A guide to creating your own website, from someone who makes it up as he goes along......
this page first published by John Wright, 26 July 1997
last update 13 Feb 2002
vintage@jabw.demon.co.uk
E-mail John Wright if you have some good advice for me to improve the jabw-vintage 78rpm website
I bought a Packard Bell 9002 for the kids in Dec '96, and soon had to increase the memory to play FIFA'97 soccer game. I soon got fed up of the Star Trek game and was growing tired of cataloguing my huge record collection on a spreadsheet, so what else could I do......
I signed up on Compuserve in March 1997, surfed the net for a while, wondering what it's all about.
Soon I realised they had supplied me with HPWIZ, a 'simple' tool to publishing a webpage. I found it a little tricky but HPWIZ does work, and very soon I had created my Welcome Page and a Beginners' page, written to attract people to the joys of collecting 78 rpm records.
Whenever I was having trouble updating the pages I found I could turn to the Compuserve HPWIZ forum and they answered most of my questions and problems.
Within a week I was receiving E-mail from record collectors interested in my website. How did they find me ? Must have been from a 'What's New On The Web' facility ? That was fun, receiving my first mail, replying, a real sense of achievement at such an early stage.
More people will find your website if you submit the URL to search engines. In May 1997 I submitted my website to Yahoo and Infoseek, and in November it appeared in the Entertainment...Music...Collecting search section. Soon by searching for 78rpm the search engines that found this site included Excite, AltaVista, Infoseek, Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos.
It wasn't long before I realised that there was much more to publishing webpages and that I would have to learn HTML.
What was HTML ? To understand HTML I resorted to buying a book. At the local PCWorld I found there were many books on the subject of HTML at prices from £10 to £40. It looked like most of them had the same information so I went for a cheap book: 'Instant HTML' by Steve Wright (no relation), Wrox Press Ltd. 1996, at £13.99. This book gives you a step-by-step guide to preparing a REAL web page.
It wasn't too difficult, though there are a few tricks and things from the book that don't work, but like everything else, it's not the same everywhere. Soon I learned to do font types, lines, paragraphs, links to pages and e-mail addresses.
Compuserve Forums were helpful with the updates and now the browser was Microsoft Explorer.
I found out what cache was, and Temporary Internet Files. My computer DOWNLOADS the text and pictures from pages I surf! I don't need to read them while I am connected on the phone! This was a wonderful discovery (back in May '97) which I had somehow missed along the way, and I'd run up a phone-bill of £47 during my second month!
I was struggling a bit with the 'Instant HTML' book when it came to IMG pictures and soundfiles. Then I found out that downloaded pages could be viewed and printed if you put them in another folder, and you could view their 'source' in HTML - you could learn how people did all those fancy tricks with pictures and sounds. Using other peoples 'ideas' on the net is OK, but if you want to use their images, pictures and soundfiles it's nice to ask first, and linking with the source site is usually the deal.
I've learned to do tables and used them in my film lists, and I worked out how to make scrolling frames and for a while re-designed the look of this website with very little effort, but vistors didn't like the frames so I don't use them now.
After two years,because of Compuserve's 5Mb limit on website size, I made the change to Demon Internet, a bit trickier to use and less fancy than Compuserve, but nevertheless my website looks the same...but is bigger!
My first scanner was a DEXXA 4800 Flatbed Scanner. It came with Dexxa software and two other great pieces of software, Adobe PhotoDeluxe and Textbridge Classic OCR. With PhotoDeluxe I was able to take the scanned images or old photos, sharpen and colour them properly, and with Microsoft Paint I was able to add finishing touches to make them presentable on this website. It wasn't easy at first, it needed a few days and a lot of trials playing with the software. See Scanning 78rpm Labels. Now I am able to scan small pictures and make page backgrounds like the sax player on this page. The Textbridge software allowed me to scan paragraphs from books or magazines and quote them. Some spell checking is necessary on text scans, particularly when scanning old documents from the 1930's. I now have a Visioneer Scanner which has produced better images and it's much easier to use!
My first PC in 1997 was very low spec, only 120MHz and 1 gigabyte. With all the software for my website everything began to slow down and it was a real effort recording and playing sound. Now in 2002 with 1GHz and 20 Gigabytes everything runs much quicker and I can record complete 78 rpm records with ease and make CD's from 78's or from cassette tapes. There's a separate page describing how I make PC recordings of 78's
I've made a lot of new friends on the web, and met some of them at record fairs. As well as being easy to find via search engines a lot of record collectors know me because I joined the 78-L group and various Yahoo groups.
By the end of 1999 visitors to my website were running at over 30 per day on average, that's 200 per week, or around 1000 a month, and it appears to settled down at that level even now in 2002. This indicates that the site attracts many collectors but I expect it is visited again and again by many people. This site has received a 'featured site' recognition from both Compuserve and Demon.
For a while that is what my site was - a website for 78 rpm collectors, with pages of information and discussion, sounds and pictures, and the beginners page to try to attract more collectors.
What next ? Well, the most popular aspect of the website is now the 'features' pages especially the tribute pages devoted to musicians, singers and band leaders from the 1920's and 1930's. Most of these pages grew out of enquiries from the musicians' families, e.g. Dan Donovan's grandson, Lew Davis's grand-daughter. Working on these pages is most rewarding as this always leads to new discoveries of recordings, photos or movies that can be shared with collectors. And most people are very pleased to see a webpage devoted to their grandad!
I don't think I can make a career out of the internet. Plenty people have. And plenty people are making money from their websites. But my area of interest is a minority subject. If you look at my pages recommending books, CD's and musical videos you'll see that I've linked these to Amazon. I do get paid a small amount (in gift vouchers) for each item ordered, but that's the only 'income' at present. I remain content with making this website free and available to anyone interested in the vintage music scene and record collecting.
E-mail me if you have some good advice for me to improve the jabw_vintage 78rpm website