The Creation: How Miimez came to be

 

Courtesy Photo

The complexity of building a website does not compare to that of creating human beings. I do not claim myself to share the similar ability with God, Buddha, or Allah. We are so complicated that there are even disciplines focus solely on studying humans: biology, psychology, sociology, political science, etc. But if one thinks about the idea of a website for a while, and sees this amazing layout and interacting nature of the perfectly designed Miimez, it would be hard for such an intellectual individual not to ask the following question: how does it come to be?

There are a gazillion of ways to make a page (not necessarily always a site though) that is accessible to people all over the world (except for several regions with restricted internet access, in another word, censorship). Free services provided by various service providers can accomplish some simple goals. If you want to blog, Blogger and Wordpress can meet your needs. If you want to share videos, Youtube is second to none. If you want to share pictures, Picasa and Flicker should be the first ones to look into. If you want to stalk people or be stalked, several options are available to you: Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. However these so-called “personal pages” are completely at service providers’ mercy, meaning you don’t have any control over anything you have uploaded to these providers should they want to take advantage of your files. If you don’t believe me, hire a lawyer and make him read their Terms and Conditions carefully. Also, the functionality is completely dependent upon these provider’s will. If they don’t change Facebook’s layout, you just gotta live with the way it is.

Therefore, I started to explore a new method of living in this Web 2.0 world and eventually I found a way to get around these capitalists’ fine prints: build my own website. In order to build a website, you will need:

Ingredients: At Least One Fully Functional Human Brain, Some Commonly Accepted Trading Token (also known as money), Web Space Providers, Appropriate Software, (Preferably) A Content Management System, Good Chunks of Time.

1.

First of all, you need a place to store all of your website files. Ranging from the porn you want to share to the files that record website activity, all of them need to be on a physical media. Web Hosting Service Providers provide this type of service in exchange with a fee. I use Site5 and if you want to purchase their service, please use the link above as it will earn me benefits.

2.

Then you need a Content Management System (CMS). Unless you are a graduate student from MIT with a computer science degree, you know you want a CMS instead of a full-fledged web design software. Think of CMS as an operating system for the website. If Web Space is the brain, then CMS is the spirit. Without it, your website is only gonna be a vegetable that generates blank pages. I use Wordpress as my CMS because it’s one of the hottest and most supported. And also it’s very easy to use. People with minimum coding experience (like me) can fly through the installation and setups.

3. Let’s face it: we are talking computer-related issues and dealing with codes is inevitable. Thus a good code-editing software is a must. For Windows users, BBEdit is a very professional choice (very much an overkill) if you don’t care drop 125 bucks on it. For Mac users, Coda is also a good choice and it sets you back for 99 dollars.

4.

If you want your website to look good and if you do not want to learn all about how to make it look more aesthetically appealing (which deals with CSS language), you should consider using a theme. Themes are layouts designed by people to give a unified artistic look for different websites. There are amateur theme designers that offer free themes and those professionals that offer elegantly designed themes with (usually) a gigantic elephant price. The theme for this website is designed by Graph Paper Press, and it is run by a group of excellent individuals with boundless imagination.

5. Among all of the things, the very thing that will determine the good or bad of your website is its content. Make sure you publish things that will attract visitors. You can make videos about yourself and post them if  you think you are attractive. And of course, it never hurts to try.

This is about it. See it’s not that complicated at all. Are you thinking about giving your exploding creativity a vent? Go ahead and click on the web service provider’s link as a start.