This talk is about how to build a personal web site (consisting of multiple pages) and about how to make an existing one better. By the way, a personal web site is one whose content you control, not just a site put up about you or a site you have written on behalf of another person or organization. For this reason, personal web sites often carry disclaimers.

    Before you even start with the computer aspects of building a personal web site, you need to do several things.  You'll probably end up doing these things all at once and changing them as long as you've got a web site :

decide on the purpose (or purposes) of your web site.

assemble some of the content of the major pages.

pick or design a template for your site (especially the home page).

figure out an organizational scheme for the site.

After the hard part's started, you just need to deal with the mechanics:

get an account on a web server.

write your pages.

maintain them.

    This is an important question both because it takes time to build and maintain a personal web site and because your purpose(s) dictates what you're going to put on your site. There are a zillion good reasons to put up a web site:

for fun, in which case you must come up with a reason for people to visit your site

to advertise a business or a cause (although if this is the only purpose for your site, it's not really a personal web site any more)

to create a list of URL bookmarks (a links page) that you can access from any computer on the internet (useful to those of us who use computers in several different departments)

to distribute information that other people might want: i.e. study sheets for your students, recipes, movie reviews, etc.

to distribute software that you have written or freeware

to post news and/or abstracts you might have for those who are interested (i.e. your students, your colleagues)

to use as a public, easily-accessible filing cabinet for things like your cv or non-private phone lists that you might want to get you hands on without carrying them around

to provide education and/or entertainment for the general public

as a presentation program

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    This will, in part, be a function of your website's purpose.  Generally, as one comes up with more material fit to put on the web, the site's purpose expands, but some people may choose to restrict a given site to one topic.  I prefer well-rounded personal web sites that contain matters from several aspects of people's lives, but the point of these sites is that they're personal, so the writer can choose what to put up.

The sorts of things that should be every web site:

A home page, where a person surfing the net enters, which tells the person what's at the site

A links page, including a description of what's to be found at each link - these are useful for every purpose!

Highly recommended:

a picture of you - not sure why, but it's the done thing

your curriculum vitae or resume - again, it's the done thing

reviews of things you enjoy: books, movies, TV shows, museums etc.

original writing and artwork that's good enough for others to see, but not worth publishing

For scientists:

abstract of your current scientific work

abstracts and complete references to all of your publications

a plain English account of just what you do, which should be comprehensible to older schoolkids

software you've developed that you're not going to sell

essays or other scientific writings you're not going to publish elsewhere

Remember that the Internet is a public place.

Things that should not go on your personal web site:

anything private - even passwords aren't foolproof

hostile, inflammatory stuff: i.e. racism, pornography, general arrogance, etc. - use discretion!

things that are copyright someone else, unless you have permission to put those things on your web site

anything potentially damaging to yourself, other people, your business, or your country - use lots of discretion!

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    I'll be discussing design issues later.  Right now, be a web surfer and decide what kinds of pages you like to look at.  These pages can be sources not only of design ideas, but of the code and sometimes the graphics used to implement those ideas.  It's okay to copy HTML code as long as you aren't making off with the actual content of the page, most of which does belong to the author by copyright.  Many graphics are royalty-free and the public has blanket permission to reproduce and use them within certain limits.  But it's generally good form when possible to acknowledge your original sources and owners of images.  Since you're making a personal web site, you don't want to copy pages wholesale, because yours should be unique.  Just collect bits and pieces.  You'll find some great examples of things not to do on the web as well.

    For Netscape users with PCs: to examine or copy HTML, pull down "view page source" under "view" on Netscape's top menu bar, or save the page of interest as HTML and look at it later in a text editor like Notepad.  To copy a graphic, click on it with the right mouse button, which will give you a display box which lets you save it as a .gif or .jpg file.

George Phillies - An extremely simple home page, the attraction here is the quantity and quality of information he makes available, an example all web-page writers should follow.  Although it's long, this page loads quickly, and it's easy to find and access specific topics because of the list of internal links at the top.  This would be a good code template for a newly-started personal web page.

Jeff Tidball - Jeff's site contains a lot of spiffy features (particularly CGI scripts) but loads quickly because it's low on graphics.  The background is simple but looks impressive.  If you want a background, it might be worth examining the code to see how Jeff set his up.  Also, on his links page, he tells you where to get information and code to build a site like his.  I could do without the extra welcome page before the index, though, and I wouldn't encourage the use of strong language for links, of all things!

Joe Teed - a fairly artistic page, with lots of graphics and imagemap links, but it loads quickly and I've never seen it crash a computer.  Thanks to the content, this page is barely comprehensible no matter what the browser, but keep in mind that the format will be gibberish to a text-based browser.  A good source for design ideas and maybe code, but it's ideosyncratic enough not to be completely copyable.

Albert Choy - another artistic page, but of a different kind from Joe's.  Albert is a poet, not a graphic artist.  This site has an interesting organizational scheme.  However, it also contains links to pages he hasn't written yet, which can be annoying.

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    Organization is essential for any web site, but good organization is essential for a personal web page because of the diversity of material that's likely to be on it.  Your top (home) page should contain links to all the major features on your web-site.  It should be easy to get from sub-pages to other parts of the site.  Keep links to outside sites together by category on the appropriate sub-pages.  Provide a reasonable description with every link.  The reader wants to be able to find and get to interesting pages quickly and not to miss anything.

    There is definitely an aesthetic component to organization, and many different ways to approach the problem.  Interestingly, I've found that organizational schemes seem to reflect more on the page writers than they do on the sites themselves.

George Phillies - has set up his home page as an essay about who he is, and can break his life into four major pursuits: research, teaching, politics, and science fiction.  His subpages can all be reached by text links within a well-organized prose essay.  This approach makes sense given that George is a person used to introducing himself and explaining his ideas to a variety of audiences.

Jeff Tidball - Although Jeff's page doesn't deal directly with music, he's got a radio-station theme throughout his site, which can be navigated using the handy little "program guide" imagemap at the bottom of each page.  I don't think Jeff's ever been a DJ, but he does listen to the radio a great deal and plays saxophone for a choir.

Joe Teed - uses Chinese cosmology to divide up his page because he's a student of standard Chinese and a megalomaniac.

Albert Choy - has set up his site like a home, with various specialized rooms.  Unsurprisingly, he's just bought a house in Minnetonka and is in the process of furnishing it.

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    You need a server and a link to the World-Wide-Web (a DNS entry) to make a web site from a bunch of funny-looking text files.  Unless your one of those whacky and wealthy computer fiends who can install server software on your computer, afford connect it to the internet perpetually, and buy a web address for yourself, you'll need an account on someone else's server.  There are several options for U of MN academics:

Departmental or college server: if they'll give you an account you can access easily (so you can update your page), and you can trust them not to delete or lose your files or your site's link to the internet without warning you (I've had both kinds of problems), this generally the best solution.

Get a "free" account from geocities, bravenet, tripod or another of many servers.  You "pay" for your account by hosting advertisements for companies who in turn pay your server, which may be obnoxious and slow down the loading of your page.  These servers host many pages and can be very slow during periods of peak internet activity.

Pay for an interactive account on the University of Minnesota's server or one of the many commercial servers around town.  Keep up with the bills and you can keep your web site up.

File Management

Your "top" page, the one that all the others are linked to should be named "index.html".  This gives you a slightly shorter URL and it's also a good name for security reasons.

Write the pages themselves on your PC and upload them to your server using FTP or "publish" in certain HTML programs.

Back your pages up periodically, just in case!

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    You should do this yourself, because it's your site and because it's easy.  Many programs including Microsoft Word '97 and Netscape Navigator contain options that will let you write web pages using only what you need to know for word-processing.  HTML itself is extremely simple (the browser does most of the work) and the basics can be learned in a little over an hour.  To learn enough HTML to start off your web site, read the Beginners Guide to HTML and use it to try to understand the html code for one or more of your favorite web sites.

    The major issue in web page is design is the conflict between fast load times and the file size of the page and associated graphics, scripts, noises, etc.  Simple pages with few or no associated files load the most quickly and are the easiest to read by computers with little excess memory, old or text-based browser programs, or slow connections (like a 14.4 kbaud modem).  Keep in mind that blind people often use text-based browsers.  But, on the other hand, associated files (especially big ones) can make a page more attractive or interactive.  Striking a balance is difficult, but I recommend leaning toward the simple and accessible.  The internet is, after all, a public place, and it's a shame to see so many web pages restricted to access only by an elite with expensive computers and fast connections.  Big graphics all by themselves don't necessarily make a page look good; use a little common sense and basic design/composition ideas to compose your pages.

Recommendations to keep your page accessible:

Restrict individual pages to 50 kb or less (or put a warning next to the link to that huge page)

Use text-based links or ALT tags if you have any graphical links.  Otherwise, text-based browsers can't navigate your site.

Don't put sounds on your web page (except as voluntary downloads).  No browser yet developed handles sound files well.

Don't use Javascript or animated .gif files.  These can crash older browsers or computers low on memory.

Use graphics to spruce up a page and break up text, but keep them as small (in terms of file-size) as possible.

Don't use a background without a good reason (i.e. to make it easier to project a page onto a screen).

Zip downloadable software when possible and have an unzipped copy of pkunzip.exe on your page

Just good form:

The main page should have a link to your e-mail address

Most pages should have an "updated" date and a link to the main page

Check each page in your browser once it's uploaded to make sure that it works (links especially) and that it looks OK

    I recommend to you a great web-page style-guide sums up all of these issues and more.  It's succinct, almost certainly correct (if there's a correct in aesthetics, this is it), and very funny.

Some more links that may eventually prove useful to people writing web pages:

Web Page Workshop - much like this one, but different

A collection of web page tutorials - many of these are on advanced topics

An archive of CGI scripts and some of the programs they invoke

Another list of Web design links

The Web Designer Page - once a fantastic resource, now reduced to a list of examples of various types of code

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Web sites are like pets, they've got to be taken care of, even if your server isn't billing you.  This will scare some folks off, but it doesn't really take that much time if you don't have much time to spare.  Things that must be done:

Check every 6 months or so for broken links (i.e. URLs that are no longer valid)

Update your cv, current research abstract, news-type pages and other information which may become outdated

Put up new stuff periodically - don't be boring!

Make regular backups

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© 1999 Rebecca Teed