A link exchange is the oldest deal on the Web. You've got a page nobody knows about. So do I. You put a link to me on your page, I put a link to you on mine, and we each pick up the other's visitors. Do that with forty people and suddenly the Web feels a lot less like shouting into a well.

I'm 41. I keep the computers running for a school district in central California, which means I spend my days crawling under desks, and my evenings clicking on other people's home pages to see what they've built. The Wall started as a links page on my old site and got out of hand. It's the best part of my week, honestly. Every button up there is a real person who made something and wanted somebody to see it.

How it works: read the rules below, put my link on your page, and e-mail me. If you've got an 88x31 button, it goes on the Wall. If you don't, you go on the text list until you make one. Either way you're in.

• The Meade Family Movie Guide — can the kids watch it? Larry will tell you.
• Clip Art Corner — a graphic artist on colors, backgrounds and restraint. Ironic that she's the one without a button.
• Brian's PC Help Page — Windows 98, modems, Y2K.
• Mom's Guide to the Family Computer — one PC, five people, one phone line.
• Tilework — background tiles that actually tile.

1. Exactly 88 x 31 pixels. Not 88x33. Not 90x30. Not "close enough." The Wall is a grid, and one odd-sized button knocks the whole row crooked.
   
   
2. Under 6K. Most good buttons are 2K or 3K. If yours is 15K, it isn't a button, it's a wallpaper.
   
   
3. Animation is fine if it's calm. Twinkles, a blinking cursor, a cat that winks: great. Anything that flashes between two colors faster than about once a second: no. Somebody has to look at the whole Wall at once.
   
   
4. I have to be able to read your site's name on the button without leaning in.
   
   
5. Put my link up first, then e-mail me with: your site's name, the address of your front page, the address of the page where my link is, and your button (attach it, or tell me where to grab it).
   
   
6. I keep a copy of your button in my own space. I don't hotlink other people's graphics, and I'd ask you to save my link text the same way.
   
   
7. Family-friendly sites only. No adult stuff, no warez, no hate pages. My kids use this computer too.
   
   
8. Your site has to have something on it. At least one real page of your own that isn't "under construction." A page that's nothing but other people's buttons doesn't count. (Yes, I hear it.)
   
   
9. Link check is the first Sunday of every month. I click every button on the Wall. If yours is dead, you get one e-mail. If it's still dead the next month, it comes down. If you move, tell me and I'll change it the same night.
   
   
10. If you take my link down, I'll figure it out on a first Sunday and take yours down too. No hard feelings. People redesign.

Confession: I don't have a button right now. My old one was 14K and flashed red and yellow, which broke rules 2 and 3 on my own page, so I took it down. The new one is being drawn. Until then, a text link, please. Copy and paste: