Forum Moderators: mack
Many books later and the discovery of WW I was well on my way.
What got you started and how did you learn the tricks of the trade?
Mack.
Exploded from there.... That was in maybe 1994 (not sure now....) It's still the same sort of FUN. I don't expect it to ever NOT be fun....
Things have changed. Many competitors. A lot of money being invested in SEO in the niche. Glad I got a relatively early start.
Started with a WYSIWIG editor. I could recognize the code bloat and the lack of flexibility almost immediately. Couple of books and lots of surfing later I was able to create a validating page. On to PHP/MySQL.
I still consider myself a beginner. Always nice to benefit from the wisdom of those that frequent these boards.
WBF
One day the boss came in and said "We're putting up a website. Figure it out."
… and here I am.
I'm just now getting round to use the 'puter for the reason I bought it in the first place, making music!
Talk about getting sidetracked.......
For those who don't know, the web was invented at CERN, so as you can imagine, the web was (and is) everywhere there - and working the night-shift meant that I had very little actual work to do other than being present. But, I had a UNIX workstation, a shell account, a personal web space and a copy of Netscape 2, and so I delved in to find out just how this web thing worked.
Eight years later, and I'm still messing around building websites for fun and profit, and I still love the technology and everything with it.
In 1996 I bought this OEM PC (Pentium 90) for $1050 and run out and sign up for AOL. That's what everyone else has. Right? So I get somewhere in their "community" that talks about having your own personal web page without any knowledge of HTML.
So I, being the DIY rebel I am, said, "To heck with that! I'm going to learn this HTML stuff! Ha!" So I got [u]Using HTML 3.2[/u] at the college book store and I haven't been the same since. My boyfriend, who is now my husband, would get me web design jobs while working desk help for the local ISP.
Yes, he still gets me work while out there doing computer consulting. I don't mind as long as he doesn't try to choose the CMS himself.
I played around with it a little for years, but never really got into it because I didn't figure I had anything I really needed to share with the rest of the world via a web page.
But then I got a job with an employer who needed someone to create a new site for them (but who couldn't afford someone who had actually done it before ;) ). So I got to play every day at work!
Since then I've learned a great deal (mostly from here). I've created two ecommerce sites for others, one for a university, a site for a charity, and am working on my first site just for myself--which hopefully will be the first of many money-making sites.
But mostly I do it because it's fun!
When I saw that BBS's were going the way of CB radio, I closed shop on the BBS and went looking to see where all my BBS users were disappearing to.
The Internet. The World Wide Web.
Got a "free" Internet email account (no web space) and Internet dialup account with my university computer system account and started poking around. Pretty cool, very informative, highly addictive -- just like the BBS community I was familiar with.
Based on my work on my BBS, I was approached by a local (small) ISP who needed to drive more traffic to his site. He offered me free web space if I'd create some pages about travel and tourism opportunities in the area. I could do whatever I wanted with the rest of the web space.
ME: "But I don't know HTML!"
HIM: "Well, now seems like a good time to learn, doesn't it?"
End of story. Total addiction ever since -- fun, enriching, first a corporate career and now a self-employed career (The Internet's not my business, per se, but is a crucial aspect of it.) And I'm only 30.
Always looking out for the next new thing because I was so glad I got started learning about BBS's and then the Internet early. Watching technology and its social impact evolve is endlessly fascinating to me. Participating in that technology and its social impact is the addictive and fun part, for me.
I met my best friend/husband online in 1988 on his BBS. We've been married since 1998. Gotta love technology!
I'd already done 'proper' programming (PL/1, C++ etc.) before, so HTML wasn't too difficult to grasp, but to be honest, I kind of fell into web development more by chance than design.
and I still love seeing my work on the web.
:-)
Patrick Elward
I'm 24, love my job, and make more money than any of my friends (who all completed their 4 years of college, while I decided that 1 semester was good enough for me). Can't complain.
I started out as a psychology major, but do I really wanna be a shrink? And look at the job market.
Anyway, a little story...
I was at a new friends house one day. He just got a DSL connection. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him web development. His eyes sort of glazed over and he told me that he though that must be pretty boring. I told him that's not so. And to prove the point, I got on his PC and opened up notepad.
First, I showed him the <html> tag. I explained that this is how the browser knows that html is coming. Next I showed him the <title> tag and then dragged the saved notepad doc into a brower. Neat he thought, afetr seeing the new page we created.
I then proceeded to show him some text tags, background color tags, simple table tags, a href tags, etc. I really had him going. I finished with some <img> tags and added some images he liked.
Now the final thing I showed him blew him away. I ftp'd the stuff to one of my servers and told him that now all the stuff we just worked on was public for everyone to see. He had hundreds of questions, which I tried to answer, and I told him to get a good book on html and have at it.
Well, to make this long story shorter, about 4 years has gone by, and this guy is totally hooked on putting up web pages. Some of the stuff he does is actually quite nice. He has gotten into javascript, db stuff (ASP), css, the whole shebang.
I got him hooked. And that's pretty much how I got the bug too. You see immediate results for your effort. And That is what is so cool about it.
If there is something out there you don't know about, the whole web is open to you to find out. Once you're hooked. your a goner.
After a few weeks of wandering around the web and getting used to having email I went to see what this "chat" stuff was. The first chat room I went into was full of web designers having a ball building spoof wweb sites. Within a few days I'd gone beyond playing with html whilst chatting and built my first spoof site. Shortly afterwards I built a personal site, then one for a friend, then one for another friend's company. Within a couple of months I was too busy to do sites simply as a favour.
The first time I saw his webpage and how he developed it I was hooked. My parents hadn't Internet at the time so I sat in school lots trying to develop my own webpages..
My first page was a PC Gaming site, it was quite terrible with a black background, a logo and menu made based on WordArt in hideous colors, I remember it so clearly because I found it on a disk a year ago.
That's how I got started :)
The limitations crushed me, but I was definitely hooked. I went from general interest, to specific interest, to starting my first web company, to my second, to my third...
Then I decided to take my small publishing business online and see what "e-commerce" was all about. It was mostly training for me since I never sold much, but I learned about CGI/Perl scripts, flash, and dreamweaver.
That complex site impressed someone at an interview, and I was hired by a company to deal with their web reporting software called Actuate. I became fluent in ASP and JSP and reading from databases.
Then I had a great idea for an on-line software application for a niche market and set about really learning ASP and databases. Took me a year of writing before it was on the market, and after three years on the market I'm just about to start doing it full time.
What began as a hobby has given me the tools to be creative and entrepreneurial. it's a puzzle to solve, and I'm continually making improvements and learning.
And I can do it in my bathrobe and fluffy slippers.
I carry no inventory, have minimal overhead, and deposit checks every day.
I love it!
Two and a half years later I arrived in Dresden for a semester in Germany. I had a lot of free periods in my timetable so I trotted off to the Rechenzentrum (computer labs) to see if the web had changed since 1994. I was staggered by how much it had changed. Within days I had discovered Geocities, the Advanced HTML Editor and I had typed my first <h1> tags. (Wow!)
I decided to write a website and treat it as a work-in-progress project.
I didn't think I'd still be developing the same site seven years later, but that seems to be how things have turned out, more or less...
No, of course it's not still on a Geocities webspace...
I often wonder where I'd be if he had the time! I'm so thankful he didn't because it captivated me immensely. I was clueless. Okay.."I'll get that CD" and sign up on this server thing he mentioned. I was ready to go..pop in the CD and let's go! It didn't work. I expected magic.
I still do everything with MSFT FP..yea the code bloat is there but the load time is better than 90% in my line of business. Few know how to optimize(may not be the right word) images and they are key in this business.
It's the power of creation and being my own editor that fascinates me the most. I dabbled in print submissions over the years but always got--it's not for us but thanks anyway. Heck the typewriter fascinated me when I was a kid 35 years ago. I can only imagine where I'd be if PC's were around then.
Is the internet in heaven?
Bought several books on HTML first site in 2000, first ecom site in 2002. Still remember getting my first order I was close to tears!
Still remember getting my first order I was close to tears!
It's an awsome feeling aint it. :)
Mack.
