..I recently received an e-mail from an old friend I hadn't been in contact with for years. Actually, it wasn't from her. It was from a spambot using her old e-mail address. When I tell you that she used the pseudonym "Capt. Janeway", & you're a fan of Star Trek: Voyager, perhaps you appreciate the irony of it.
I should tell you how we "met" online... And how I was put in a position where I had to learn about building websites. In future posts, I'll discuss what I learned, and how I learned it..
Okay, it all started with my first modern computer. I bought a Compaq presario set, including CRT monitor and printer, back in 2000. For a long time, I didn't even set it up. Finally, I did. But, I didn't have broadband, or cable yet. So, I first took a few courses on how to use the computer for word processing (we used to call it typing, once upon a time..) and using spread sheets. You have to know that, before this, the last computer I used I programmed in Fortran (a computer language from the 1980's, just before programs were being sold by everyone..). I hadn't even touched a computer in between...
So, back in 2000, the next investment was for a cable connection and modem from AT&T ... Which ended up selling it's cable division to Comcast, meaning my e-mail address changed, screwing up Outlook Express settings.... But enough about that!
Once connected to the internet, where to go to? I could go to the various AOL sites (AOL was still big back then) or Earthlink (remember them? The Church of Scientology competing with AOL/Time Warner? Ah, the good old days!). I did go to Netscape and downloaded a version of Navigator, so I'd have a back up browser. But, since most of my browsing was with Internet Explorer, I decided to see what I could find through Microsoft's MSN..
When people talk about social networking these days, they often forget that period when Yahoo! and Microsoft offered "groups".. Which were websites you could build yourself using their programs. Problem was, data storage was at a premium, and only so much was available for free...I'll get to this dilemma later...
Well, you went to the MSN groups menu, picked out a subject you were interested in, and there was a site. Complete w/ message board. Message boards were then, what walls are to facebook. Only, you could have "threads", where you discussed a particular topic, or start a new thread. And the message boards were unlimited in how long you could make a thread, though they were often deleted if not posted in (which is where we developed the habit of *bump*ing a thread, to keep it open).
Noob that I was, I found a group that was not currently being used. So, I "lurked", hoping for someone to talk with. And I posted an "anybody home?" Eventually, some other folks turned up, new to the group site... And one was actually experienced w/ MSN groups! We talked, got to know one another... And grew bored with a group that wasn't active... So, it was proposed that the four of us should form our own group... Except that we had a grander vision. What if each of us had our own group sites, and we called the combination "The Federation"?
Well, yeah. It would possibly put some other groups' noses out of joint, but... That could lead to alliances with more fan groups. We weren't going to dispute rights, just do our thing, and also participate with theirs. We wanted to eventually branch out of MSN, and using links to sites we favored would also mean reciprocal traffic...
All this was still just being spitballed and talked about, when...*BOOM* !
Our senior member just announced that he started groups for each of us! To me, it was like being given the keys to a ferrari, by a stranger...
So, I went to "my" group site, and looked around. I could see that a lot of content needed to be generated. And I'd have to catch up on a few things.
One thing I could do was start a few thread games, like trivia or word games.... And, in the section for photos, I could start adding stuff. Stuff I pirated, I unabashedly admit, from other sites... I also could add photos from my computer. So, I bought a scanner, and started buying fan magazines. I also dug through some of the old fan magazines I had collected from the seventies and early eighties. This is where the storage problems came in...
Each member had to have an email address. Each membership entitled you to only so much free storage, then you had to pay for more. But, there was no rule that you only had to have one email address... or membership! I had already learned about "sock puppetry" from another message board I frequented, so knew about the practice of alternate identities and what kind of benefits they could have. Here, I could take advantage of multiple alts to generate storage space for content! It would make things confusing, if my alts weren't readily apparent to my cohorts, and I chatted with them.
Still, there was more I had to learn. Because the group barebones platform wasn't pretty..
So, I started going to the library, to the bookstores. Bought and read everything I could about website design. Some of the magazines I bought had inserted cds, containing trial versions of Dreamweaver, which was then a popular wysiwyg program at the time. Never mind that MSN groups already used a wysiwyg format for setting up the group sites, I could create pages and drop them in. I also bought an earlier website design tutorial that included a simplistic wysiwyg program at a discount store.
Then , I decided it was time to take a class... And buy my own copy of Dreamweaver (which also included the Fireworks graphic design program).
About this time, I also discovered a MSN group that would review websites, and offer commentary. This was also when I began generating website banners for my group. We'ed create them to trade with other sites on the "Links" page. Turned out that the girl running the review group also specialized in making banners, and was a Star trek fan! So, I joined her group, and did a couple of critiques of web sites. And I joined in discussions there, learned about other groups...
Another thing I did was start going to Star Trek conventions again... I needed content, and thought getting pictures of the stars would be great, as well as reporting on the different events. And I started reviewing new shows that might be of interest, or movies I've seen..
This pretty much summed up my internet activities, and kept me busy, until... MSN decided to get out of the Groups business. Just then, these new upstarts, MySpace & facebook, had appeared. It was a new form of socializing. I, myself had just joined Myspace and Stumbleupon, and had been asked to join facebook (which I didn't think much of at first. Compared to MySpace's "Pimp my profile" features, it was just plain! Little did I know then the genius behind that plainness...).
MSN offered us the chance to transfer our sites to a new Groups site, Multiply. Which I did. But it became more difficult to log into the site. And I was bored with it... So it may still be languishing out there, or gone....
So, yeah that sums up how I learned about things like HTML, XTML, BBC code and wysiwygs....
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