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Advice for Web : When the H in HTML is hip-hop

© Steve Juon

I was amused recently when somebody used my handle Flash to spell out the acronym "Fucking Lame Assed Shitty Homepages." Makes you think that some people have too much spare time on their hands, doesn't it? Nevertheless, I didn't crack the top 50 in the AA Top 100 (www.100hot.com/aa) without knowing a little something about hypertext markup language. Therefore, I'd like to devote this column to advice for aspiring hip-hop headz worldwide who would like to start their own pages or have access to accounts to do so.

Rule #1 is EXPERIMENT A LOT. If you see something on the web that looks pretty cool, use your browser to view the document source. Look at the commands in the source. Compare them to what you see on that page. Some will make an obvious set that forms a display option. Others might not be so clear. Don't be afraid though to copy things you like to your own .html files and then mess with them at will. I know some people will recommend using web page design software, but then you end up with a nice looking page and little understanding of how it works. I'm much more in favor of ripping something down to the source, and trying to rebuild it from the ground up. Just load and reload your page whenever you make changes and see if they worked or not.

Rule #2 is KEEP IT SHORT. If you can stuff pictures of unlimited size into your homepage's folder that's fine, but realize nobody's going to wait two hours for the web browser to finish loading it in. Try using graphics in small chunks, and make your web pages work that way too. The reason it's called hypertext is so that you can create links to OTHER information, instead of having it all on the same page. Case in point: instead of putting your resume and your favorite hip-hop artists on the same page, make a seperate page for each, and then a homepage where you can select one of the two. Something like My resume and Favorite artists should work fine on the page with the links.

My third and final rule is BE CREATIVE. If you've already seen 12 pages devoted to Bone-Thugz-N-Harmony, why be the 13th? It's not likely you're going to come up with anything more definitive than the other 12 people already have. Don't be afraid to strike out on something totally bizarre, because it might just turn out that's what people are looking for. I've even seen a homepage based on the "rappers with glasses" list that used to be circulated on alt.rap. Bizarre? You bet, but it's a lot of fun.

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