First-time visitor? You may want to Click here to read the story thus far.
I can not recall where we met the guy who would be our first link to the net, nor can I remember his name. All I remember is the company was called "Powernet", and they had a multi-level marketing scheme for Internet dial-up accounts. I think I have blocked out much of what took place with these people because they left a sour feeling in my gut. I wish I could remember details, but they say the mind is the first thing to go.
Regardless, we had worked out some sort of arrangement with PowerNet to place our server on their bandwidth. At that time, it was a blazing fast ISDN line. (128K... yeah baby!)
We had yet to come up with a name for our web site. We batted around every cliche in the handbook, attempting to make compound words out of all the common new-tech words.
net
global
wired
village
community
dot
world
and so on...
We mixed and matched words every which way and finally settled on WorldVillage. The philosophy was that the net brought the world closer together, ergo, a village. To this day, I'm still not crazy about the name. But I've had it so long, it is like a child to me. WorldVillage.com... hmm.. does have a BIG sound to it, doesn't it?
We now needed a design for the site. In those days, everyone used HTML 2.0 to code their pages. We didn't yet have tables or frames to display things all pretty. Most pages were one column of graphics and text. But we knew we wanted a visual display of the site contents. I asked Josh Williams, an extremely talented young designer, to whip up a quick prototype of WorldVillage. This is what he came up with.
The game area would be represented by the ufo. The educational software reviews would be located in the school house. Multimedia Mountain contained CD-Rom reviews. You get the idea. Visitors would simply click on the location of their choice to be instantly transported. Image maps are old school now, but they were very cool and hip back then.
Ken began coding a layout for our initial pages as we hoped to go online in Summer of 1995. The picture was coming into focus.
to be continued...
It's Del.icio.us!
Furl It!
