Welcome to my Website!

Before I begin, I should start with a profanity warning (for parents, mostly): Occasionally there will be words like 'ass' and 'shit' throughout this tutorial. I swear like a sailor in the real world, and while I've tried to tame it down throughout this tut, it's bound to creep in here and there. I do understand that children use horseland, though, and I appreciate my cussing won't be... well, appreciated... by some parents. Fortunately, if this is a real concern, there's an app for that! You can install something like WebCensor (which is an add-on for Google Chrome), to filter out all the bad words (I haven't used it personally, though, so user beware). And certainly, parents, don't allow my potty mouth to interfere with your child's interest in code. Coding is a wonderful exercise, a useful skill to have, and potentially a profitable career path for anyone interested. If your child shows an interest in coding beyond horseland, there's plenty of other places online that he or she can learn - w3schools is a good place to start.

With that out of the way, let me introduce myself. Hi! I'm Alice. I'm player 461280 on HorseLand. I don't play HL as avidly as I used to, and I come and go as I please, but during my most recent stint I've noticed that the number of layout designers and coders on HL has significantly decreased since it's hey day. I'm not sure why, and this isn't really the place to speculate, I suppose - but when I started offering my services purely as a layout coder, I seemed to be in ridiculously high demand. Which was odd at first, because if I'd offered something like that a few years ago, I'm sure nobody would have taken me up on the offer. But nowadays, it seems that there's a real need for someone to code layouts* for players, because they don't know how to code them themselves.

But, since I'm like a cat, and I come/go/do as I please, I can't be relied on to code these players layouts for them all the time. I do still want to help, though, so I've created this tutorial for you all to learn how to code layouts for HL for yourselves.

You know how that old saying goes: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for the rest of his life." -› This tutorial is summat like that.

Coding for HL is a little different to coding for the rest of the internet, though. HL is more than a little bit strict with the code it actually allows you to use and display on your home page, which is both frustrating and limiting. Honestly, the cool things we could do if HL wasn't so backwards...! *wistful sigh* Never mind that now, though. This tutorial will be focussed on the way that I personally code layouts for HL - so by the end of it, you should be able to code the same way I do. It may not work for some, and be distasteful for others, and probably outright odd that I do things that way for others still - but, if you're looking for somewhere to at least try and get an idea of what you could do, this is a good place to start.

Enough rambling out of me - let's do this!
♥ Alice

» Prologue: Pre-Basics

*Usually, the home page is adorned with something players refer to as a 'layout', which is usually a static background image with a scrolling text area or two laid over the top.