Wanna Build A Website?
A how-to
By Terry Creighton

So here you are: new to the web, broke, and wanting to make a website that is as good as wiffleball2k.com. The good news is that I'm here to help you achieve that goal. The bad news is that you will never reach that goal. Haha, just kidding...kind of.

Basically, the point to 'Terry Creighton's "Built a Website"' page is to help people learn how to make a site that is not going to be bad. It would be way to difficult to try and teach people how to make a good site, so I'm just going to let everyone in on a couple secrets so that you do not fall into the category of the GAS award (God Awful Site).This isn't going to cover every single base that deals with websites, it will deal with more of a reference check point for you and your website. I hope to be adding more and more to this section as time goes by, but to tell you the truth, it probably ain't going to happen. That brings me to my number one point...

1) Update Your Site
If you have no plans on updating your site once you put it up, then please don't make one. If you think that you want a site, but know that you are the type of person that will quit something after a couple weeks...then please don't make one. If you are somehow forced into making your site by either your friends, family or girlfriend (Ha, wiffleballers with girlfriends, that's funny!), then please stand up for yourself (and all of us) and don't make one. I will visit the crappiest looking site that updates often than I would view
an awesome looking site that never updates. I will check out the awesome looking site once, think that the person has some good talent, then leave and never come back. Is that what you want your viewers to think about your wiffleball league? Give me a site that I know will have somewhat changed the next time I visit it and I will continue to check it out. I will also check it out a lot more if the content was interesting...which brings me to my second point...

2) Make Your Site Interesting
First off, if you are looking for me to tell you what to add to your site to make it interesting, then forget about it. I'm not going to give out a creative idea while wiffleball2k.com is still around...sorry. Basically, just ask yourself the question, "What can I add to my site that will make people interested in it?" Please don't visit other sites and put up what they have on theirs. Because then why would I want to visit your website? For wiffleball2k.com, we thought of many new things through the years. One being a fantasy league. Another one being multimedia. These were things that we thought would help people become interested in our league. Guess what? It worked! Now it is your turn to think of some things. Alright, I give in, here is a secret...one way to make other wiffleballers visit your website is if you talk about their website. Now don't say I never gave you anything...

3) Nothing Flashy
OK, if you have been a web designer for seven years, then don't follow this rule, this rule is for beginners only. Alright, so you put up a site, it's not getting many viewers, you are updating every once in a while and after viewing another site, you become inspired to make your website the best! So what do you do? Add a spinning wiffleball animated gif? Wrong! Add some baseball themed midi file in the background? Please don't! Odds are, anything you add will turn your site into a joke. Just stay with the basics and go back to rule number one. Through time, people will notice that you update your site a lot. People will notice that your site is getting a ton of information on it. Then as people start coming to your site, you start getting more and more talented, until all of the sudden, you just redesigned your whole site and it looks five times better than it did a year ago!

4) Use Humor
Even if you know you can't tell a joke, even though you are the only one that laughs at your jokes, please put humor into your website. You are making a wiffleball website for crying out loud! Who the hell is going to your site looking to get the latest 411 on Jimmy, your best-friends co-worker who's pitching accuracy is about a 7 out of 10 on your scale? Maybe if Jimmy is wearing a fake mullet wig and advisees us to wack off before each wiffleball game so we will stay calm, I might actually care about how good Jimmy really is. The point to using humor is that it is the easiest way for someone to become interested in your site. Once people start coming to your site, you can ditch the humor if you like and stick with more facts. By that time, people will care so much about Jimmy that they will be interested in how he's going to do for the new season, instead of his new advice.

5) Content
Let's say that you can't think of anything new and interesting to put on your site. Let's also say you can't tell a joke to save your life. On top of that, lets also say your league is pretty crappy. What can you do? Easy, put things on your page. Add info everyday. Got nothing to add? Well, then let us know that you don't have anything to add...and you just added something. The importance of adding content is that people will stay at your site and it's always a good thing when people are at your site. The backlash to that is that you are going to have to put content on your site and that is going to take some time. So like I said at the top, if you don't have any ambition to update your site, then please don't make it. I'm just trying to let you know what you are getting into if you are new to the web.

Those five advises are the basics that you are going to want to carry for your website. Here are some other little things that will add to your website:
-Don't put up graphics that are above 250k unless you warn us that the image will take awhile to download.
-Don't make the background change on every different page you have. Keep it consistent all through out your site.
-Make a Links page and exchange your address with other people. This will help get visitors.
-Remember, smaller is better (font sizes, graphics, the length of your page, etc.)
-No blinking objects...ever!
-Learn Tables (part of html code) as soon as possible!
-If any of your friends show just the tiniest bit of interest, exploit it for all it's worth.
-Try to make things in your league more exciting (such as having playoffs, all-star game, awards, etc.) This will make you want to update your site with the info.

Above are the mere basics for completing a site that will become an interesting site for others to visit. If you understand all these concepts and use them, I guarantee that your site won't suck. To make your site one of the best, it will take a lot of work and a lot more time. Even though we (wiffleball2k.com) claimed we were the best site out there the minute we put our site up ('98), it wasn't until 2000 that other people actually gave it a consideration. So know that it will be a long road before you reach any sort of reward...

With that...good luck!