For those of you interested in learning more about me, I thought I�d try a page I'll call "the making of the DonnaOnline website."
Anyone else, I trust, can find their "back" button.
My name is Donna. I am currently surviving as an "at home" mom - in an attempt to raise children that I can stand as adults, and due to the support of their father, my husband Craig. Since I do not enjoy soap operas or cleaning house, and have whittled down my volunteer time, I decided to pursue web page design as a hobby. In my on-going search for "what I want to do when I grow up", I have found this pastime very interesting.

I decided to try creating web pages when I got a scanner. Of course, I have many pictures that I love, but my diligence in putting them into photo albums diminished when those cute boxes that fit hundreds of photos became easily accessible... I got some photo software, and had such fun working with the photos on the computer, that I decided to look into sharing photos on the web. That led me to my internet service provider�s free site offer. It was a site where everything is done for you, the creator just points and clicks, basically. I thought this was a great way for relatives that don't often see each other to share a bit of their lives. It was a private site (invited members only), in case there was discomfort at putting a child's photo on the "web". Although it took awhile, others played along, the site had participation from overseas, and it was so exciting to see a photo of a new relative within hours of his birth!! However, I stopped updating it, and heard nothing about it being missed, so I guess the idea fizzled.

The annoying sign-in requirements for that site, as well as its unfriendliness to any webTV users, led me to creating pages that could be viewed by anyone with access to the web. So, I started teaching myself basic HTML. I studied the options available at the time for free site hosting, and signed up with a server called �Go2Click� (basically I liked the way the address turned out better than other offerings -- its not like I knew what to look for in their service offerings!! Duh!!!)
I had fun experimenting with pictures and backgrounds, and clipart, and animation, and.... well, the result was educational for me, but not a very pleasantly visually consistent site! BUT I WAS PRACTICING!! This free service also had various tracking reports available, so I learned a lot about the visitors my site got, how they got there and why; learned about Meta tags and search engines, download times, file compression, photo file adjustments, CGI, java script... I made a great (if I do say so myself) photo-intensive site to showcase a cub-scout event we were involved with (taking care not to have close-ups of the young scouts without permission). I also had fun creating a web slide-show format of family pictures for a friend of mine. I was hooked!
Go2click shut down their free web-hosting in November 2001, so that was the end of those websites.

I had in the meantime checked out some other free web-hosting offers, and have tried different services (Our family.com, Bravenet, Freeservers, Tripod, and Geocities). I used Tripod's free service for more than a year, compiling quite a few pages, but decided to ditch that recently due to their addition of more ads and popups. That led me to this current geocities (yahoo) site that you see here. The geocities ad is separate from my pages, and can be diminished. The only thing I'm missing so far is that they don't accept ".ico" files, which eliminates the "favicons" I was having fun making!!
Although I haven�t yet ventured out of the �free� zone, I have purchased two domain names (thinking I would get "official") -- but I can�t come up with one I like enough to pay hosting fees for. Good thing that names are reserved for a minimal fee!

Well, as in everything, the more you know, the more you find out you don't know! I am mainly self taught in the web technologies that I use. I have a strong interest in web application development, and perhaps will find something to do in relation to this. I have equated my internet interest to the same joy I get when entering a library (so many books! so little time!!), so perhaps its the availability of information that so fascinates me.

Comments, constructive criticism and suggestions for new content and topics are always welcome!

So many people; so much diversity. What a web.

I thank you for sharing your time with me.

Peace.