The Electronic Ping-Pong Martian Game

Last Thursday I decided to join the rest of the world and put up a web site. I figured I’d just whip up the site over my morning coffee…

Yeah, right.

What an education the intervening week has been.

The web thing is like a sexy, bad-hearted woman: compelling, fun, aggravating, costly, powerful, irresistible (on occasion), time-consuming (always, apparently), and a bit twisted.

I don’t know if my experience is representative, but here’s how the process is going so far:

1. I figure out a cool name for my site. That’s called a “domain name.” Do you know WHY it’s called a “domain name?” If so, let me know–I’ve got no idea.

Yahoo.com listed agencies that can register the name for me (so I own–or at least rent–it). One site won’t take my (perfectly healthy and legitimate) credit card. The other site has some kind of automatic e-mail reply thingy designed by, and for, Martians, and I’m lost in some insane version of e-mail ping-pong, where I’m supposed to “respond” to strange, tangled e-mails generated by some evil computer somewhere. It’s not merely complicated, mind you. It’s utterly impossible.

2. I call Saipan Datacom, my local Internet provider. By now I’m convinced the whole world will spontaneously discover the genius of the domain name I want, and I’ll be shut out when somebody else takes it (yeah, right). Dan Camacho recommends I try the site with the Martian automatic email thingy.

“I tried it, Dan, I can’t use it, it’s too hard to figure out,” I say.

I hear laughing.

“Heh, heh, yeah, YOU can’t figure it out, heh, heh,” chuckles Dan.

Dan doesn’t hear laughing.

“Okay, Ed, we’ll do it for you, no problem,” Dan says. My goodness, I suspect that Dan has made PEACE with the e-mail aliens.

3. Dan is reliable, so I know he’ll win the electronic Martian ping-pong game and reserve my precious domain name.

The domain name safely in hand, now it’s “just” a matter of whipping out a few web pages. I don’t want something fancy, I just want something presentable. Something practical.

Which poses a bit of a conundrum, and introduces the entire “form vs. function” issue. The web was launched, basically, because its form (graphic interface) made the Internet more functional. That is to say, “form follows function” in this case.

The content of a site is, then, only as credible as the quality of the site itself. To the aesthetically challenged (c’est moi), this presents a bit of a problem. I like clunky old things like vintage pickup trucks, Linda Lovelace, and DOS. How can I possibly fake the slickness necessary to leap into the zip-zap world of cyber-coolness?

How, indeed. Fortunately, HTML (Hyper Text Martian Language, which is what web sites are written in) is clunky, so as I study it, I feel–at some fundamental level–at home. Which is good, since I’m knee deep in it and my desk is covered in scribbled notes. To distill coolness from this clunkiness, though, while the Martians are still pelting me with cryptic e-mail bombs, is quite a challenge.

There is no such thing as simply whipping out a good web site. Trust me.