
Neopets HTML Guide - exolymph
http://www.neopets.com/help/html1.phtml
======
cnees
Every once in a while I run into another programmer who started on Neopets,
and it makes me happy. :) When I interviewed for my job, they asked me my
“programming story.” I remember struggling to make my petpages compatible with
Firefox, Safari, and IE5. I remember learning Dreamweaver so I could apply to
adopt cool Neopets. I wrote tens of thousands of lines of HTML in TextEdit to
make an interactive Lite Brite, and more recently I built Neopets-compatible
Minesweeper. ([http://www.neopets.com/~wire](http://www.neopets.com/~wire))
These are the projects that made me give CS a shot even though I had no idea
what it would be like and even though I was nervous to enter a field with a
bad reputation for its attitude towards women. I’m so glad I did.

So many people learned the joy of coding from that site. Sadly, it can’t be
that for the next generation because its code filters are almost as obsolete
as this guide. HTML5, CSS3, multiple classes on an element, and the word
“position” in a stylesheet aren’t supported. TNT, if you’re reading this,
please take some time to invest in the part of your site where people learn
and create.

~~~
seangrogg
To this day I will still cite how Neopets' pet pages were my introduction to
the creator's web; later MySpace would help me accumulate some spare lunch
money. The good ol' days. =)

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zoba
Neopets is the reason I’m a software engineer. Along the way looking for
“cheat codes” for Neopets, I discovered some people hacking the games. I
eventually ran a forum on hacking Neopets, made money from ads, got into PC
World Magazine, and had a great time along the way.

Sorry to Adam and Donna for any headaches I caused during my teenage years. <3

~~~
fenwick67
Neopets was where I first discovered hacking.

There was a user named "blueyoshi82" or something, I wanted to see if I could
get into their account (I don't remember why). So I tried guessing their
password, and lo and behold, it was just "yoshi"!

Being the white-hat that I was, I tried to PM them a message saying "hey you
really need to change your password, it's too easy to guess", but the word
"password" was blacklisted so I couldn't tell them.

~~~
yclept
I remember during school showing my Math teacher (who was a big Ultima gamer
but also played Neopets) how I set up a fake neopets shop that prompted you
for login. <form action="mailto:xxxxxx"> When you submitted the login form it
sent the form inputs in an email to a hotmail address :D. One of my first
experiences with HTML. I had no idea there were so many shared Neopets
experiences in this community.

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aylmao
Low key, this guide is how I got into programming and probably plays a big
role in why I’m now a Software Engineer. Throwback.

~~~
52-6F-62
I never saw the Neopets guide. For me, it was Joe Burns' site: HTMLGoodies[0].
It was indispensable for me. That and a lot of help from FrontPage Express[1]
& viewing the source code of whatever I'd just made.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/19990429010831/http://www.htmlgo...](https://web.archive.org/web/19990429010831/http://www.htmlgoodies.com:80/)

[1]
[http://www.jegsworks.com/lessons/web/html/fpx/fpx.htm](http://www.jegsworks.com/lessons/web/html/fpx/fpx.htm)

~~~
uremog
HTMLGoodies helped me make terrible Geocities sites.

~~~
52-6F-62
You and me both

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anon_mouse
First time I saw a program written was when I asked my dad to help me get #1
on one of their mini games. He helped me by making a java swing app (at least
I think that is what it was).. which I could put letters into to make words
with. Made it to top 10 for in about a day & then got banned for 'acting
suspiciously' :D. Definitely a throwback for me too.

------
a_t
And for when you wanted to dive a bit deeper and make your shop really pop,
there was the Funky Chickens HTML Help Page
([http://www.funkychickens.com/main.asp](http://www.funkychickens.com/main.asp))

~~~
Chromozon
Also, [http://www.lissaexplains.com/](http://www.lissaexplains.com/) was
really big at the time. Taught me everything I needed to know to code up
petpages and the like.

------
neonIcon
This is a major throwback, and definitely one of the main reasons why I'm
where I'm at today.

------
erikrothoff
This got me into programming as well! The biggest problem I had was when I
wanted to expand and build a forum, and tried to understand why Geocities
didn't run my .php file (which was from a tutorial). Answer: PHP support was
paid option AFAIK

~~~
wjoe
Yep, back then it was very hard to get any free hosting that supported any
sort of scripting language. Of course, as a 12 year old on the internet,
paying for anything was unheard of.

I remember wanting to set up some forum that required CGI. I had some sort of
hosting account that required using their own dialup service to connect to
their FTP. Probably cost more on the phone bill than some cheap hosting
service, but it was easier to get that by the parents than asking to use their
credit card when the internet was still a mystery to them.

~~~
krapp
Tripod offered Perl CGI scripting on their free service at one point.

I wrote a terrible "messageboard" that only one other person ever used.

------
tn_
The bandwidth at which they produced new flash games was amazing. They were
pretty detailed too. I can't think of any html5 gaming community website that
even comes remotely close to them.

One of my favorite events with Neopets was participating in a global takedown
of enemies during war. I spent so many hours with that website.. from tending
my shop, training my pets and tricking out their pages w/ HTML, to collecting
map pieces (I remember the economics w/ Secret Laboratory Map Pieces exploding
when people realized how valuable they were)..

------
gertlex
I too used this, and more generally credit Neopets as a source of a lot
motivations to learn by solving interesting problems. I reproduced a couple of
the site's games in my first couple high school programming classes, and then
eventually had a minimal logic but very reliable "Battledome" fighting script
using autohotkey partway through undergrad. That autohotkey experience was
helpful senior year in very quickly automating data collection from a non-
automatable program for estimating atmospheric radiation dispersal.

------
napsterbr
This is so nostalgic... I remember spending several days of my youth playing
and, er, "boosting" my scores to earn more neopoints. Usually modifying the
POST request with something like TamperData did the trick :)

~~~
wccrawford
I actually went beyond that. There was a fun game that involved overlaying
tetris-like shapes on a board to cycle images through a set. It started out
easy, but soon got rather hard. I wrote a program to help solve them easier,
and did quite well at first. Eventually, I think other people did the same,
but better. That, or they were really, really savants at that kind of problem.

------
Raphmedia
I know a handful of developers started to code thanks to Neopets. Personally
it was bbcode that got me interested in what was going on behind the scenes.

------
red_admiral
> If the user viewing your page is using Internet Explorer, your music can
> play in the background when the page loads.

This brings back memories ...

------
mcx
I got introduced to HTML through Neopets as well. I remember joining a Legend
of Zelda guild. Another member and I decided to start our own guild. He showed
me how to use an image tag so we hotlinked a bunch of sweet images and created
a bunch of new accounts to boost our member count and that helped us
organically get members. Good times!

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stjarnljuset
Chiming in as another person who got into web development thanks to Neopets.

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5ilv3r
Ah neopets.... your character limits forced me to ditch frontpage and actually
learn how to make html with notepad.

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chimmy_chonga
Now you too can make web pages straight out of the 90's!

