One pager or multiple pages?

[Eunice]

What makes you decide to do a one-page shrine, or one with multiple pages? Just curious!

[nyxmidnight]

The amount of gushing I can do :D

Seriously, all my shrines start as one pagers. If that single page becomes too long, I divide. I tend to love minor characters, so a single page is often sufficient; however, for a group, like the Manikins, I've made a general page for the generic Manikin and my theories, then a single page for the "special" Manikins: Futomimi, Sakahagi and the Junk Collector Manikin. My shrine to the Sky Doll series is multipage for obvious reasons, and my Vergil shrine will most likely be too because he's a main character and I have lots to say about him.

[Robin]

It generally depends on how much factual content I can find for the subject of the shrine. For minor characters, for instance, a one-page shrine is generally sufficient since they don't appear as much as a major character. I also am influenced by how popular the subject matter is already--if there are many multi-page fansites already for a series or character, I may just make a small tribute instead and not try to include QUITE so much factual information, since I can merely link to a site that does that a lot better. xD (This may or may not be to the site's ultimate detriment)

I see one-pagers as their own sort of challenge--a collection of carefully selected snapshots of its subject matter, as opposed to a multi-page site which is allowed to sprawl out in as many directions as possible. There are good points to both approaches. :)

[dubiousdisc]

It depends on how much I can write about something. If I start writing and when I make the outline I already have more than 5 topics I need to talk about, I can tell that this is going to need several pages, so I act accordingly. Then of course sometimes I start writing thinking that I will be able to fit it all on one page and end up with way too many words and then I must split (story of this site).

I think my cutoff to where I think it's time to have more than one page is around the 5000-6000 words.

So far my reason for writing things as one page has been always linked to how much can possibly be said about a subject (same thing Nyx was saying about minor characters), but I can absolutely see writing about, for instance, a major character on only one page to give a focused view of the topic. Especially when the character is so major that wanting to make a super complete site would be out of the question!

[Todd]

This is an awesome discussion! Thank you, Eunice!

Haha, I love that one pagers have become a standard type of site now. I remember back when I was discussing one pagers with Masao and Larissa, and we ended up having our first one page shrine marathon years ago...

Anyway! I actually do like Nyx does. I build my shrine on one index.html page on my computer, and set headings (h1) for all the articles I plan to write. Once I have everything written, I look at it and access how it should be presented. It could remain a one pager, or I could decide to create menu pages and individual pages. It just really depends on what the content dictates.

[Camy]

Depends on the character, if there's enough to seperate the contents, then I'll do multi pages. Alduin's shrine was close to being a one-pager lol

[Larissa]

Haha, I love that one pagers have become a standard type of site now. I remember back when I was discussing one pagers with Masao and Larissa, and we ended up having our first one page shrine marathon years ago...

Wasn't that in, like, 2009? Where has the time gone... Somewhat hilariously, my first one-page site was 20 years old, and half the reason I named it after that song was because I turned 20 right after opening it. Now I just feel old every time I look at it.....................

Anyway, I wanted to +1 most everything dubiousdisc said and also provide a couple of examples, since those are usually helpful. Right now I've got two one-page sites.

The first one's for Lenneth, the main character from Valkyrie Profile. This site is really just a high-level overview; it introduces the subject and touches on the most important moments from the story. It goes into detail about Lenneth's character and motivations, and her relationships with key characters, but everything else is omitted. I went with the one-page route for Lenneth despite her being the main character in the game she's from because of the sheer scope of the material -- at the time, it was way easier to just focus on the highlights and pull out the most important points from the entire game. And, uh, given that I made this site in 2010 and I still haven't expanded it... (One day, one day.)

In contrast, my other one-pager is about Laguna from Final Fantasy VIII. The thing about Laguna is that there really isn't that much to say about him in the first place. Everything I had to say about the character made it onto that page, and that's why I chose the one-page format. If I end up changing it, it'll only be to make the site easier to read and less wall-of-text.

The point I'm getting at, really, is that any subject can work for a one-page site; it's just a matter of deciding what you want to cover in that space. And then if you figure out that you have WAY too much information to be conveyed on a single page, then it's generally a good idea to split it up, as others have mentioned.

Personally I see a one-page site as analogous to an essay; you've only got the one page to present your take on the subject and you can choose what examples you want to use to back up your point, but realistically you're probably not going to write a single 50,000-word essay. A multi-page site, on the other hand, lets you tackle the material from lots of different angles. (Not that you can't do that on a one-pager, but it's a lot harder, to be sure.)

[Mikari]

The amount of things I have to say, marathons, events and group sites are also an influence but mostly the amount of things I have to say.

[Laura]

I always plan my shrines to be multiple pages because I try to provide as much information as possible on a character, which usually ends up being too much writing for one page. xD I think if I was to make a one-page shrine, I'd probably do it for a character that had minimal appearance in their respective series. Like Ritsu from Fruits Basket; he only appears 5 times total in the entire manga so the amount of content you could create is pretty minimal.

That being said, I love the idea of one-page shrines and how they offer us a chance to create something that may not require as much work as a multiple page shrine. IMO, any shrine is a good shrine and if it encourages people to create them because they potentially involve less effort, I'm happy. xD lol

[Lethe]

Everything that dubiouscdisc and Larissa said including Larissa's two examples: intentionally limiting the amount you cover, or writing about a minor subject.

Like dubiousdisc, I make an outline of my shrine before I start writing, so I go into shrine-making with a clear idea of what I want. While my shrines focus on analysis, a side goal of theirs is always to introduce people to a given subject (especially if I shrine obscure stuff). However, some of my shrines are specifically meant to be an introduction, so those are one page shrines.

There's a lot more I could write and analyze about Claymore (scope), and I could break down the characters and talk about great scenes and amazing game rounds in Liar Game (depth), but I chose not to so as to leave the shrines as relatively spoiler-free introductions while having them feel "complete" in their own way - without stripping them of the themes and analysis parts. (With other shrines, visitors have to stop reading at some point once the introduction part is over, which means they do not get to experience the whole shrine. That's not a big deal, but I write my pages to form a cohesive whole with lead-up and conclusion, so...)

On the other hand, I thought I'd go with a one page shrine for Idike, a minor character who pretty much only appears in one chapter. However, it's precisely because she's so minor that I wanted to say more about her than just what you get to see in the chapter, so the shrine contains a lot more analysis than it does superficial descriptions. To me, it wouldn't have made sense to write an introduction to her character and leave it at that, since her story is over soon after it starts.

Really, depending on your shrining style, I'd put more emphasis on "how much do I want to say about this character?" rather than "how much factual info is there on this character and how minor is their role?".