I control my friends web domain, what pranks can I play on him?

May 18, 2011 2:40 AM

I have control of a friends web domain. Any good ideas for some (good-natured) pranks we can play on him?

Nothing malicious, harmful or mean. Ideas that are fun or interesting.

The domain is pointing to my server. I can't edit the DNS records, but I can do anything else.

posted by xanderbeedle to computers & internet (13 answers total)

I don't think we can answer this without knowing more about the domain. And I don't think I would WANT to give suggestions without knowing what kind of web site it is. For example, if this is a site about his/her interest in furry troll dolls, I would say "go for it, anything is fair game", but if this is a web site honoring his/her lovely deceased grandmother, I would tell you not to mess with it.

more info please.
posted by tomswift at 3:04 AM on May 18, 2011

FBI seizure notice?
posted by atrazine at 3:07 AM on May 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

Build them a 1994 style personal home page, complete with blinking multi-colored text, crappy animations and midi music.
posted by crabintheocean at 3:09 AM on May 18, 2011 [7 favorites]

You should make this conditional based on his IP address, so only he sees it.

Take a look at http://bieber.ly/ Float Justin over his site with Javascript.

Reverse proxy another site on the top of his.

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html
posted by Leon at 3:11 AM on May 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

He doesn't have a website at the moment. It's just the domain for email, and so his site is just a blank white page right now. Looking for something fun to do with it :)
posted by xanderbeedle at 3:29 AM on May 18, 2011

How about a simple redirect to something strange. Changed on a daily basis.
posted by tomswift at 3:59 AM on May 18, 2011

See, a dead webpage wont get crawled and indexed without reason (or time). Doing anything more than a redirect will either take too much time to get quality practical joke traffic, or be something that will really be not worth the time.

With that said, outsource. Get his mom to make him a youtube video about him not calling and visiting. And now he's even gone and gotten this web page without even telling her... Is he spending too much time on this interweb thing and not enough time finding anyone? She'd like to be a grandmother someday - she may not live forever... yada yada yada...

Give him something sentimental, yet minorly depricating showing his family wishing him good luck with his website.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:53 AM on May 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

I second crabintheocean. Try to get a hold of an awkward middle school photo and put that up. Then figure out a regrettable/nerdy/embarrassing phase he went through and create a GeoCities page that looks like it was made as his tribute to whatever silly pop culture fad he went through for a short period of time.

Obviously, not knowing your friend I can't recommend anything specific, but pretty much everyone had a phase like this in their early teens.
posted by graphnerd at 6:40 AM on May 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

This only works if you are local to this friend and can visit him. Next time you're in his bathroom, hold your camera phone up near the ceiling and take a high-angle shot of the room. Then create a web page that features that photo with the title "Live Web Cam" above it. Bonus points for adding details to make it more realistic, like adding a timestamp when the page loads.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:36 AM on May 18, 2011 [4 favorites]

Fantastic idea :D
posted by xanderbeedle at 7:54 AM on May 18, 2011

i like burnmp3's idea, you can add additional "live" cams of his bed, etc...
http://www.degraeve.com/live/
posted by fozzie33 at 8:17 AM on May 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Naturally, anything you do will be indexed forever. And assuming your friend doesn't put up a site of his own, your joke will continue to appear in search results for a long, long time.
posted by ryanrs at 10:47 AM on May 18, 2011

If you add a "live" cam of his bedroom and the walls are bare, be sure to enlist a Photoshop wizard to add embarrassing decor. (E.g., Justin Bieber poster, sex toy on the nightstand, etc.)
posted by Hylas at 1:08 PM on May 18, 2011