Anime Weekend Atlanta 5 - Fan Web Sites
|
 Less than a
decade old, the World-Wide Web has become the great universal hypertext
library. It's also become the most democratic way for people to express
their opinions. Many sites and authoring software are free, and it takes
only time and enthusiasm to let the world know what you think. Anime fans
have flocked to the Web by the thousands. Three of those fans spoke about
their sites on a rainy Sunday at Anime Weekend Atlanta. |
 All of these
people were Sailor Moon fans, who enjoyed the series so much that they
wanted to share their enjoyment via the Web. Mara started with a Sailor
Pluto shrine. "I was just honing my skills," she said. "As time went on,
I discovered I really liked making web pages and graphics." Now Mara
has five sites, expanding to include a Cutey Honey F page and another
site that offers graphics for web users. She uses Macromedia Dreamweaver
to author those sites and "hates Front Page and Page Mill with a passion." |
 It's easy to
guess that Stephanie has a shine to Rei
Ayanami from Evangelion, but she also started with a Sailor Moon page.
That site followed her first page, when she was assigned to create a web
site as a class project. "It was a really bad page," she recalled. Later
came the "Sailor Solar's Spectacular Sailor Scout Shrine," which was on
a Geocities site and used the free Geocities HTML editor. The Sailor Moon
page work showed Stephanie how to use HTML tables and image maps to format
text and graphics. |
 Michiru is
all but an old-timer by Web standards, starting a Sailor Moon page that
"was a disgrace" in 1996. But, like the others, she learned about site
design and now has her own Web domain.
That move came when Michiru's sites - honoring Sailor Neptune, Wedding
Peach and Revolutionary girl Utena - got too large to stay at the free
site she was using. (Registering a domain costs around $70 annually from
Network Solutions, the fans noted.) She also prefers Macromedia Dreamweaver,
but advises aspiring web masters to go further than a software package.
"I really recommend learning HTML before you use an editor," she said. |
