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April 1, 2025

Online For 30 Years

April 2025 marks 30 years that I've had a website. That was only two years after the first web browser was released! When I arrived at NC State in 1994, I found that my dorm had a computer lab in the lobby. I didn't have my own computer, so that was pretty neat. Even more amazing was the fact that these computers were all connected through something called the World Wide Web, and I could communicate with anyone else who was on this internet superhighway using Z-mail and Mozilla. I could also learn about anything imaginable by going to people's websites. It wasn't long before I wanted to have my own website, and that happened in April 1995.

My first hosting server was through the university at eos.ncsu.edu. I wish I had my original website files, but they're long gone. It was harder to copy and save files back then, and I didn't think it was worth the effort. USB was still years away, and everybody had stacks of 3.5" floppy discs.

One of the first things I added to my new website was the genealogy research I had done on each of my grandparents. It was a convenient way to share my research with genealogists and long lost cousins that I met online. Over the next three years, my website continued to grow.

I graduated in 1998, and my website needed to find a new home. I found this nifty site called Angelfire that would host my site for free! Using the Way Back Machine site, I can look back at how lonely and sparse my website looked then. The earliest capture of my site is from April 1999 (click for link). My photos page proudly proclaimed 70 old family photos online! Each one is listed individually, and you can click the description to view it. Not bad for 1998, but today I have over 4,000 online photos in a searchable table with filters.

Screenshot of my homepage from April 1999.

I created the tree icon in 1994, and I still use it as a logo.

I stayed on Angelfire until 2006 when I bought my own domain, webjmd.com. I didn't know anything about how to manage my own server, but I kept tinkering with it until it worked. I still feel like I don't know how the hosting works, but somehow I keep adding new bells and whistles.

My biggest accomplishment came about three years ago when I figured out how to overlay my custom maps onto Google Earth and display them online. A year later, I discovered a way to stitch multiple images onto one map, and that gave me a scalable platform for sharing the work that I've done to map Wilkes County land grants. I've never seen another genealogy project quite like it.

I've created an email list that people can join to learn about my latest genealogy discoveries and as a way to be notified about my upcoming history presentations and hikes. If you want to subscribe to my monthly email, send me a message (jason@webjmd.com) or click the link below.

Comments? Want to join my mailing list? Email jason@webjmd.com