Tutorial 3: A Tip A day Keeps the AQ Away

The Amazoness Quartet votes monthly on the "Worst Sailormoon Pages Ever" and the lucky winner of that honor soon finds his or her guestbook overflowing with TONS of hate mail about how a POS the site is, that it is a waste of space, and should be taken down with as much haste as can be mustered.

Despite recent declines in their popularity, the seal of disproval of the AQ is still a powerful incentive to get your page right the first time.

To help out a bit, I will tell you a few of the no-nos I have come across in my page-building experience. Where it contributes to the point, the AQ opinion on the subject will be included.

Webpage Tips

• Avoid long pages. For one thing, they take longer to load, and also, people don't want to have to navigate a page the size of the Mississippi to get to that links page...

  I know, you're probably saying: "But Artemis, APATT has a huge page!" Apatt is one of the elites in the game, and his page is relatively straight-forward. If you want an example of why you don't want to have a VERY LONG PAGE, go to www.icq.com. While I know they provide a very nice communications service, they put up a very-badly organized webpage. Another badguy in this category is Save Our Sailors.

• Avoid the temptation to overload the "eye candy". Too much JAVA or other complex scripts put a strain on some of the older browsers. When creating a page, shoot for something within the capabilities of Netscape 4 or MSIE 4 since those are the standards RIGHT NOW.

• From the AQ: No mixing Japanese and Dic: Now, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people who do a page on the Dic series. The problem happens when they try to 'Dic' up the series and characters that Dic hasn't done anything with. If you have a Dic based page and want to tell people what happens after those 65 eps, tell them using the Japanese names and stuff, don't try to dub them on your own.

  You'll note that for the most part, my page is a dub page. However, when I use the original Japanese information, I attempt to warn dubbers of where I am getting the information. This also tells non-dubbers that I am aware that I am "crossing the border."

  If you DO mix dub and original information, fix what you can, and apologize for what is irreparable. I am writing a fanfic series, and not only did I have dub and original characters interacting together, but I have a whole new generation of Sailors in my fanfic series. At the end of that particular fic, I apologized for the mixing of information...saying that it was necessary in order to tell the story. Don't be afraid to apologize...it will make you a lot of friends.

  From the AQ: Get rid of those intermingling NA and Japanese names. If you want to talk about both of them, make two different sections or obviously distinguish between them without confusing them. This includes NA and Japanese info like attacks and backgrounds and storylines too. NA SM and the Japanese SM are way different, so don't assume that one applies to the other.

  That sounds reasonable.

• Copying stuff from other sites is okay as long as you ask permission first. And why not? The only thing they are likely to ask in return is a link to their page, and you are likely to strike up a good working relationship with them.

  No doubt you notice the big blue menu tables on my pages. Go to the Sailor Moon Universe and you'll see similar red tables. Guess what...I asked them if I could copy the table, and they agreed as long as I linked back to them. You'll note that EACH table contains a link to SMU.

• Along those same lines, don't plagarize. In an educational setting, you'd get kicked out of school, or at least receive a failing grade. In the case of Sailor Moon pages, people tend to get ticked fairly quick about that sort of thing, and the Sailor Moon community is quick to jump down the throat of someone who is proved to be a plagarizer.

  Again, ask permission. I asked the AQ if I could use excerpts from their page in these tutorials, and they said yes. People are generally reasonable as long as credit is given.

• Do *NOT* "direct link" to a picture or file on another site. What this does is slow down the server of the site you direct linked to, and this is simply considered rude. Of course, there is the other occupational hazard of direct links....the closing of the original page...at which point, all of your links don't work, and your page turns into a smoldering wreck.

  In order to avoid this, simply copy the pic or file to your computer, then upload it to your site.