For those who work better in pictures, check out the video tutorial. Also, I say below and in the video that you want to change all of the http: references, and that may not actually be the case. Beware of references to CSS style sheets on the web. They're necessary to keep the same look and feel of the doctored up page, so if you all of a sudden lose the look and feel, look at whether you've accidentally changed the references to the style sheets.
Booger your friends this April Fool's Day by doctoring up their usual home page and adding fake stories. Here's how:
- You'll need access to their computer. Open up their browser. The first page that is shown is their home page. If the browser is open already, hit the home button.
- Once you identify their home page, click on View, then Page Source (in Firefox) (or View, then Source in Internet Explorer). That will show all of the html for that page. Copy it and paste it into a text editor like Notepad or Wordpad. Save the file as "april_fools.htm" or april_fools.html" or something like that with either the .htm or .html extension.
- Now it's just a matter of finding what you want to modify. Go back to the page and identify the top story. That's what you're looking for. Go back to the html file you just created and do a search for the headline of the top story. What you should find is something like this:
<a href="http://www.rockytoptalk.com"> This is the Headline for the Story</a>
You should also see the blurb of text previewing the story immediately following that. Change the headline of the story and the text blurb to whatever joke you want to make.
- Next, create a new html file. You can do this by finding the <body> tags and deleting everything between the two of them. Then, insert something between them delivering the punch line. It can be as simple as <h1>Happy April Fool's Day!</h1>. Save it as "punchline.htm" or "punchline.html" or whatever you want as long as it has the extension .htm or .html.
- If you're not working on the victim's computer, you'll need to transfer the new html file you just created to it. Once the new file is on the victim's computer, open it and copy the URL from the address bar in the browser.
- Now, replace every link in the april_fools.htm file you were first working on with the URL of the punchline file so that every link goes to the punchline instead of where it used to lead. What you're looking to replace is the stuff between the quotation marks beginning with "http:// . . .".
- Transfer the april_fools.htm file to the victim's computer. Open it and copy the URL from the address bar.
- On the victim's favorite browser, click on Tools, then Options (in Firefox) (or Tools, then Internet Options in Internet Explorer) and replace the browser's current homepage with the URL of the april_fools.htm URL you just copied.
- Hide and wait.
Caveat. Make the fake stories exaggerated so they don't do anything hasty. For instance, you don't want to reduce the price of their favorite stock by 20% or they might make an urgent call to their broker before they click on anything and realize it's a joke. The one I used on a judge I used to work for (who was a Notre Dame grad and fan) was a story reporting that the NCAA had given the death penalty to the Notre Dame football program.
Leave your ideas below. Have fun.