Acknowledgements and history
I began designing and constructing my own personal web site on June 24 1996, as a result of a workshop that had been presented by University of Windsor IT Services. I made use of Netscape Composer as an editor. The site went on-line on November 10 1998. I continued working on it intermittently, until my retirement in July 2000.
At the time of my retirement, I transferred all my folders and files to a zip drive, and took them home. For some time I became very frustrated at my failure to access the directory in which my files were stored, until I finally figured out that the problem was simply caused by an inconsistent use of upper case letters! In the meantime, University IT Services had moved all personal web pages to a different server.
I had been advised to use Domino Designer - a programme used by IT Services for most of its "official" pages. However, I found this package to be incomprehensible, and very user-unfriendly. I am currently sticking with Netscape Composer, as I understand it, and it does what I want it to do. I completely revised many of the pages, and added several new ones, and these were published on the Internet on April 1, 2001, for public inspection.
Now that I am well into my retirement, I do have somewhat more time at my disposal, and I am in the process of updating and revising many of the pages, and adding new ones. In December 2001 I acquired a web editing programme called Web page construction Kit, but it doesn't have the flexibility that I need.
For a while I tried a free commercial site.
Sue Braiden (http://www.tinman.org)
had given me a list of five sites that provided free hosting, and after
comparing them, I decided to try
http://www.freewebhosting.com,
but it didn't provide enough storage space, and I
started getting a lot of unwelcome spam. I am now
however managing
to figure out the nature, purpose and characteristics of
the Winstock ftp programme that I have on my computer.
Finally, in November 2004, Allan
Laporte recommended that I edit my files using Netscape
Composer, but that I
transfer them using WS ftp. I found a web page at Wellesley
College in Massachussetts (http://www.wellesley.edu/) that provided clear and easily
understandable instructions for this ftp programme,
After some more
frustration, and some invaluable help from Allan, I finally
managed to transfer some successfully, Now, in March 2005,
I think
that I'm back in business! The next step will be to figure out
how to make my site searchable on the Web.
December 3 2005: It would appear that
my site is now searchable on the web, because during the past few
months I have received several e-mail messages from people making
family history enquiries, and they all said that they had found my site
through a Google search.
August 2008: I had some
difficulty publishing my new and revised pages, but it now seemsd to be
working again, thanks to assistance fom the HelpDesk. I have
begun a major initiative torevise and expand my site, partly because
everyone is telling me that I should join Facebook. When I
started thisd site twelve years ago, it hadf a purpose similar to
Facebook today. I could have gone dfown in history and made
millipns as the inventpr of Facebook, but I didn't think of it at the
timer. Anyway, I prefer the Intenrnet approach that I still use,
as I feel it is more flexxible.
February 16 2009: I have just spent a couple of months updating
my science fiction page and Robert Silverberg bibliography and blog.