The main page — References & Easter Eggs

Let's take a look at the main page. That is, the page shown after clicking “There”, with the gallery and all.

Burning wizards

No, nothing to do with The Wicker Man. In the page header, an endless stream of wizards are heading towards flames. Clicking the “Just Wizards” text will cause them to move more quickly for one second. Hovering over the flames reveals the hover text “Wizards are disposable… right?”

Visual captcha

The captcha is a spoof of a misunderstanding of disabilities, articles that are needlessly available as audio, and captchas in general.

The text displayed in the captcha has some resemblance to the QWERTY layout of keys on most keyboards, but this was probably just from me struggling to think of what the captcha should contain.

Filling in the text field for the captcha is by and large an unremarkable process. However, if you fill it in successfully then change the alert field to “i hate you”, it will say “Well now I’m not doing it.” There’s some flexibility in this check, so you can insert intensifiers and use uppercase to your heart’s content.

If the captcha is filled in successfully and the alert field is either left at the default or not changed as described above, a low-quality copy of Rick Astley’s famous Never Gonna Give You Up plays, in typical rickroll fashion.

No smoking

The “no smoking” signs in the background were added due to this website being an entry for the Game Breaker’s Toolkit Jam, as the theme was “no”… hence “no smoking”. Michael Rosen’s “no breathing” would’ve been funnier, but oh well.

You may notice they scroll… strangely. I thought that having them scroll down and to the right at half the speed the rest of the page’s contents scroll upwards might cause some form of motion sickness, but it doesn’t do anything for me, so I guess it’ll remain as a quirky design.

7

When in gallery image #7, hovering over the 7 at the top reveals the hover text “7 is my lucky number”. It is in fact many people’s lucky number.

I don’t personally perceive any numbers as being particularly lucky or unlucky. Certainly there are numbers we’ve created connotations for, but that’s all I see in them.

You’re a wizard

If you type “wizard” into the page, Hagrid will say “you’re a wizard, Harry”. This is from the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This can be done anywhere on the page — it doesn’t need to be in a text field.

FAQ & footer

There’s not a great deal to say about these. They’re basically just filler. *proceeds to write multiple paragraphs anyway*

WhoisGuard was protection Namecheap, my domain registrar, offered at one time for a small fee but by then for free. It is now “Withheld for Privacy” instead — a far less catchier and self-explanatory name.

Without it, my full name and address would have been on full display, which would make me uncomfortable. I believe there are cases where privacy should be compromised, such as if someone is hosting illegal material and not cooperating, but it should not be a free-for-all for randos on the internet to have access to.

Fortunately, such protection is pretty much a given, these days. ccTLDs may still expose your details, but gTLDs should be fine — check before registering. The level of protection varies between registrars — for example, the Whois data for justwizards.me, registered with Namecheap, claims I live in Iceland (I don’t), whereas the data for javacakegames.com, registered with Cloudflare, correctly narrows down my location to Angus, UK.

The “Want to sue me? Don’t” in the footer is because there could conceivably be reason for one to sue. The Windows XP startup sound is loud and the website contains some unlicensed copyrighted material. It’s low risk, but some of these companies can be ruthless. In the event I receive a DMCA takedown notice, either on itch.io or directly, we’ll assess the future of Just Wizards from there.

Continue your wizard journey by seeing what's all the time, or visit the full post at blog.javacakegames.com