A Free, Easy-to-Maintain Personal Homepage featuring both Google & Duckduckgo Search

Free Republic ^ | March 21, 2021 | PoconoPundit

[poconopundit]

Imagine having a simple tool for creating and updating your own private starter page (homepage) of favorite links on the web.  If you're looking for something like that, I've built one you can download and use for free.  Here's the idea behind it:

• Build and maintain the homepage using a simple text editor (such as Notepad++) that doesn't require you to learn HTML — just insert a few HTML tags.

• Deliver a private HTML page that launches from your laptop so you can quickly access your links without Big Tech's help.

• Enable quick search engine switching to and from DuckDuckGo and Google.

• Customize the tool with settings for background, colors, fonts, and local search by zip code.

Check out the sample page on-line.

Download & Instructions for Use

Here's how to install and customize this tool:

1. Download this zip file: myhomepage (1 MB) to your computer.

2. Create a folder named "Home", "Homepage" or whatever you like.

3. Unzip the files into that folder.

4. Double click the myhomepage.htm file and test drive the Sample homepage pictured below.

5. For your own homepage, simply revise this Sample homepage or copy it to a new homepage of your own name in the same folder.

6. To create your own homepage, just delete the existing sections and create sections and links of your own.  It's set up for 6 columns.

7. The syntax for a section heading is <h4>My Section Heading</h4>

8. A link is <a href=http://freerepublic.com>Free Republic

9. No need for a closing </a> tag at the end of each link.  Instead, insert the closing after each section of links with the line: </a><!-- closing anchor -->

10. To select this as your browser's homepage, Chrome and Firefox have similar methods. On a Windows PC in Firefox, select Options > Home > Homepage and new windows, then enter the name of the file in this format:
    file:///C:/Home/myhomepage.htm

11. Instructions for customizing colors, fonts, image background and local zipcode are shown in comments within the CSS styling file: myhomepage.css and the Javascript file: myhomepage.js

12. Import your own background image(s) by putting them into the backgrounds subfolder of the homepage folder.

13. Contact me by FR private mail if you need help with these instructions.

Sample MyHomePage

Observations

I'd be interested to hear your comments on methods you use to managing personal links for your web searches.  Also, let me know this tool's shortcomings.  Later on, I may add more capabilities if there's enough interest in doing so.

I did a search on "build my own homepage" and could find nothing comparable.  I was either directed to links that show you how to create a website, or sites like Start.me that hook you into their on-line page to capture your search behaviors so they can sell that intelligence.

I suspect the search engines and browser creators want to discourage people from having their own personal homepage.  These are commercial enterprises who compete for eyeballs and advertising.  When people use a homepage located on their own computers, the first "hop" of a web search doesn't contain the analytics tags they use to track you.

Of course, there are many ways you can still be tracked -- by analyzing behaviors, mobile location, your ISP, cookies, etc.

While I personally value Duckduckgo as a way to cut through the fake news filter, it's a commercially driven search engine like all the rest.

Google is far superior to Duckduckgo in the quality of business and general interest search results.

We're making progress in winning greater web search choice.  I notice that both Firefox and Google Chrome browsers now allow you to choose Duckduckgo as a search engine option.

In the end, public pressure and competition are the best tools we have to make the Web less commercially and politically biased.  We are fortunate to have Free Republic with moderators and FReepers who police for trolls and see that fellow FReepers follow the rules.

[NetAddicted]

Bookmarked!

[Sdrawkcab]

Nice. Thanks!

[daniel1212]

I just make a document using Apache or Libre Open Office, and use tables and do formatting and create links (Insert function or a keyboard shortcut you can make) and save the document as html and open it locally in a browser. That is how I made pages for our web site, http://www.peacebyjesus.net thanks be to God.

And for Firefox I use the Cynwoody Free Republic Posting Form Enhancer

And BBcodeXtra Firefox extension for posting also (bbCodeWebex for Quantum).

[poconopundit]

Hey Daniel, I was just about to tell you that I couldn’t figure out how it works, but I now see that by signing up for the Firefox add-in, it puts the controls above the Your Reply box. Pretty handy.

[poconopundit]

Hey daniel, I tried the FR HTML enhancer add-on to Firefox.

I think it’s great for people not familiar with HTML. But for me, it didn’t help.

But it was interesting seeing how a browser can insert commands on top of a webpage page form.

[stevem]

BTTT

[poconopundit]

Thanks, Steven. In the months since I posted this, I have been using this Google/Duckduckgo homepage.

What I have discovered is that Duckduckgo is a far inferior search engine to Google. And one reason for that is Duckduckgo needs to make money and so they are much less likely to send you to the best sites because they need to send you to a money making site for them.

The other aspect of this is being able to ask questions in the search bar is a Google strong point. Duckduckgo is a poor replacement for that.

[NetAddicted]

Bookmarked.