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Help[Facts] Re: Another new feature
in reply to a message by Mike C
Very cool, Mike! It's also interesting to see how much activity on this site has increased with each succeeding month.
Just another suggestion (don't want to make more work for you, but it might be interesting for others here)... I know you started the site in 1966, but the actual recorded "history" of your site appears to begin on Jan. 1, 2000. And then, of course, the archiving started for the month of November, 2000.
Any chance you could include a brief "history" write-up somewhere? I mean, did you have this message board on the site right from the start? You could maybe include the history on the page where you've written about your purpose for starting up the site.
It would kinda fill in the gap of "Dark Ages" between 1966 and 2000. :)
-- Nanaea
Just another suggestion (don't want to make more work for you, but it might be interesting for others here)... I know you started the site in 1966, but the actual recorded "history" of your site appears to begin on Jan. 1, 2000. And then, of course, the archiving started for the month of November, 2000.
Any chance you could include a brief "history" write-up somewhere? I mean, did you have this message board on the site right from the start? You could maybe include the history on the page where you've written about your purpose for starting up the site.
It would kinda fill in the gap of "Dark Ages" between 1966 and 2000. :)
-- Nanaea
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Replies
You asked for it - A Brief History of Behindthename.com
This is actually more like a brief prehistory, since I kept no record of changes before Jan 1, 2000.
The site was launched in early 1996 under the title "The Etymology of First Names". I had just finished a few linguistics courses and I wanted to put something related on the web. It was just one of many websites I created back then, though it's the only one still maintained. The site was hosted under my UVic account (a clear violation of my department's rule that all student websites be computer science related) and the address was www.engr.uvic.ca/~mcampbel/etym.html. If you do an internet search for that address you will still find some sites that link to that very defunct URL. As far as I knew at the time my site was the only one of it's kind. Later I found out that Alfabette Zoope, and perhaps one other, co-existed with me.
I quickly added the core English names, but only made infrequent updates after that. Sometimes it would be 6 months before I did any work on it. The site was getting about 60 visitors per day, which I was pretty impressed with - this was before the big internet explosion. During this time I added some of the supporting pages such as the links page, intro, and references. I also made such great innovations as using links to connect names to other names and adding gender information.
You might be surprised to learn that during the first 3 years of my site's existence I did not own a single name book (I was a poor student). I did all of my "research" (ie writing definitions into a notebook) at the school's reference library. Several notebooks were filled with names and definitions.
In mid-1998 I finished university and had to move my site. I settled on the local ISP Pacificcoast.net. The address was www.pacificcoast.net/~muck/etym.html, and once again you can find several sites that still use this link.
This is actually more like a brief prehistory, since I kept no record of changes before Jan 1, 2000.
The site was launched in early 1996 under the title "The Etymology of First Names". I had just finished a few linguistics courses and I wanted to put something related on the web. It was just one of many websites I created back then, though it's the only one still maintained. The site was hosted under my UVic account (a clear violation of my department's rule that all student websites be computer science related) and the address was www.engr.uvic.ca/~mcampbel/etym.html. If you do an internet search for that address you will still find some sites that link to that very defunct URL. As far as I knew at the time my site was the only one of it's kind. Later I found out that Alfabette Zoope, and perhaps one other, co-existed with me.
I quickly added the core English names, but only made infrequent updates after that. Sometimes it would be 6 months before I did any work on it. The site was getting about 60 visitors per day, which I was pretty impressed with - this was before the big internet explosion. During this time I added some of the supporting pages such as the links page, intro, and references. I also made such great innovations as using links to connect names to other names and adding gender information.
You might be surprised to learn that during the first 3 years of my site's existence I did not own a single name book (I was a poor student). I did all of my "research" (ie writing definitions into a notebook) at the school's reference library. Several notebooks were filled with names and definitions.
In mid-1998 I finished university and had to move my site. I settled on the local ISP Pacificcoast.net. The address was www.pacificcoast.net/~muck/etym.html, and once again you can find several sites that still use this link.
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code of arms
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Wow!
2.5 million hits per month??? And 120,000 new visitors per month? Who knew? That's *amazing*!
I really hope you put this history up permanently somewhere on your website, Mike. Those stats are staggering, to say the least, and it was intriguing reading how your site was one of the first of its kind.
Many thanks for the background!
2.5 million hits per month??? And 120,000 new visitors per month? Who knew? That's *amazing*!
I really hope you put this history up permanently somewhere on your website, Mike. Those stats are staggering, to say the least, and it was intriguing reading how your site was one of the first of its kind.
Many thanks for the background!
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Oops! I meant "1996" -- not '66. :)
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