August 2015 marks the 20th year that this site, in some form or another, has been on the web.
It all began back in August 1995 shortly after I got my own copy of Windows 95 following several hours in line at a electronics retailer in Piscataway, NJ. After getting back to Italy a couple of weeks later someone mentioned a site called GeoCities to me because they knew I was into geek stuff.
So I went home, checked out GeoCities and spent all night creating the beginnings of what is now this site.
The first iteration was called Another Windows 95 Links and Resources Page.
I was teaching myself HTML and that first version of the site was just a single page full of links centered on the page. I even remember its web address – SiliconValley/Heights/1094/. The fledgling web had all kinds of pages that were sharing information about the recently released Windows 95 and so the name I picked fit in with just being another one of those pages on the web.
The site went through several changes in those early years as new technologies arrived to enhance the web viewing experience and it was a blast learning about them along the way.
Eventually the site got its own domain in January 1998 when GeoCities began offering a program where they could re-direct a domain to your GeoCities address and so the first official domain name, AnotherWin95.com, went into action. I still own that domain and it is now re-directed to WindowsObserver.com.
That domain remained in use for just over 8 years. However, in early 2006 we had seen a couple of new versions of Windows released and the Windows 95 name was becoming dated. So in February of 2006 a new domain, WindowsObserver.com, was registered and has been the Internet home for this site ever since.
From those early days of updating the site by editing the HTML source code in Notepad, manually curating the collection of links and hosting a software repository it has all come a very long way.
The site has now been using WordPress as its backend for about 9 years. While it still requires the manual creation of content, the database management capabilities of WordPress and its modular plugin structure allows so much flexibility and customization that the site is leaps and bounds beyond the way it appeared 20 years ago.
Progress is oh so good.
As I close out this small remembrance of the last 20 years I can not tell you how much I have enjoyed bringing this site to everyone.
I know it has not been as active over the last 6 months since I started contributing to the SuperSite for Windows but plans are coming together to begin delivering new content to WindowsObserver over the next couple of months. By the way, despite not receiving a lot of new content throughout most of this year, the site traffic levels continue to be steady and in fact, August traffic is a full third higher than any other month this year.
Of course, this has been and will continue to be the home of The Observed Tech PODCAST and its listenership continues to grow. Despite a few unplanned hiatuses it has still been published while I have been writing at the SuperSite for Windows and the plan is to continue bringing you that show to talk Windows and other things tech.
My thanks to all of you for making this a tremendous journey over the last 20 years and I look forward to the next 20.
