Soundoff - If the Web was an MMO

If the Web was an MMO

I took a stab at creating a quick one-page website yesterday. I spent a couple of hours on it and at the end of that time I decided that if the web was an MMO I'd be level 4. Now, this is your standard pre-expansion MMO with a max level of 50. I'm not talking about one that's been going on for seven years, has six expansions, has raised the level cap four times so that it is now resting at a comfortable 125, power-leveling and twinking everyone type of MMO. If the web was one of those I'd be level 5.

Seriously, the web page looked like an eight year old did it.

But, not to be daunted, I set out to design a newer, better, cooler, nicer web page. I figured that I would take the Waterboy approach: visualize and attack. So I got a clear image of what I wanted and set to work for another couple of hours.

And I am proud to say it now looks like a nine year old designed it. I think I dinged.

Now, I am not talking about mad HTML skills here. If HTML were an MMO, I'd be at least level 12. I can string together some table tags, even do some column spanning, and when I wanna throw some zing into it I can even use a div tag. Yep, I'm at that stage just beyond newbie with HTML. I'm not ready for any decent content yet, of course, but I'm not the guy that gets happy when you give me your old rusty longsword.

And if PHP were an MMO I'd be about level 49, but I'd be one of those high level players that has crap equipment. I can't say I really know much about PHP even though I programmed the blog software that's spitting this stuff out. But, programming is programming, and if you are good at it then one language is pretty similar to the other languages. If I wanna do something I usually have to hit google and search for the right syntax to do it in php, but I know how to do it and that's the difficult part. Slowly, I'll get some decent equipment and be able to participate in some PHP raids.

But, if we are just talking about the web, as in designing something and chunking it out there, then I'm a total newb. Well, maybe not a total newb. I know a little bit about trying to optimize for search engines, throwing advertisements somewhere on the page in hopes of paying off a year's worth of hosting within the next twenty-years (which is my best-guess estimate of how long it will take to pay of that first year's hosting bill).

So, I guess you could say that I'm a level 4 newb, but it's my third character and I've also got a level 7 and a level 9 toon. I'm one of those guys that couldn't decide on their class right away.

Oh, but this site doesn't look too bad, does it? I mean, it ain't knocking your socks off, but it's not designed in crayons. And there's a good reason for that. My wife did it. At least, she did the basic design, and then I rip her off anytime I want to play around with a new site. (Such as my cowboys blog.)

Wow, mad skillz with the shameless plug, huh? I think I just had a mini-ding. Only nine more bars to level 5! Eat that!

Posted by Dan on 08/19/07