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www dot housekeeping dot com
Jun 9th, 2001 by Babs

<div class=\"pavatar\">www dot housekeeping dot com</div>

August 8, 2001 A Web Site Created by Babs celebrates it’s 3rd  birthday. That is quite a milestone for a web site, especially a personal one.

I bring this up because not too long ago a friend and I were talking about vanishing web sites. He was on a mission to find some Power Ranger sites, but all he seemed to be finding was practically every other site listed in the search engine he was using no longer existed. I found the same thing when I was going through the links at the Link-o-Rama. About one quarter of the links had to be removed because their corresponding sites were gone, or they had been changed to a point were they were no longer relevant to their links. I’m sorry, but if I click on a link for a Pokemon site I expect to be taken to a Pokemon site. Not one about Weiss Kreuz.

Just as frustrating is the site that announces it’s closed. Why freakin’ bother telling us this? Just take it down!

Web sites are like children. If you’re not willing to put in the time and effort into taking care of it, then it’s better that you not have one. Now, I admit, I’ve been known to slack off on the updates. But I do update. This isn’t the same site it was 3 years ago. I’m always trying to improve it, making it more fun, more interesting, to visit. The concept, however, has remained the same: It’s still a web site, I created it, and I’m still Babs.

Periodically I update my site’s info with the search engines, even though I haven’t made any drastic changes to its content. I’ve found some search engines will even delete information that’s more than six months old. Unfortunately, most rely on us to either submit updates or tell them about broken links. If your site has metamorphosed and you haven’t alerted this change to the search engines, you deserve all the flames you get!

Contrary to what the free web space providers tell you, bandwidth isn’t really free. And it’s costing more each day. Sure, you’re not paying an actual out-of-the pocket expense, but look at you have to put up with:

Banner ads. Not really a new thing, in fact many providers are now offering ways to jazz them up. They should, since quite a few of these providers are now banning all ads from personal web sites, aside from the provider’s own, of course.

Pop-ups. Have you noticed those little buggers are getting more persistent? It used to be you could bump them down to your task bar, where they’d sit and behave (at least with MSIE they did). Now, more and more are popping back up when you go to another page. Some don’t even wait that long, opting to annoy the hell out of you every few seconds. With Tripod, whose pop-ups still usually behave, they are still the lesser of the two evils.

Anti-remote loading programming. This is the newest addition to the restriction lists most providers have. It means you can’t load graphics from one site (even if it’s your own) to another site. While this does prevent bandwidth theft. It also prevents those of us who use graphics on message boards, or include banners with their URLs in polls, from doing so. It’s supposed to save money. Providers would save a lot more if their members just didn’t waste bandwidth.

So, exactly how does one waste bandwidth? Well the aforementioned closed site is a good example. If you don’t have time for it, close the account. If you can’t do that, at least delete the files associated with that account.

Anything that needlessly slows loading time is also a waste, not to mention makes me wish I could strangle the site’s owner! Yes, I know I have a few large files floating around my site, in fact my faveduo.gif on my Just Who Do I Think I Am? page weighs in at 27.4KB on it’s own. But if you consider it used to be 89KB, as well as the fact that most of my pages are under 50KB, including their graphics (and some are even below 30KB), you can see my site is nowhere near as offensive (size-wise) as it could be.

If I want to listen to music while I surf I’ll open up Real Jukebox, and as cute as Chibi-Quatre is sitting on his camel, I think turning him into a background is a bit excessive. Remember, size does matter.

Now that the main portion of my site has been successfully moved to a new account, I’m about to deconstruct the old site. The index page will remain, just so those who haven’t visited in a while will know the site’s new home. After six months that will be gone, too. Any files currently not in use on the active accounts are also removed. Because of my diligence A Web Site Created by Babs and it’s “satelsites”, The Pinkish Pages and The Lavender Room, take up less than 4MB of space, total, on the World Wide Web. Not bad, eh?

To wrap things up I’d like to reiterate that a web site isn’t something one should create just so they can say they have one. It should serve some real purpose. Some may argue that my site does little more than feed my ego. They could very well be right. But as for that “little more”, well thanks to my web site, I’ve made new friends, been found by old ones, and was reunited with a part of my family I never thought I’d hear from again. It has also outlived many other sites. I think it’s going to be here for quite a while.

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