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| Site Map | Mini-Bio | Gathering | General Index | This story begins in 1998. I was feeling inspired. My friend Andy had done it. My friend Jeff had done it. And my friend (at the time) Tracy had done it. And they had done it in a way that made it look so dang easy. Yes, they had made their own web pages. And I was ever so bound and determined to delve upon the world of the Internet and create my own webpage. I went to Jeff first, being that he knows a Pentium better than the back of his hand. And, so, on 16 March 1998, I sat down and went diligently to work. I am Josh, and this is my web page. As you can see, I can't do this because I'm so pathetic. Vote for Bob Dole, and soup is good for you. And that's it. Heck, it didn't even make it onto the Internet! But, being the determined lad that I was, I soon found an easier way to do it. I was connected to America Online, and they provided an easy webpage builder called Personal Publisher. Using Personal Publisher, I was able to make good looking web sites in a matter of minutes. Using Personal Publisher, I was able to create my very own web page! Woo-hoo! So, on 11 April 1998, I created Vegisaurus' HomePage. The web address was http://members.aol.com/vegisaurus/index.html, and I had a Guestbook and a counter and links and I thought I was hot stuff! The site stayed pretty much the same as time went by, save for the occasional updating. And then on 21 June 1999, I changed the address from /index.html to /home.html in order to use index for the new General Index that I was creating. Scrounging through all my old files for this project, I managed to find a copy of an old version of the site. It's from the /index.html days, though I don't know the date. In the early days, I didn't post the dates on the pages, so now we have no idea of knowing when this is from, although I can confirm that it is from before 23 December 1998, when I removed a bunch of stuff from the site. I've gone and taken the page and converted it to Angelfire and dug up all the old pictures for you, and here it is. Oh, and maybe three of the links might work, so don't complain about that. It's just for show at this point. Since the beginning, the Jurassic Park Velociraptor has always been at the top of the page. Some months after opening the page, the awe-inspiring MacAfee churned out his own batch of funkadelic pages. So, I posted them, and to clearly mark off the MacAfee area from the rest of the page, I used the cute little spinning radioactive signs that I had found somewhere.  Fun, eh? On 13 July 1999, I created the sister site Vegisaurus' HomePage II. I never got much done with it. But it allowed me to create a new graphic. With both sites operating side-by-side, an icon was used to bridge the two. By clicking them, you would link to the other site. Nifty, eh? Also, at one point, a sign was posted informing you that the site was brought to you by JG Enterprises. The green color was to match the background color used for the site (This is before I knew how to make transparent GIFs).  Things were going good, and then the worst possible thing possible occurred! And if you've read any of my other pages made from ex-AOL sites, then you should know that near the end of August 1999 AOL switched from Personal Publisher to Easy Designer/123 Publish, thus making all of my old pages totally inaccessible. I couldn't edit or delete them. So they're all still around, horribly outdated. In fact, the last time I updated Vegisaurus' HomePage was 25 August 1999. And now, thanks to Angelfire, I've been able to recreate this and many other of my old AOL in a form that I'll always be able to access. Hopefully. Vegisaurus' HomePage's function is changing slightly as it's being brought into the Angelfire realm. Back when it began, it was my base-of-Internet-operations. All my web pages were routed through it and it served as a library to them. When I opened the General Index in June '99, the HomePage's use as the library was rendered rather moot. Although it still contained the links to other people's sites, that was about it. After I lost access and went aboard Angelfire, I wound up creating even more places for all the sites. So now, this page will serve as my personal home and not my professional home, if you think about it the right way. The newly revamped General Index serves as my site library, and all other sites are in the Links page connected to the main page. On 11 April 2001, the HomePage celebrated it's Third Anniversary! Go HomePage!! And on 10 August 2001, the counter rolled over to 1000 hits! This is pretty significant since it's not a highly traveled page. 3 November 2001, after exactly one year since I began to rebuild the HomePage on Angelfire, I got ambitious and changed some stuff. "Vegisaurus' HomePage" came to be known as "Josh's HomePage," and gained some new and fancy graphics to back it up. As a result of this, all sorts of links and headers on all sorts of pages had to be changed. But now, we are...  A scant few months later, I began a major process of redesign. The HomePage was to recieve a major facelift! Because it was the home page, after all, I moved the site to /index.html, meaning every page needed to be relocated. In the redesign, one of the things I wanted was a column of navigation icons along the left hand side. I made a few test graphics that I never used. This is one of them: 
It was more or less to test the mouse-over script I wanted to add. When you pass the cursor over the graphic, it "turns on." The center was green because the page's background was still green. The design was improved upon (specifically increasing area of the red "lights") to produce the graphics along the edge of your screen: 
When I did the second version of the graphic above, I had decided to change the whole site's background to grey. Not only did I change it to match the JG Enterprises grey/red color scheme, but it also made things easier to read. In the first graphic, I was also trying to favor the Jurassic Park theme that was carried over the years. I dropped that in favor of the JG Enterprises theme, meaning that the one thing that I'd kept since day one, the velociraptor picture, was ditched. The font face was changed from the default Times New Roman to Arial and every page now uses a graphic for a title, with an Arial Black typeface: 
Now the HomePage melds almost seamlessly my personal and professional lives to produce a much more aesthetic and user-friendly result. It also looks neater, too! The new-and-improved HomePage was recommissioned on 11 April 2002, the site's Fourth Anniversary. Thank you for taking interest in the history behind Vegisaurus'/Josh's HomePage. While I have no plans on revamping the HomePage II, I intend to keep this one up and running for as long as humanly possible. Oh, and if you happen to be wondering whatever happened to the old HomePage, then look no further, for here it is. Vegisaurus' HomePage. Thank you, and have a nice day. Return to the HomePage. Last updated 6 April 2002. ©1998-2002, JG Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
