Homepage?
In Japan, people use the word homepage for a personal Web site, and the acronym HP is widely used. The same is true in Germany, except for the acronym; a German psychiatrist has just published his finding that homepage owners suffer from low self esteem.
Whatever the merits of the psychiatrist’s research, I find the word “homepage” very quaint. It seems to me that people who actually build Web sites don’t use it, unless they’re being ironic, refer to a site’s topmost page, or mean the personal sites that were current before weblogging software came along in the late nineties.
I raised the question on a message board. Here are the first few replies (I copied and pasted them because the board requires registration).
I use it to refer to the index.html page of someone’s website.
— Fabienne
i use homepage to describe a mostly static, mostly bad personal website which includes photos, links and some sort of bio of the author.
I used to use “my homepage” in the nineties to refer to a small collection of web pages I kept on the student server. Now I use “my site” or “my website” since the whole server is mine.
At work, I usually use “Home page” to refer to the initial page you get when you hit a site, or first log in.
— Brian
Homepage (hohmpaytsch) is used here as the non-web person’s name for “Personal Website,” which, by web people, is never called that way, but simply ‘my site’. I also never call weblogs ‘sites’. I call them logs. Pete’s log, Puck’s log, my log etc etc.
My dad, under my supervision, has become increasingly ‘web’*, and no longer uses ‘homepage’.
*) term coined by person writing smitten.typepad.com. I enjoy using it, since it hits the mark perfectly.
— Willem
I always say “my site.”
— Bill
Comments
My favourite reply:
my homepage is either google or BBC news. it’s what i get when i hit the little ‘home’ button on my browser.
whenever i’m talking about my site, i just call it my site.
—Nic
A homepage is a browser setting.
kevin :: July 25, 2004
Aside from the Japanese meaning, I always considered “home page” to mean the page that your browser opens to when you start it up. (mine goes to about:blank).
Commenting on this entry is closed.
It’s an interesting note. I don’t remember when I stopped saying ‘“my homepage” and started saying “my site”, but I’m guessing it’s about 6 years ago (I started it in 1996)
As for the low self esteem issue, seems like another academic trying to label something they don’t get.
I was interested in the idea of ‘logs’ as opposed to maybe ‘blog’. I couldn’t use this nomenclature as I work with computer logs (as in, reports of what an OS or application is doing) on a daily basis, so I need the distinction - one is human generated (blog), one is pumped out of an app (log/microsoft.com).
Just my 2 yen…