to your page IF they want to, not by seeing your counter number.
- Some older browser don't support Frame. However Frame is good for navigation. Frame is like this :

Or maybe like this (depend on your choices) :

Things to consider about your homepage provider:
- Just use a free provider, unless you want to make a business site. Cheap way to create your page.
- Finding a perfect&free provider is really difficult. See below :

* Very good
* Still a good choice
* Think again
* not available    I'm new to this provider, so I can't rate their reliability

See what I mean ? Choose carefully. (Above is only example, there are many provider out there). May be you are thinking, why Angelfire is my choice. The reason is simple, I don't need big space. 5 Mb is enough (Although they already upgraded it to 10 Mb due to my request). The important things to me is speed and reliability. Angelfire's server is very fast and they rarely down (not working).
- Sometimes they're "cheating". They say "Free ?? Mb space without pop up ads". Yeah, right. Then a big banner show up in your page. So no pop up, but "only" banner.
- Sometimes they'll automatically rename your .htm files to .html . So you must update your links. For example in Angelfire.
- Find a provider that support upload by Browser. It help a lot. All providers above support upload using Browser.

If you're interested to know, what I used when I make a homepage :
Personal Computer
- CPU : Intel Pentium III 450 MHz
(my old Intel Pentium 133 MHz was enough too)
- RAM : 64 MB
(my old 32 MB was enough too)
- Modem : Rockwell 56K V90
(my old Rockwell 28K was enough too)

Software
- Browser : Internet Explorer 5.0
(Internet Explorer 4.0 was enough)
- Editor : MS FrontPage 2000 and Notepad
(MS FrontPage Express and Notepad WEREN'T enough)
- Ulead GIF animator Lite Edition (not fully used)
- Adobe PhotoShop 5.5
(Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 wasn't enough)

Promoting your homepage
There are several places to promote your page.
1. Yahoo.com : This is a popular search engine. It's hard to get listed here, but keep on trying. Submit your page in the right category at least twice in three months if they still haven't listed it. BUT don't submit your site every week, because Yahoo! staff can feel disturbed and ignore your submission. After your page is listed, you will absolutely get many visitors.
2. Anipike.com : Place to submit your manga, anime and games related site. You won't get many visitors from here, but it really worth since they will list your site as long your site is complete and don't have broken links.
3. Submit it in some search engine, such as aol.com, lycos.com, excite.com, altavista.com, etc. They may be not as popular as Yahoo! but the chance to get listed is higher than Yahoo!.

Receiving email
Now your homepage is more popular, surely you will start receiving email. Sometimes people send you their praise, asking you, etc. But you must prepare yourself about this things : flames and constructive criticism.
Flames and constructive criticism is different, read this :

Flames
1. Using offensive and dirty language to insult your page or to show their anger.
2. People who sent this kind of email/message don't really care about your page. They only think that your page is bad, slow, make them angry, and you should pay for that.
3. They usually don't reveal their real email address or their real name.

Constructive criticism
1. Not just telling you that your page have bad side, but also telling about your page's good side. They also wrote nicely.
2. They care about your page. They might think that your page have slow loading, or your page content can make people angry. In fact, by sending you their comment, and suggestion about your page, this people prevent you from getting flames.
3. They might not using their real name, but they often using their real email address.
4. Sometimes their judgement about your page is more accurate about your own judgement ( of course, that is your own homepage, surely you won't think that your page is really that bad ).

How to handle flames and constructive criticism
You should handle this things carefully, here is my tips :

Flames
1. Check if they're really the one who sent that flame. ( Who knows if they're using someone else email address ).
2. Ask them, why they do that. (Or just skip to step 3 or 4).
3. Report their actions to their email provider or their Internet Service Provider. Contact someone who is expert in this problem (but it is hard to do this, as I said before, that they might be using fake email address, fake name, etc).
4. Just ignore them, or block their email address (only if your email provider have this feature), so you won't receive another email from them.

Constructive criticism
1. Think carefully and honestly about their comment and suggestion. Is your homepage really that bad ? Don't insult them, or anything that can make problems. ( You don't want to get more enemies, do you ? ). I know that your worked hard to make your page, but at least you can still disagree without being mean or rude.
2. Now you have two choice. Accept or don't accept their suggestion.
3. If you decide not to follow their suggestion, just reply and say thanks about their comment or suggestion, however you have your own plan for your page, so you surely can't accept their suggestion. They surely understand and will not disturb you anymore.
4. Never do this (NEVER !!) :
   - Being mean or rude to them. ( Please think, how if you send your suggestion to another person, you just want to help them, telling about their page slow loading or broken links, and you receive a reply that make you sad or angry ? )
   - List their email and it's content in your flames section. Constructive criticism is not the same as flames. ( They just want to be nice by helping you, and this is what they get ? )

Well, good luck with your new homepage !