Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Today's soundtrack: Depeche Mode "Policy of Truth" ::
It can get kinda depressing, surfing the ol' 'net randomly.
I was considering remotely the possibility of joining another webring. I decided to check out a random "goth" themed ring to see if I'd fit in. My site's dark, and gloomy and depressing and and stuff. Sorta. Sometimes. Occasionally. ANYway, I picked a ring and started visiting various miscellaneous member sites.
And mein gott in himmell, I can't believe how high the percentage of these sites were not only hosted on crappy free servers (I can grant them that, we all start there) but they also employed the super crappy "given" layouts and images! I could not believe that there are still sites like these and that there are SO MANY of them! They all have either a black background or a repeating wallpaper type one of something "creepy" like a marble wall or gate. (And why do the black background guys always seems to make their content text blue? Don't they know how hard to read that is?) They're supposed to be all dark and eerie-like and yet they have these cutesy-poo counters, too. What the heck does your counter look like a limousine for? or a coal train?
And the animated GIFs!! Oy vey... don't any of these people know the meaning of the word "tacky"? I just don't get why there are still folks who actually have dripping blood bars, flappy bats and dancing skeletons! Let me tell you guys: those ain't goth, they're CUTE. And stupid. Mustn't forget that. I mean, I could understand one or two, like maybe an e-mail icon or counter being animated, but not all over the damn place, mmkay? There was one site that had 3 enter pages in a row, and each of these just brought you to a new Enter page with a different giant GIF on each page! Bleh!
Sounds and midis seem to also still be overused. Many of the aforementioned GIFs come with their own "spooky" sounds like moaning and cackling. And then there are the sites with the I'm-sorry-its-too-cheesy-to-be-creepy midi music playing either on the Enter page or on the whole site. Most of the time you can't even turn it off! Who doesn't get annoyed by that?
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying some big pinnacle of web design or coding or anything. Far from it. I'm sure the fact that I have my main layout presently in a pop-op annoys some people out there. All I'm saying is, that I thought the internet had been around long enough that it was common knowledge what was NOT considered good web design. Originality is usually key, and so many of these sites were just so similar that it seemed redundant. I'm not going to name any names here, but damn try it yourself. Key in a "goth webring" search and just look around randomly. I suppose it did serve one positive purpose, being it made me feel quite a bit better about my own abilities, as meager as they may still be.
So I guess I'm going to share the basic guidelines I like to find in a website:
Originality. Don't steal from anybody. Little to no animated GIFs. No sound you can't turn off (and that switch better be in an obvious place). Try to pick a font to type other than the obvious (times new roman and veranda). Know basic HTML. Try to do a little of your own coding. Make all links out open in a new window!! Use sub-pages wisely; you don't have to have ALL your content on ONE page (a lot of people STILL just have everything on a single page and you have to scroll forever!)!! Your pages should be easy to navigate. Use colors that compliment each other. And text colors that are readable over the background color. Have some content, dammit! Have someway to get visitor feedback. Have something to "say." Use good grammar and NOT chat speak or sTiCKy cAps. Be respectful of others. Be open to criticism. Be mindful of people who may have a slow connection or different screen resolutions. Try to update regularly.
I guess what I'm saying is, if your site happens to look ANYTHING like This, even remotely, you have a little work ahead of you. That link is a subsite (a part of HomestarRunner.com) created as a parody of bad sites, so I'm still sticking by my "not naming names" statement.
Okay, I'm done. Sorry about that. I feel better now.
