12 Years and Counting

It has been 12 years now since I first pushed the floppy disc into the 486-16 megabit computer to make the 28K connection to Axion dial up. It wasn't long before I found free web site hosting at places like Tri-pod and Geo-Cites. Using their built in editors to make one and two page sites. Not yet knowing what FTP was. Geo-cities if I remember correctly used to let you FTP files but, they cut it out after I had built the Family site. This meant I had to use the single file upload method if I wanted to work on the site. There's no going back once you learn how to FTP, which is short for "File Transfer Protocol".

After a year or two I found Netobject Fusion a WYSIWYG HTML Editor but, not before I used Front Page Express and Publisher. - What You See Is What You Get - editors are good to a point. Back in the 90's I used Netobject Fusion all the time. Not sure how the search engines viewed a site made with NF or any other WYSIWYG editor but one thing is for sure, times have changed a great deal! The first time I used Netobject Fusion it was Version 2.0 and I am sure I only used the demo.

It was not until Version 4.0 that I ordered and bought Netobjects Fusion. It was a lot of money back then, after exchange, I picked it up here in Canada for just under $500.00 dollars. I did get a bunch of valuable bonus's like the graphic's program I still use today. It is still a hundred dollar Graphics program to this day, and well worth it.

I always kept my Netobjects Fusion license up to date and paid for a few upgrades to Version 7.0. It was around this time that I had an issue with my license number. I tried to buy a rather expensive upgrade from Digital River, all of sudden they claimed my license was a promo from someone. I had no idea why this was happening. The trail of upgrades can be documented by receipts back to the purchase of Version 4.0.

Why would my licence number become a promo when I had clearly spent some serious money over the years on Netobjects Fusion. This was not a good experience, so I moved on and started using Coffee Cup. An incredible web site building editor that is normally around $50.00. They have many other software titles to build a complete Webmaster tool kit. You don't have to spend money on software, there are many quality free programs and open source projects.

When I started using Coffee Cup's HTML Editor , it only did HTML code, no WYSIWYG. It would show you a preview of your HTML and that was an excellent feature in it's day. I just downloaded the latest version (Oct.31-2006 release), they call it 2007. It is very up to date and can convert HTML pages to XHTML for you. Using Coffee Cup keeps your knowledge level up where it should be if you are going to build web sites. It is also fairly easy to learn, lots of built ins, graphics, web templates.

I will fast forward through the Network Marketing years where I joined just about every company you have heard of on the Internet. I am sure the network marketing type business model works for many people but it wasn't for me. It cost me many thousands of dollars to learn my lesson. There were of course many scams that got my money too. If you are every thinking about joining a business that using Network Marketing to sell their product I would suggest you stick to the reputable companies that are running a legal business. There are a few and they do have some good products. I know of one that I would join again because the products are unique but most importantly, the business is completely legal. Most multi-level schemes are not legal but some are. The first step is to find out if they are legal. There are thousands of people that still join scams daily.

For over a year (2006-2008) now I have been involved in the content management system call Joomla. Basically it's a website you can control with a backend office area. Your site will also have a front-end log-in area for members or users of various types. This software is database driven. The main reason for using this type of system was to solve the biggest question customers had in the 'old' days. 'Can I make changes to my website', the answer was always the same, ' not unless you know how to do HTML or use the same Software I used to built your site with'. With a system like Joomla this problem is solved and the customer can make daily changes to their content. You will be able to do a lot more as you learn how to use the Joomla content management system. It is not easy at first but you will pick up speed with practise and daily use. 

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