GeoCities, do you have any tips on building a site?

I have a LiveJournal now · Postby **Nikki_fallingup** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 8:17 pm

I just resently got an account with GeoCities and would love any pointers!

Postby **Debitt** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 8:20 pm

Well generally it depends on what sort of site you're planning. ^_^ I've never used GeoCities before, but I do my fair share of webdesign so I'll try and answer whatever questions you might have.

Postby **agasfas** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 9:13 pm

I suggest you use your own code or if your new at web design, use Microsoft word, I know they have a way of doing so. Like make a txt document, then type: "<html></html> then close the document. Then right click and change the extension to *.html. Then right click it and goto edit. It'll let your make changes to the web page: add whatever. Though it's really basic. Also a web designing program is good too.

Postby **LorentzForce** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 9:19 pm

1) Keep it simple. Don't try to use rainbow colours for your site. Stick with one (or more if they go together) colour and make a website out of it. I tend to stay with grey, but it's up to you. Even purple works if you do it right. For beginners though, stick with white first.

2) Constant content update. I can't stress this enough. If you only update your website once a month or have nothing useful on it then no-one will come and visit it. Those who do are likely not to come back again. Easiest way to generate recurring traffic is to make a forum of sort, but this isn't possible on GeoCities, so you'll have to go full force on content. Blog and such might work.

3) No counters! Make a counter so you can track people's numbers, but don't put it on your website. It only makes your website n00bish.

4) No MIDI background music. Ugh. No one wants to hear your music when they're listening to their favourite music. Even if yours is better.

5) Learn CSS. It's the best layout management language out there. It's not hard at all either.

There are probably more, and even more, but that's all off top of my head. Good luck

BTW, my first website was plain text. Black and white. Nothing else. Remember that everyone starts with a bad website

Postby **Mithrandir** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:13 am

Really good pionters Lorentzforce! Though I must contest number 3. ( http://www.flactem.com/ ) If done RIGHT counters can be usefull - if they are high enough.

Postby **Mr. SmartyPants** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:23 am

agasfas wrote:I suggest you use your own code or if your new at web design, use Microsoft word

you mean notepad?

anyway, i have an old geocities site using that page builder, its kinda easy but you can't do everything you can do without any coding, which i dont know T_T

Postby **skynes** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:08 am

Best thing I can say is learn HTML. Yes it can be a pain at times, but it's not a good idea to go off and use all these site building programs when you have no idea how to do them manually, cause if an error occurs, You won't have a clue where to begin to look for it.

CSS is Cascade Style Sheets, pretty much on one page of the site you declare a whole pile of fonts and tags etc. Then if you link another page to that one by simply telling it to get the styles from nameofpage.html it will use ONLY the fonts you have specified in the way you want! Very handy..

Postby **Debitt** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:28 am

I don't see anything wrong with counters. =O As long as they don't intrude upon the general layout of the page, that is.

Learning HTML is a very good idea - even simple stuff can come together a lot nicer than some of the more complicated things a sitebuilder can put together for you. Look around the internet for tutorials on div layers and tables, since I see those used very very effectively in a good number of webpages out there. And as a bonus, once you know how to use HTML, you can move out of Geocities and go to somewhere like Fateback.com or a private webhost, because Geocities is terrible, especially when it comes to banner ads. =X

Postby **ShiroiHikari** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:34 am

graffiti.net provides pretty good hosting. no pop ups, they let you hotlink, and you can upload MP3s as long as they're smaller than 5mb. you get 20mb of space, which should be enough for a small site.

Postby **Mr. SmartyPants** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:22 am

hmmm, i joined grafitti.net now i can upload mp3s and directlink them for my xanga! hooray!

hopefully.... an mped layer 3 is uploading right now

Postby **Mithrandir** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:40 pm

You're uploading a Moped? Cool!

Postby **LorentzForce** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:29 pm

Most counters aren't good enough. I see many people using generic FastCount or something counters and they look real bad, because they're everywhere. It makes your website feel... common. It should be made unique, which bring in even more traffic

Of course, if you customised your own then it could work. Just that I somehow doubt many HTML beginners know Perl or PHP to actually customised their own counters.

CAA doesn't have counters. Should your website?

Oh yeah, as for the tool to use to write HTML and such... NotePad++

Next best thing to vim.

Postby **Mave** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:51 pm

An option? They should have some PageBuilder option when you enter into the "Page Manager" section. But I've never used them before and rely completely on basic html.

http://www.geocities.com/tanmichi00

My old geocities website. Feel free to look at it (nothing really great, just simply basic HTML). I plan to remove it soon once I integrate it into my new webhosting.

Sorry, wasn't much help.

Postby **LorentzForce** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:55 pm

Maybe I should be evil and shamelessly advertise my website making program

[edit] Which is my Black Crystal engine. Check it out in my sig.

Postby **Debitt** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:32 am

LorentzForce wrote:Most counters aren't good enough. I see many people using generic FastCount or something counters and they look real bad, because they're everywhere. It makes your website feel... common. It should be made unique, which bring in even more traffic Of course, if you customised your own then it could work. Just that I somehow doubt many HTML beginners know Perl or PHP to actually customised their own counters.

There are plenty of free text counters out there that work with seamlessly with pages, which is what I use most of the time. Just hide it at the bottom of the page - out of site, out of mind. Why pay for an invisible counter or go through all the trouble of writing your own code for one when you can just put it where no one will see it? It isn't the concept of a counter that makes your page look "n00b" but what kind of counter you use and where you place it.

Something else I forgot to mention in my last post: Pointer Number #4645765834 - =O make sure your page doesn't take an eternity to load. When you design your graphics and pictures, make sure their file size is as small as you can make it without damaging the quality of the image.

I have a LiveJournal now · Postby **Nikki_fallingup** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 9:06 am

WOW! Thanks for all the advice! I had no Idea that I would get so many responses! This has really helped! Thank you, thank you!

*glomps everyone* :hug:

Postby **Bobtheduck** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 1:24 am

Warning about pagemaker: I have no clue why, but many pages I make with that don't load right on firefox... There goes my whole website...

GeoCities, do you have any tips on building a site?

GeoCities, do you have any tips on building a site?

Who is online

Loading