homestarrunner.com
From Homestar Runner Wiki
- This article is about the website. For the YouTube channel, see homestarrunnerdotcom. For the personal website of Homestar Runner, see Homestar Runner's Website.
homestarrunner.com is the URL of the website and primary home of the Homestar Runner body of work.
Contents |
Structure
The index page is the first page one sees when visiting the website, and displays recent updates, merchandise, Tweets from @StrongBadActual, and a link to a randomly selected Main Page (of which there are currently 27). The Main Pages, which are the main menus of the site, split homestarrunner.com into six main categories: Toons, Games, Characters, Downloads, Store, and Email. A few of these categories host subcategories such as Strong Bad Email and Teen Girl Squad. The Main Pages also link to the Museum, the Weeklies, recent site updates, the toon First Time Here?, and the rest of the Main Pages.
Outside of the frame, the rest of the screen is simply black, with a round border around the Flash files. Some toons use this black space to their advantage, such as the Strong Bad Email virus, in which Strong Bad runs outside the frame, or flashback, when Strong Bad extends the boundaries of the screen to reveal Homestar Runner, who says he's usually "behind the black". Below the frame is the navigation bar, which has small links to various sections of the site, functioning as a more condensed version of the Main Pages on almost every page. Most toons have previous/next buttons above the navigation bar, indexed by toon category. There are other site components as well, embedded into Flash files so that they are rarely accessed on their own.
The site is navigated mainly via Flash menus, currently emulated through Ruffle as of the post-Flash site update on December 31, 2020. Many of these menus have a specific theme or gimmick, such as the TV Time Toons Menu, which is listed on a TV Guide-like magazine, and the Downloads menu, which looks like an ATM. Most menus have an interactive aspect to them. The Main Pages, for instance, have certain events that play when the cursor hovers over each button, and the Scrolling Shooter Games Menu takes the form of a vertical scrolling shooter video game.
One unique aspect of the website is the abundance of Easter eggs. For example, clicking the last digit of the copyright date on any of the Main Pages takes one to the Homsar Main Page, and clicking "Eject" on the VHS player and clicking the "Homsar" tape on the Character Videos page will play Homsar's Character Video. The majority of these Easter eggs can be found in toons. Some of them require clicking on something while the toon is playing, but most of them can only be found once the toon has ended. Sometimes the clickable area will change when the cursor is hovered over it to indicate an Easter egg, such as the red letter "D" turning yellow at the end of Hremail 7, but usually there will be no indication of an Easter egg beyond the cursor changing. The "Tab" button on the keyboard can sometimes be pressed to locate Easter eggs; however, this functionality is not present in the Ruffle versions.
Another unique aspect is the loading screens. The main sections of the website generally use the same loading screen: the Homestar Runner logo hovering up and down against a white background. However, specific toons often have a more unique loading screen, usually relating to the toon itself. These loading screens occasionally say something besides "loading", such as "load", or even no text at all.
The page titles are ordinarily different than the toon or menu name, and frequently contain jokes. For example, the index page has the page title "Everybody! Everybody!", which is the lyrics to the intro song. Since the post-Flash site update, page titles are followed by the subfolder name (if applicable), the page's actual name, and the name Homestar Runner.
Hidden among the website are various secret pages, ranging from toons never added to the main list, pages intended to be found, and unfinished toons. There have also been secret pages removed after fans found them, such as If I Ran the Camera.
Subdomains and Folders
The website also hosts several subdomains. These include:
- podstar.homestarrunner.com, which hosts the menu and files for Podstar Runner
- trogdorboardgame.homestarrunner.com, a subdomain for updates and information on Trogdor!! The Board Game
- new.homestarrunner.com, which displays a redesigned HTML version of the index page that was eventually abandoned
- old.homestarrunner.com, an archive of the pre-2021 Flash site
There are also a few folders within the domain:
- "stinkogame", the folder housing Stinkoman 20X6
- "sadjournal", which houses Strong Sad's Lament
Filename Conventions
On the old Flash site, many of the page files (.html files) and Flash files (.swf files) for the main features have consistent naming conventions. For example, the page file for a Strong Bad Email is "sbemailX.html", where X is the email number, with a handful of exceptions. The same goes for Teen Girl Squad (tgsX.html), and Marzipan's Answering Machine (answerX.html).
Toon URLs, however, are less consistent. Sometimes, the page file relates to the toon. For example, A Jorb Well Done is "cantsayjob.html". Usually, the Flash file will have the same filename as the html page, but there are some exceptions. If this is not the case, the Flash file may be found by viewing the page source and reading the filename from the line that includes "<PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="FILENAME.swf">". Many URLs end in the number 2.
Since the post-Flash site update, URLs for toons consist of the file directory (such as /toons/ or /sbemails/), followed by the email number (in the case of Strong Bad Emails) and the toon name, written in lowercase with any spaces replaced by dashes. The Flash filenames remain the same as before, and can be found in the line that includes "<embed id="embed" class="embed-responsive-item" src="FILENAME.swf" loop="false" menu="false" quality="high" width="750" height="545">".
Domain
The domain was registered on December 6, 1999 by Harmless Junk, Inc. Its IP address is 72.10.33.178.
The website was originally hosted by Yahoo!. It was so popular that it wildly exceeded Yahoo's bandwidth limits and was moved to Sagonet. Around October 2006 it was transferred to Caronet. Currently, the site is hosted by GoDaddy.
Other Domains
Harmless Junk, Inc. also hosts other domains, including videlectrix.com and thoraxcorp.com 
mild language — both based on companies within the Homestar Runner universe. The domain name whatthepfargtl.com was registered based on the toon Sbemail 169 Deleted Scene, but the site was never set up and expired April 30, 2008.
Email Addresses
- See also Email
"@homestarrunner.com" email addresses, both for real-world people and fictional characters, have been listed on the site. As of 2015, their use has been reduced.
- brotherschaps@homestarrunner.com was the personal email address of The Brothers Chaps, the creators of Homestar Runner. This email address was removed from the site in late 2015, and as of 2023 sends an automated reply stating that it "isn't so much of a valid email address no more".
- strongbad@homestarrunner.com was the email address for sending Strong Bad Emails, appearing at the end of nearly every email cartoon. Beginning with sbemail 206 in 2015, emails instead ended with a prompt to "tweet to email strong bad" via the Twitter account @StrongBadActual.
- DJmankiewicz@homestarrunner.com was the email address for sending Hremails to Homestar Runner, introduced in email thunder. Emails receive an automatic response from Homestar commenting on the "big cavalcanche of emails" he is receiving.
- Two Halloween toons solicited votes for viewer's favorite costumes using specialized email inboxes. Although both addresses are inactive, simply returning bounce messages, they are still linked from the toons.
- halloween2000@homestarrunner.com was used in Homestarloween Party. The end screen asked viewers "Which costume was your favorite? Click here to let us know.", with "here" opening a blank email to this address.
- ween@homestarrunner.com was used in The House That Gave Sucky Treats. At the end screen, viewers were directed to vote for their "favorite costume"; clicking a character would automatically compose an email to this address with a humorous subject line and pun relating to the chosen costume. The winner was revealed in the DVD-exclusive toon Halloween Awards Show.
- costumes@homestarrunner.com and punkins@homestarrunner.com were used to collect costume and pumpkin photos, respectively, for a contest announced via a a 2009 Main Page pop-up. Prizes were awarded to costumes in Fan Costumes '09 and to pumpkins in Punkin Show.
Browser Support
HTML Validity
homestarrunner.com does not pass the W3C Validation Test, at least not on many of its pages. This is mainly due to no DOCTYPE and because it uses the EMBED HTML Object (which is is not valid HTML 4.01; flash satay must be used in order to bypass validation errors.)
Mobile Browser Support
Prior to the December 31, 2020 update, the website was not fully supported by mobile browsers, as it was made up almost entirely of Flash files. However, the site could be fully viewed on Android devices until 2012, when Flash Player support was discontinued for Android. It was suggested in Flash is Dead! that by circa February 2016, the website (or any future additions to it) would be in HTML5 format. HTML5 is not only more secure, but its video format is supported by some mobile browsers.
In late 2017, The Brothers Chaps started on an HTML redesign of the site. This redesign was much simpler and uses embedded YouTube videos instead of Flash content, with links to the old site, as well as links to other non-Flash content such as the Store, the YouTube channel, the HTML5 TROGDOR! game, and the @StrongBadActual Twitter account. In addition, selected toons and Strong Bad Emails could be viewed from mobile devices via official YouTube uploads, and a few toons released since 2016 had been posted on the site in embedded YouTube video format.
On December 31, 2020, the redesigned website was updated to use Ruffle instead of Flash, allowing the entirety of the site to be viewable on mobile devices for the first time since 2012. In addition, the website has received some optimizations for mobile devices in order to improve the layout of the pages.
