When the Internet was first becoming popular, I can recall speaking to people who wanted to have their own Web page and wondering "Why?". I thought that it was enough that there were resources on the Web to utilize and that having one's own Web page was somewhat pointless, if also a bit egotistic. However, I did find it useful to have a portable reference to my most used Web resources, and to have that reference on the Web where I used it most.
Free Web pages:
I found that there were organizations that would provide you your own home page, just for advertising's sake, complete with email, a calendar, your favorite cartoons, sports, local news and weather. It was great and I came to depend on it. However, every once in a while, usually when I most needed the home page to be there, the page would either not be available or it would lose its configuration and I'd have to start all over again.
In all, I became frustrated with:
Unreliability and outages (site unavailability).
Frequent loss of useful links and home page configuration.
Difficult and impersonal Web and email addresses.
Lack of permanence (a permanent Web location and email address to distribute).
Password (and other) restrictions.
Design limitations.
Lack of privacy (email scrutiny and censorship).
(There are a number of problematic conditions, described on this page, for which your experts' observation may be "
I've never had a problem...
". Of course, I'm happy for them.)
About John.Dodrill.org:
This Web site provides me all of those things I couldn't have with a third-party free home page.
Reliable portability of information across the Web (i.e. résumé, useful links, etc.)*
Consistent configuration and restoration procedures.
Personalized, distinctive Web and email addresses.**
Permanent Web and email addresses.
Few (if any) site or email/Web mail restrictions.
No design limitations.
Privacy.
About the Site Design:
I quickly found that if you use a Web site builder or a content management system, it will be very difficult to leave that system because of the links to that package's proprietary facilities. So, I trained myself in HTML, Javascript, CSS, Meta tags and the like so that my site would be free from any proprietary software and portable to any host with no special requirements.
One point needs to be clear: THIS IS NOT A COMMERCIAL SITE! *** This Web site hosts my résumé, a number of links to utilities I use from day-to-day, and it serves as a test stage for me to explore new and unique Web site design ideas, programming techniques and so on. As such, it may offend commercial programmers by not adhering to the standards they apply to business Web sites. I would remind those programmers, and everyone else, that this is NOT a business Web site. A relevant point which seems to get overlooked by some programmers, leading to skeptism regarding their talents and insights, is that site design for a business Web site is not a "one-size-fits-all" solution. A personal Web site, an entertainment Web site, an e-commerce Web site and a technical Web site may differ in performance demands and so in structure as well. Those programmers, if completely offended, are also not required to visit my Web site, so there is no need for them to be offended.
Here are some of the ideas I've employed on this Web site, just for the experience of writing the code and incorporating the graphics:
A resizable (stretchable) background.
A "Web saver" (the text blanks out after several minutes to reveal the background, then reappears when the mouse is moved, or a key is pressed, with the Web page selected).
Right-click restrictions without alert pop-ups.
Context variable graphics (i.e. an accurate moon phase integrated into seasonal, holiday, and time-of-day contexually sensitive backgrounds).
Animated backgrounds.
Semi-transparent menu backgrounds..
Time server based, locality and daylight-savings time sensitive, clock and date.
A php-based personal contact form that neither uses jQuery nor requires the sender to have an email address of their own.
Compatibility with most current revsision
browsers
.
It's not that no one else has ever done these things before. It's just that I want to make sure that I know how to implement these things. This is where I prove those programming techniques out. For ease of hasty implementation of changes, I don't go to much trouble to compact nor modularize the code, though the code is clear, verbose, easy to read and easy to edit. Also, some of the modularization that is transparent to the visitor, is being implemented as server-side includes.
Current design issues:
Size of the graphics and processor time: In order for the stretchable animated backgrounds to be able to scale to the full-screen size of some MacIntosh monitors, they must be fairly large, both in pixel-dimensions and in file-size. This falls into the criticisms that the backgrounds do not have to be animated, stretchable to full-screen sizes or be scenic. This is
my
Web site and, by
my
requirements, the backgrounds do need to be animated, stretchable and scenic!
The problems this presents is of download time and the amount of processor time required to keep the animations moving. This can present something of a problem for older computers.
A couple of solutions that present themselves are:
I can convert the Web site to Flash every time I make a change to it. The Web site itself can detect whether a visitor has Flash installed, and then direct the visitor to either the HTML or Flash code accordingly. That's a lot of work for the number of changes that get implemented on this Web site, but I will consider it. I'm not convinced that Flash is so universally implemented that I can assume every visitor already has Flash installed, so such detection and duplication of code seems necessary. Furthermore, it is my decision whether to inconvenience visitors with having to download Flash in order to view the site or not. I've chosen not to make Flash requisite to visiting my Web site.
Another solution possible is the use of
Animated Portable Network Graphics (.png)
, which graphics are loseless and smaller in file size. While I do like this solution and most browsers do support .png graphics, I'm not convinced that all browsers support .png animated graphics. Support for .png graphics is
not
synonymous with supporting .png animated graphics.
Finally, as I have done for some business Web sites, I can detect the time it takes to download a file, of known size, in the course of loading the Web page, and from that infer the data throughput rate (some prefer the term "bandwidth") the visitor's Web connection is capable of. I can then have the Web site make some informed decision as to whether to even load the scenic background. The scenic backgrounds should not be an impediment to visitors viewing my Web site.
Cell phone/tablet compatibility: Owing the the scalable size of the page in most cell phone's browsers, the background is going to have to continually detect the browser page size and adjust itself accordingly. That's fairly simple to implement and it's in the works folks, based on the code you can see utilized in
http://John.Dodrill.org/browserid.htm
.
HTML file size (not related to graphics): Some of the HTML files do approach a size larger than the average business site, by a far strech. This is in part owing to "white space" or charachters within the code that are not completely necessary to the function of the Web site but make it easier to edit and therefore maintain. This really isn't all that it seems to be, since some of the problem is resolved, at the server end, through the use of server-side includes. That modularization is transparent to the visitor and does nothing to improve performance for them. The down side of this is small for the visitor but incites objections that I'm "helping to bog down the Internet", "it isn't green" and so on. With the increased speeds of FIOS, AT&T World net, Cable Internet and even 3G/4G, and in light of YouTube videos, Facebook graphics, video and white-board Web meetings, I find these objections hollow and am not likely to address this issue with any significant priority.
Everyone is welcome to use whatever links, facilities and resources they'd like. There is frequently more information regarding the techniques and technology peripheral to do operation and development of this site and others on the blog. Beyond that, if you need to contact me, the
e-mail/contact form
will send me a message, without requiring you have an e-mail account yourself. If you find a facility not working correctly, you are invited to let me know.
However, in that this is a personal site, it's probably not worth contacting me to let me know that you can make this a Flash site or tighten up the code, make this a real search-engine friendly business site, or improve the graphics. I can do that too. It's not that I don't know how to implement these things. These changes may aleady be in progress, they may be impeded by personal priorities and lack of time or it may be that I've chosen not to implement these things. Apart from being a compendium of my most-used links, this Web site is an experiment perpetually in progress: the site will likely never be complete. That's just the nature of personal Web sites.
* I have the latitude to choose a hosting company that will be reliable and to choose another hosting company if one fails.
** On the subject of domain (Web site) names: it's VERY important to choose a reliable, cost effective, domain name registrar.
Free domain names from hosting companies are owned by the hosting company and they will keep your free domain name when you leave, or charge an outrageous price to transfer the domain name to you. That's why they're initially offered for free....
Registrars who charge $25.00/year, or more, for a domain name apparently really like that $25.00/year and are notorious for not letting you change registrars without a fight at
ICANN.
With one domain registrar, I found advertisements for Viagra, in the place of my Web site. I called the registrar and asked why. They said it was because it would be coming up for renewal in about 30 days. I argued that I paid for the domain name for a year, not for eleven months but they said they had no way of knowing who I was and the only way to prove who I was, was to renew the domain name. So I did. Then I couldn't transfer the domain name for 90 days.
It is normal for a registrar to not allow transfer just before a domain comes up for renewal, or just after it's renewed. However, when I called up some 90 days later I was told the same thing: I'd have to prove who I was by renewing the domain name, then I couldn't transfer the domain name away for another 90 days. So it went, with the Viagra ad still showing on the domain name that had my name on it, until I discovered the
ICANN Registrar Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy
and the
ICANN Registrar Complaint Form.
In the dispute, the registrar claimed the reason for not allowing the transfer of the domain name was because they were protecting my domain name from being stolen from me by someone else. They said it was too easy to transfer domain names away from other registrars. Of course, the whole time, my domain name was advertising Viagra for some other corporate interest, while I paid to renew the domain. (I think there are a sufficient number of other people who have had similar experiences, so that it is commonly known whom this registrar is.)
If you're looking for a reference for Domain registrations, after several other choices and problems, I ended up at Cookie's Domain Shop, mostly for the price (which is usually less than GoDaddy). I've moved my domains away and back without a problem and I pay less than $10.00/year. While I can occasionally get a better price elsewhere, it's usually not worth the risk and effort to transfer my domains away, in that I just end up trying to transfer them back again. Also, with their DNS, I can easily move to the best suited hosting company with ease.
*** Commercial sites need to have small tight code, a limited number and size of graphics, present information in a clean concise manner and be search-engine friendly. I have written sites for companies that are all of those things but THIS is not a company site.
