So, earlier this month, a group of friends and I were gmail-conversation arguing the merits of Stuff White People Like (okay, so maybe I’m a stick in the mud, but I just don’t like it), when someone jokingly suggested we go completely contrarian, and start stuffnobodylikes.com. My very entrepreneurial roommate had the domain bought within the hour.

Luckily I purchased the deluxe (ooh fancy!) hosting account when I started this little website a few months ago. By 4am I had the domain linked to hosting, Wordpress downloaded (I’m suddenly becoming a pro at this), and the first post, #1. Herpes, was born (there is something truly disturbing about “herpes” and “born” being in the same sentence).

Twenty-four hours later, my verbose (and very talented) friends had posted 22 entries.

One week later, we had 20,000 hits, were posted on metafilter.com and I was being interviewed by NPR. Whaaaaaat?

I don’t think I ever really understood the power of the web until that week. My webmastering was relevant enough to warrant an NPR interview?! Surely not. But I suppose we now live in a world where any of us can get our 15 minutes by starting some internet meme or publishing a video of our dads dancing to “Superman Dat Ho.” (I haven’t posted the video yet, but by god, I will someday!)

Anyway, this webmastermistress thing is new to me. I’m sharpening my .php skills, and learning just a teeny tiny bit about MySQL databases. Yippee!

So, it is without further ado that I introduce you to my new unexpected child (it may be the only grandchild you’ll get, mom, so learn to love its whining): StuffNobodyLikes.com.

This past Saturday/Sunday, from 1am-1am, I participated in an HTML/CSS writing contest, namely, the CSS OFF. The purpose of the contest is to use the given .psd to create a super-cleanly written website, in 24 hours. I can’t even remember how I heard about the contest at this point; I’ve been doing so much CSS-related web browsing in the past few months, it all runs together.

I decided to do the contest because of the great feedback the judges give you. Not having gone through school for web design puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to knowing the most current and “correct” way to do things.

I used microformats for the first time! and I’m looking forward to using them in the future. It may be said that I have a slight geeky crush on Tantek Çelik (this started after reading Zeldman’s web standards book, where he talks about Çelik’s work on IE5/Mac. I found out about Zeldman because of my slight geeky crush on Doug Bowman. Okay so maybe I have a slight geeky crush on all of them…this post is getting off-topic. The point is I think all this web standards stuff is wonderfully important, and these guys are the professors. I can only begin to hope that I pass.)

Check out my competition entry at www.aliglia.com/cssoff. I’m most proud of the way it handles text resizing. Things that could be better:

-microformats were missing some class names (specifically for links)
-a 1px-off problem with the nav in Safari (rrrrrggggg)
-should’ve made a rollover on “Get a Free Inspection”
-should’ve made “Contact Us” in the bottom-right a link
-too much space between the content and the footer
-could’ve made the footer a gradient

I’m totally out-of-control anal. My kindergarten teacher wrote on my report card: “Alia begins projects with a very unique enthusiasm, but has trouble completing them.” Uh oh. Something to work on.  I think 24-hour contests are right up my alley.

About 4 months ago, I decided to become a web designer. Armed with very little background in html (I designed a movie list website for myself in college using Dreamweaver and TONS of tables!), negligibly more Photoshop knowledge (high school newspaper editor), a very web-savvy and knowledgeable programming domestic partner (”web standards are important!”), and tremendous run-on sentence skills (see if you can get to the end of this one), I sought to learn the ins and outs of design for the web. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

After much heel-digging, I’ve decided to begin a blog, so that I can teach myself how to create blogs for clients. Wordpress is decidedly easy and comprehensive software to use. I’m currently in the process of manipulating the default theme’s CSS to fit my own site’s aesthetics.

It is here that I’ll catalog my continuing web design self-education. As I learn more about CSS, XHTML, Wordpress, jquery, shopping cart software, Photoshop, Flash, forms, search engine optimization, Google Analytics and IE bugs, I’ll post the information here. At some point soon, I’ll begin cataloguing of the backlog of information I’ve accumulated in the past 4 months.

My self-education will parallel my college education in many ways.  For instance, I may procrastinate or get distracted sometimes and include links to music videos or embed maps of Places I’ve Slept.

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Hello world!