Personal home pages have always been a popular thing for web browsers. However, recently Iowa State students have been gaining recognition for creating home pages for people other than themselves.

Last year Tory Waddingham, a senior in liberal studies, made a home page for the “Menards guy” — the guy who does commercials for Menards. When Waddingham began the page last year, he had no idea that the page would get such a huge amount of attention.

According to Waddingham, the page was originally created as the result of a picture collection. Whenever Waddingham saw the “Menards guy” on television, he took pictures of him.

After a while, Waddingham decided that he wanted to do something with all the pictures he had accumulated, so he used the pictures to create a web page for the “Menards guy.”

“The main picture was taken from another web page,” Waddingham said.

Most of Waddingham’s information about the “Menards guy” came from other people. Waddingham made a section on the page specifically for browsers who wanted to add their opinion or new information about the “Menards guy.”

Throughout his research Waddingham learned interesting information, such as the fact that the Menard guy’s real name is Ray Szmanda and he is from a small town in Wisconsin.

Waddingham was surprised by the information and responses that came from the browsers.

“People seem enamored about the fact that someone would bother to make a page about something like that,” Waddingham said. “A lot of people are interested in him and want to know about him. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion of him.”

When Waddingham originally created the page, he got responses not only from web browsers but also from the “Menards guy” himself.

WGN, a radio talk show in Chicago, interviewed Waddingham over the phone and then let Waddingham and the “Menards guy” discuss the page.

“He asked me if I had any other questions I needed for my page,” Waddingham said.

Since his radio encounter with the “Menards guy,” Waddingham has continued to receive e-mail about his page and questions about the Menards store.

“People think I’m some kind of Menards expert,” Waddingham said. “If they have problems with the store, they ask me because they don’t know where to direct it.”

Matt Livens, a junior in pre-business, hasn’t gotten to talk to former Charlie’s Angel Cheryl Ladd; however, he has received his share of attention for his Cheryl Ladd home page.

According to Livens, a brother of the one of the characters from the T.V. show “Simon and Simon” called him with questions about Cheryl Ladd.

“He wanted to know if I knew Cheryl Ladd’s publisher,” Livens said.

Although many people may think the only reason Livens created the page was because of a love for the show, Livens said he had other motives.

Livens thought that if he created a page about a celebrity rather than a student, the page would get more viewers.

“When people go on the Internet, they’re looking for a subject,” Livens said. “I thought it would be an interesting page.”

Because of his success with the page, other web sites such as “Women Celebrities,” “Cool Entertainment Links” and a local site entitled “Celebstuck” have asked Livens to include his page on their sites.

Ben Cunningham, a senior in management information systems, and Amy List, a senior in marketing, are co-founders of “Celebstuck.”

The collection of pages on the “Celebstuck” site were mostly accumulated from pages of women celebrities Cunningham and List found on the web.

“We went through and found women celebrities, wrote to [the creators] and some of them wrote back,” Cunningham said. “Livens was one that wrote back.”

“Celebstuck” was founded because Cunningham and List saw a need for a page that could give browsers easy access to celebrities.

“We took something we knew was popular and tried to expand on that,” Cunningham said.

According to Cunningham, it’s beneficial for a page to be added to a site such as “Celebstuck” because of all the extra traffic.

“The people want to be on our page because our page is fairly popular,” Cunningham said. “If we get traffic, they get traffic; if they get traffic, we get traffic.”

Waddingham’s “Menards guy” page can be found at http://www.public.iastate.edu/tory/menards.html, Liven’s Cheryl Ladd page can be found at http://www.public.iastate.edu/mlevins/homepage.html, and “Celebstuck” can be found at http://www.webstuck.com