Random Rants


Creating this site

Welcome to the first random rant ever. The big question was of course: What do I write about? I finally decided to start with the obvious topic, i.e. this website.

In case you're wondering why I made this website, the answer is simple. Because I wanted a website. I wanted a website of my own from the moment I got on the Internet. A website seemed like such a good idea. Showcase my writing, market myself, the possibilities were endless. There was only one problem. I didn't know HTML. I absolutely didn't have an inkling what it was all about.

I tried playing around with a few of those page builder programs that come with browser and office software nowadays, but the results were underwhelming to say the least. I couldn't do what I wanted with those programs and was limited by templates designed for people whose needs were totally different from mine. Not only did those pages look awful, they also came with a huge banner at the bottom saying "This page was made using program XYZ". It was ugly, it was unprofessional, it just plain sucked.

Especially since I kept coming across wonderful webpages all the time, many of them designed by teenagers who probably had learned how to make them at school. Whereas the informatics classes I took back when I was at school had only taught me the now completely useless skill of Turbo Pascal programming. No way I could ever learn how to make a decent looking website.

But then two things happened. First of all, I saw a fellow student at university create a website for the English department literary magazine (You can see it here). She had no previous knowledge and only a book on HTML, yet she could do it. And if she could, so could I.

Secondly, I had gradually learned a bit of HTML without even noticing it. A few months of posting on various message boards had taught me how to link URLs, how to make text bold or italic and similar things. Even if some of those message boards did not allow for actual HTML and used their own codes instead, the principle was the same. And once you have grasped the principle, the rest is easy.

Nevertheless, I did not sit down to create a website right away. That took yet another incident. As it was JAFO Technologie, a company for which I had been doing translations, finally decided that they wanted a website. They had a few files of an earlier attempt begun by one of their employees. And they wanted me to design a website based on those few files. I agreed to do it. Finally learning HTML and getting paid for it, what more could I ask for?

So I took a look at those few files and got to work. At first, it was difficult. There were all sorts of commands that I didn't know. There was a JAVA applet whose purpose I didn't understand, yet I couldn't get the site to work without it. By now I have found out that all the applet did was create an ugly link tree that I had wanted to get rid of from the beginning.

I was practically making things up as I went along with that first website. I did not know what many of the commands I encountered meant, so I deleted them to see what happened to the page as a result. Of course, I made sure to always have a backup file so I could not do any permanent damage. I also used the existing pages as templates to create new ones.

Of course, learning by doing could only get me so far. There inevitably came the point where I had to look something up. There are a number of HTML tutorials available on the web, this one is my personal favourite. It answers any questions you could possibly have and explains everything in terms that even a layman can understand. Recommended!

Another thing I did was learning just by looking at other pages or more precisely at their source codes. Whenever I found a page that had something I wanted, I took a look at the source code to see how it was done. Strangely enough, it wasn't even pages I particularly liked. For example, I learned many text commands such as changing colors or fonts from a page which I considered incredibly ugly.

All in all, the JAFO Technologie website was not perfect, far from it in fact. There are a lot of things I would do differently today. The first would be getting rid of that stupid JAVA-generated link tree. But the JAFO site was an ideal practice object for me (though gladly, the customer doesn't know about that). I would show you the site, but sadly it still hasn't gone online due to circumstances beyond my control.

Once I had created a full website, I seriously began to think about doing a site for myself. I had already pretty much decided what I wanted to do, gleaning ideas from places all over the web. The look and feel of my site was a much more urgent question, because that would have to be decided before I could even write a single line.

My biggest problem with the design was that I wanted my site to look cool, yet I absolutely hate the style that is currently en vogue. Broken typewriter fonts, blurry monochrome images, you get the idea. All that may be fashionable, but I just don't like it and I refused to use a style I don't even like on my site. So I tried to come up with something that looked cool without blindly following trends. I finally decided to go with the "old paper" look, because it fits the pulp theme so well. In case you were wondering about the backgrounds, I got the crinkled paper background as well as the inspiration for the newsprint background from here.

The rest of the work, the actual writing of the pages (with Notepad of all programs) was done in about two weeks. This is the result. I hope you like it.





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