A personal homepage is a World Wide Web site belonging to one person. It can be about that person or about something he or she is interested in. It is used for informative or entertainment purposes, but not for commercial reasons. WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a global, read-write information space. ... A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. ... Information is a term with many meanings depending on context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Recreation. ... Purpose is deliberately thought-through goal-directedness. ... Commerce is the trading of something of value between two entities. ...

A personal homepage may be as simple as a single page or may be as elaborate as an online database with gigabytes of data. Many Internet service providers offer a few megabytes of space for customers to host their own personal homepage. A database is a collection of logically related data designed to meet the information needs of one or more users. ... A gigabyte (derived from the SI prefix giga-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one billion bytes. ... Data is the plural of datum. ... An internet service provider (abbr. ... A megabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to approximately one million bytes. ...

The content of personal homepages varies and can, depending on the hosting server, contain anything that any other websites do. However, typical personal homepages contain images, text and a collection of "favorite links." Many also contain short biographies, résumés, and blogs. Common elements of a personal web site include a homepage, image gallery, blog, and information about the author of the site. Almost all personal sites will include information about the author's hobbies and pastimes. Many personal web sites are of interest to a limited group of people such as the friends and family of the author. In information technology, a server is a computer system that provides services to other computing systems—called clients—over a network. ... For images in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Images. ... A hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. ... Today, films and television programs surrounding the lives of famous people are a major part of the entertainment industry. ... Look up Résumé in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ... Homepage or Home may refer to: Home page, the start page or main web page of a website The website of a group, company, or organization A personal homepage, usually a page featuring an individual user The URL or local file that is automatically loaded when a web browser starts... For images in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Images. ... Photo sharing is a term given to a crop of mid-2000s websites which provide means to publish a collection of digital photos online in a centralized and organized fashion. ... It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... This article is about pastimes. ... Friends was a long-running sitcom focusing on the lives of a group of six twenty-somethings (eventually thirty-somethings), consisting of three men and three women living in Greenwich Village, New York City. ... A family of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1997 A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by comparable legal relationships — including domestic partnership, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the Roman Empire). ...

Motivations

Many people maintain a personal homepage because it is the most effective medium to express their opinions or creative endeavours that, otherwise, simply would not have an outlet. These types of sites may contain short fiction such as short stories or samples of artwork. Other netizens view the concept of a personal homepage with a more metaphysical bent, placing value in the concept of owning and "residing" in a "home" in cyberspace and on the World Wide Web. This can also extend to the ownership of personal domain names and the associated personal homepages and e-mail addresses connected to those domains, although with the advent of affordable web hosting fewer people own or manage their own personal servers. The vast majority of casual internet users tend to utilize personal homepages included in the free services provided by social networking sites such as MySpace and Blogspot. The Three Graces, here in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, were the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility in Greek mythology. ... This article is in need of attention. ... The Mona Lisa Although today the word art usually refers to the visual arts, the concept of what art is has continuously changed over centuries. ... A Netizen (a portmanteau of Internet and citizen) [also known as a cybercitizen] is a person actively involved in online communities. ... Plato and Aristotle, by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome). ... Cyberspace, a metaphoric abstraction used in philosophy and computing, is a (virtual) reality which represents the Noosphere/Popperian cosmology#Worlds 1, 2 and 3 both inside computers and on computer networks. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Domain Name System. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Web hosting is a service that provides individuals, organizations and users with online systems for storing information, images, video, or any content accessible via the Web. ... The term Web server can mean one of two things: A computer that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as Web browsers, and serving them Web pages, which are usually HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc. ... A social network service is social software specifically focused on the building and verifying of social networks for whatever purpose. ... MySpace is a social networking website based in Santa Monica, California offering an interactive, user-submitted network of personal profiles, friends, blogs, groups, photos, music, MP3s, and videos. ... Blogger is a weblog publishing system owned by Google since 2003. ...

Official celebrity sites

Some celebrities, such as actor William Shatner, author Stephen King, and singer Barbra Streisand, have websites. Were they not famous, these sites would generally be considered personal homepages. Due to celebrity status of the subject and the existence of fan-created sites (of which the celebrity in question has no direct control) leads a personal site authorized by the celebrity and maintained by an individual or company directly associated with the celebrity to be labeled an "official website." This designator is often a seal of approval and an assurance to the public that the information provided on the site (including press releases, tour dates, and promotional materials) has been authored or approved by the celebrity in question. Some celebrities involved in criminal and civil trials, such as pop star Michael Jackson and media mogul Martha Stewart, establish official websites to issue statements to the press and to respond to statements and press releases issued by the prosecuting officals. Celebrities often have a symbiotic relationship with photographers. ... William Shatner (born March 22, 1931 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a Canadian actor, who gained fame for his starring role as Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise in the television show Star Trek from 1966 to 1969 and in seven of the subsequent movies. ... For other people named Stephen King, see Stephen King (disambiguation). ... Barbra Streisand (born April 24, 1942) is an iconic two-time Academy Award-winning American singer, theatre and film actress, composer, film producer and director. ... A fansite or fan site, is a website created and maintained by the fans or devotees interested in a celebrity or a particular cultural phenomenon. ... A news release or press release is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value. ... For other people named Michael Jackson, see Michael Jackson (disambiguation). ... Martha Stewart (neé Kostrya, born August 3, 1941) is an American business magnate, entrepreneur, and homemaking advocate. ...

Most celebrity sites are created and maintained by marketing and web professionals employed by the celebrity or the celebrity's publicist; however, some celebrities, such as film director Roger Avary, actor Wil Wheaton, and video game developer John Romero, maintain their own official sites without professional help, although many of them still use third-party templates and blogging software. A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, or for a work such as a book or movie. ... Roger Avary, photographed for Score Magazine at the Hotel Costes K, Paris. ... Wil Wheaton (2001) Richard William Wil Wheaton III (born July 29, 1972 in Burbank, California) is a writer, actor, and geek icon. ... This article is about computer and video games. ... John Romero with short hair. ... It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ...

Criticisms

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, takes a dim view of personal homepages. He once said, "They may call it a home page, but it's more like the gnome in somebody's front yard than the home itself." Sir Berners-Lee's personal homepage is located within the World Wide Web Consortium's website. Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim (Timothy John) Berners-Lee, KBE (TimBL or TBL) (b. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a global, read-write information space. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

A common pejorative term for a personal homepage is vanity site ^{[citation needed]}. This term is often used by other internet users who consider personal homepages with no real practical purpose or useful content to be pathologically narcissistic and a waste of bandwidth ^{[citation needed]}. Also, since many personal homepages are produced by individuals who have limited experience with HTML and graphic design, often these sites are created with WYSIWYG HTML editors (like Microsoft Office FrontPage or site-specific Web templates) and clipart graphics. This leads to what many consider to be poorly-designed, amateurish, and monotonous sites ^{[citation needed]}. Because most personal websites are ultimately unprofitable they are often hosted for free in exchange for advertisements being placed on the web site. Hosting companies encourage their customers to upgrade to paid hosting to remove the adverts and for certain privileges such as server-side scripting. Some fear that social networking sites and products such as Google Page Creator will revive this trend. Look up pejorative in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A vanity site is a website that is run by an individual or small group (such as a family) purely for their own amusement. ... Bandwidth is a measure of frequency range, measured in hertz, of a function of a frequency variable. ... An excerpt of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... ÁWYSIWYG (pronounced //), is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a system in which content during editing appears very similar to the final product. ... An HTML editor is a software application for creating web pages. ... Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Windows operating system. ... A web template is a tool used to separate information content from presentation on the web design, and to the massive production of web pages. ... Categories: Stub ... The word amateur has at least two connotations. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Generally speaking, advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas by an identified sponsor. ... Server-side scripting is a web server technology in which a users request is fulfilled by running a script directly on the web server to generate dynamic HTML pages. ... Google Page Creator is a free beta product from Google which debuted in Google Labs on February 23, 2006 that allows any user with a Gmail account to create simple web sites. ...

External links

• Satirical vanity site containing a variety of egregious features found on many such pages.