Ultimate Blog Party: My Internet History

I got this idea from Noellium. I don't know how interesting anyone else will find it, but it's the kind of thing I find fascinating. LOL.

1997 -- We first got the internet. We had AOL, and I mainly used it for the instant messenger. I liked to chat with my boyfriend, and see if I could trick random boys into believing I was the girl in the photos I found on various websites. (I changed my screenname almost weekly to avoid having to talk to anyone twice.) I also had a very basic website made with AOL's sitebuilder.

1998 -- My step-father dumped AOL and got an ISP called, I think, Flash.net. I was so angry because I thought I couldn't talk to my friends. Then I discovered AIM and all was well. On Flash.net I also had a very simple webpage. I couldn't tell you much about it since at the time I only enjoyed making sites, and then abandoning them. At this time I discovered the Straight Dope Message Board -- the very first message board on which I ever posted. I continued posting there off and on until 2003 when they began requiring paid subscriptions. (Don't know if they still do.)

1999/2000 -- During my freshman year of college I took advantage of the student computer lab, including making a webpage on my student account. During my second semester I took an extremely easy (and boring) computer class, and was assigned to create a webpage with certain attributes. Cringing, I added the required number of animated .gifs to my page and received an A.

During this same time several things were happening. One was my discovery of a message board called MissGirl. Initially my interest was in trying to give rational advice to girls who were much too young to be engaging in sex, but were anyway. Eventually I became more interested in the Web forum, where many of the girls were getting websites on the new Envy.nu and creating "online diaries" on Diaryland. (Some people were using the term blog, but I thought the word evoked bland "Site Updates" pages or links logs.)

The second thing that happened was that the lab monkeys in the student computer lab began making fun of me for using Netscape's site builder instead of writing my own HTML. So I decided to learn HTML. I was extremely frustrated that though I had managed to figure out what codes did what, I could not figure out where on a website I was meant to enter these codes. None of the tutorials I found explained this at all, and it was only after many tears and aggravated screams that I discovered how to write my code in Notepad and then upload pages to my site. Once I had managed this I created my Envy.nu site, with frames containing my Diaryland diary. I had a black and white Liv Tyler layout made with a photo I scanned from a magazine. (Copyright law, not my forte at the time.)

Late 2000 -- Now that I had dropped out of college and was working, I decided to spend some of my hard-earned money getting my own domain. My very first domain was slowly.org. My friends were constantly accidentally going to a porn site when mistyping my domain. I also installed a CGI journaling script called The Journal Script. (Still avoiding that word "blog"!) I started moving my entries from Diaryland to my new script, but didn't finish until much later. I installed the first of many message boards that would be installed, hardly used, and uninstalled. (I always called my message boards the same thing: The Bored.)

2001 -- After dumping my fiance and deciding that I no longer knew where I wanted my life to go, I bought a new domain called unidentity.net. (Yeah, it was kind of a rip on unadopted.com.) Part of the idea was that my ex-fiance didn't know where my site had gone.

Sometime during this year I was introduced to Linux and GIMP by my new boyfriend. I LOVE GIMP!

2002 -- Frames were becoming a thing of the past, and I no longer liked mine. As an alternative I decided to learn enough PHP to allow me to dump my frames without having to edit multiple files whenever I made small changes to my layout. I learned PHP the same way I learn many things. I started out with a basic tutorial from WebMonkey which taught me that PHP went between tags, that PHP and HTML could be mixed in the same document, and how to write a basic "Hello, world!" script. From there I abaondoned the tutorial method in favor of deciding what I wanted to do, learning the specific functions I needed to know from php.net, and implementing through trial and error. This is how I taught myself everything I know about PHP.

As I taught myself to use includes, my new fiancé constantly pestered me to learn to write my own blogging script and dump The Journal Script. I told him that it would be too difficult -- and then I did it. My favorite thing about learning PHP and MySQL was discovering that I could use Diaryland's formatting options to format my old entries as SQL queries -- allowing me to insert them right into my database. For my new blog I designed a layout that actually used colors and graphics, practically unheard of for me.

Around this time I also wrote a PHP/MySQL gallery script to run my online photo gallery.

Also this year my (by then) husband decided to start a webhosting company. That never really took off, but ever since then we have had our own dedicated server, which we use to host our websites and those of friends and family.

2003 -- For my birthday I decided to buy myself a new domain name, since I no longer felt uncertain about my identity. Happily secure in my new role as wife and mother, I bought my current (and probably final) domain, usr-bin-mom.com. I created my Song of the Cebu layout, which was available as a skin on my site until recently. Later I added comments, which I had never had on any script previously.

This year I also wrote and released my very first script, The Pregnancy Script. The name is, of course, an homage to The Journal Script. I have used that same naming scheme with every script and ticker I have released. As a follow up, due to user's request, I wrote and released the less popular The First Year Script.

Towards the end of the year I wrote the Build a Blog tutorial for CodeGrrl.com, teaching other female coders to create their own PHP/MySQL blogging scripts. (By now I had accepted the word "blog.") Unfortunately because I had a new baby and the homeschool year had begun, I never finished writing as many installments as I intended. I did manage to get through enough to create a functional blog, and other coders added more installments later.

2004 -- I wanted to create a webring for people who had coded their own blogs, Powered By Me, but felt it would be silly to host such a ring on any of the webring sites. So I created and released the mildly popular The Webring Script.

2005 -- I don't recall any major events in 2005. Mostly I blogged and read blogs (especially about pro-life issues), made small improvements to my blog script, posted on mommy message boards, and worked on small scripts to help manage my housework.

2006 -- Now that I spent much of my online time visiting mommy message boards, I wanted to create an interesting signature. Recognizing my limited graphic design skills, I decided to go with my strength -- coding. I learned how to create dynamic images using PHP and GD. My first application was creating graphical signatures which displayed random photos of my children and changed quotes either at random or in time with holidays. Once I felt confident in this new skill, I created my most popular release ever, The Abortion Ticker. This ticker was so popular that eventually it threatened to take down our server.

I wrote a blog for my oldest daughter, completely password protected, so that she could keep in touch with friends when we moved to Arizona.

I don't recall when I first joined MySpace, but it was probably in 2006.

2007 -- After my husband bought me a digital camera for my birthday, I began taking photography seriously. I participated in a Photo A Day Challenge (blogging one photo each day for a month), joined a couple of photo memes, installed a more powerful photo gallery to handle my 5,000+ photos, and began reading photography blogs for tips. Also this year I participated in the first Ultimate Blog Party from 5minutesformom.com, and actively promoted my 7th blogging anniversary.

2008 -- So far this year my blog is seeming more and more like a photoblog. I did a small redesign so that readers can choose to view the "regular" blog, the photoblog, or both together. I have also participated in many photo memes. I'm participating in the second annual Ultimate Blog Party, and hosting a giveaway for my 8th blogging anniversary.

My most recent coding accomplishment was The Links List, basically a Mr. Linky type feature that I coded into my blog just a few days ago. I love Mr. Linky, and I have no intention of competing with him, but having this feature built-in provides several advantages to me: I can have as many Links Lists as I want; they are permanent and fully integrated with my comments system; and I can easily turn them on or off for any post within my admin script. Also, since I am using The Links List to run a contest right now, and may do so again in the future, I included the ability to pick a random winner from any list. All I have to do is enter a list, hit "Choose," and it displays one lucky winner's name, url, and email.

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