On 5th March 1996 the initial pages of the Hugo Junkers Homepage were published at the World-Wide-Web. The project started as a simple test to learn, how Word-Wide-Web Publishing works. There was a good chance to start with another theme, i.e. politics, music or something else. However, the simple reason why it became the "Hugo Junkers Homepage" and not the "Bob Dylan Homepage" was, that I read a book about Hugo Junkers the evening before and that I just had generated a handwritten type designator list of Junkers aircraft, which I found a good challenge for my first HTML steps.
There were no editoring tools available and therefore I used a classic notepad editor of MS Windows, which I still use today for most of my pages. The few basic HTML statements were quickly realized and testing was done by loading the file into my Internet Explorer or Netscape Browser.
But how to get the page online? My Internet Provider Compuserve supplied up to 1 MB of webspace to its customers, which was enough for the first 20kBytes of the initial page. A special upload program needed to be used for publishing. For those, who remember the cryptic URLs of those first days, here the Hugo Junkers Homepage was found for the first time:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hzoe/ju_home.htm
and that's, what it looked like first in March 1996:
No banners, no pictures, no deco backgrounds ... just simple and plain HTML structures were most often used on the early homepages. The reason for that at the Hugo Junkers Homepage was surely the incapable webmaster, who did not know, how to program elegant homepage designs. But for the most homepages the reason for simplicity in the mid-90s were low download speeds at the World-Wide-Web with 12kBit maximum modem speed. Most WWW surfers had switched off the loading of images, as this reduces the transfer rate and costs a lot of time ... mostly valuable for nothing. The hunt mostly went for information, not images or designs in these early period. And so did the Hugo Junkers Homepage ... a simple page with just textes formated in standard HTML statements.
Running for the Contents
The initial contents of the Hugo Junkers Homepage was as spartian as the page layout was. There was just a doted list of Junkers aircraft designators with a brief description, what type of aircraft it was and when it was first flown, from time to time a link to some external pages, which refer to that type.
Initially it was intended to extend this form of contents. Instead I started a second page in March 1996 called the Willy Messerschmitt Homepage in the same style and I was planning a series of homepages refering to the best known German aviation companies. In addition to the company's aircraft designator list in April 1996 both sites were extended with a Junkers Biography / a Messerschmitt Biography and a Company Profile. Like the designator List both new Sections were more or less rudimental. In May 1996 a further section was added with Literature References, which was mostly compiled from my private library as well as from the first online book shops of those days. That was the initial end of the development of the Hugo Junkers Homepage.
Adding an Email address? What for? However, I saw, that most homepages offered an Email address and so did I. I was surprised by an increasing number of Emails during the next weeks with questions to more detailled informations of the different Junkers aircraft. Initially I answered those Emails, but by the time I had written in-the-depth descriptions of most well known Junkers aircraft and I decided to extend the Junkers Homepage with these descriptions.
In September 1996 I made the important decision to extend the current list contents systematically with further informations on all aircraft types. This extension was planned for both, the Junkers and the Messerschmitt Homepage. However, it was never started for the second one. It took at least three month to get a basic contents with descriptions of all Junkers aircraft types and in November 1996 the first major and pheraps most important extension was finished. During the following months several new sections were introduced:
- Nov 1996: Museum Section (still the best-visited section of my page)
- Dec 1996: Engine Section
- Dec 1996: General Themes Section (this and that around Junkers)
- Feb 1997: International Activities of Junkers
- Feb 1997: Junkers Flight Simulator Section (first downloads from my site)
- Feb 1997: Junkers Production Lists
Most of these sections started with simple layouts. The Museum Section i.e. was just a list of Junkers aircraft with serial no., registration and their location ... no photos, no history, just an aircraft list. The Simulator Section was a first experiment to get people to my page, who are not really interested in the Junkers history, but in flying those old aircraft on their PC.
May 1997: A new Page Design
After one year of contents developement it was time to get a little bit of face lifting to the layout of my page. I decided to introduce a background and to solve the problem of the dark blue letters on a dark violet background. A ringbook scan was selected as the background image,
which gave the illusion of reading in a conventional book. The basic background color was set to cadetblue, which mostly fits with the blue Junkers color.
It was also the time, when banners were more and more found on homepages. So the top of each page was headed by my Junkers Homepage banner with a stylished photo of Hugo Junkers and the flying man - the Junkers company logo.
I also experimented with some navigation buttons. Initially a register was fitted right to the banner at the top of each page. One might click on a register clip and the corresponding page was opened with a new subregistry, where you might select other subthemes. But this navigation registry was just online for a short while. When selecting a register clip, a new image with the new subregistry had to be loaded. Even if such an image file had just a size of 20kBytes, it took 10-20 seconds just to load the navigation bar with the typical download rates of 1000 kbits. On the other hand most surfers had still the image download disabled at that time and got in trouble, when they did not see the navigation bar.
Therefore the initial navigation bar was changed shortly after being online to a more simple, button oriented design below the Homepage banner. And that's, what the Hugo Junkers Homepage looked like in January 1998, when the experiments were finished:
Together with the new page design an Impressum Page and a Link Page were introduced in May 1997 for the first time.
Further Topic Developements:
Following the design improvements several new sections were introduced. Some initial simple pages were strongly extended and divided into separate sections:
- Jun 1997: Junkers Airline History
- Jul 1997: Junkers Model Kit Page
- Jan 1998: Junkers Companies, , Junkers Biography improved
- Jan 1998: Junkers Photo Gallery
The Hugo Junkers Homepage still contained no photographs, just a few very small card images and a few images, which were loaded from other sites. One reason was the missing scanner, which did not allow to get photos from anywhere ... books, postcards or paper photographs. The other reason was, that nearly half of my webspace was already used for the current pages and digital images were not compressed enough in those days. And finally, downloading of images would cost nerves of the visitors due to the low download speeds. However, the might be vistors, who enjoy looking pictures at the word wide web, like I did. Therefore I decided to introduce the Junkers Photo Gallery, which was nothing else as a link list to Junkers related photographs at other pages. That kept my homepage amount small, gave interested visitors the opportunity to have a look to pictures, but finally still provided a quick loading page.
Improving the Bidirectional Plattform
The Hugo Junkers Homepage opened a world wide discussion plattform to me. 20 to 30 Emails per week were received, mostly with questions, some with their own Junkers stories or contributions and with ideas, how to improve the contents of the page.
But I liked to extend that communication plattform. Already in July 1997 I introduced a Vote Form for the first time. Visitors could leave their oppinion about the Hugo Junkers Homepage, could favorize their favorite sections and could address further improvement ideas and votations for a follow up site (which until now, is still pending).
A discussion forum was also introduced for test proposes. I was using a guestbook for that service. However, most users seemed to have difficulties in using that environment for discussions and so the Discussion Forum was already closed again September 1997.
A first Webcounter counter was already introduced in August 1996 on my top page. Now
I introduced a number of furhter counters during 1997. They enabled me to trace the number of visitors in the different sections. With the introduction of the Impressum Page in September 1997, I also introduced a statistic section on my page.
Additionally a HTML Gear Guestbook was introduced at the Hugo Junkers Homepage in September 1997. It worked fine for years, but meanwhile daily spam droppers are visiting those guestbooks and destroying them with dozens of spam entries. So with the 10th Anniversary of the Hugo Junkers Homepage, the old 1997 Guestbook will be removed and a new one will be introduced.
Improving the existing Contents
The year 1998 became the year of the most significant improvement of the existing contents. Nearly all sections were reviewed and massively extended. More facts, more details and initial photos were shown at the Hugo Junkers Homepage.
Support came up from all around the world. In July 1999 I published a first article from third party side of Mimoso e Carvalho, who had supplied a set of photos from Alverca in Portugal. Further third party articles followed during the years. Third Party Support allowed my to focuse on to new themes, where I had no experiences, i.e. the Model Kit Section, which was greatly supported by Charles Green with a large database in August 1999 or the Philately Section, which was supported from various sides and was introduced as the last significant section in May 2000.
April 2000: Again ... Redesigning
The internet technology was quickly improving in the final nineties ... 32kBits, 64 kBits and ISDN were coming up in half year steps. Download speeds were significant enough to load midsize pictures. That brought the initial registry clip back into my mind. But also HTML had improved a little bit and now offered frame technology. Using that technology led to the current layout of the Hugo Junkers Homepage in April 2000:
A navigation bar was introduced at the left side of the page. The top frame contained the Homepage banner and some sublinks according to the section, where you are. The main frame is reserved to the contents pages. I also introduced a little CGI programming (really just a little, little code) to change buttom colors, when the mouse moved over the buttons. A new background was also introduced with the new page design, the Junkers Logo Background.
TOgether with the new design also a Search Function by Picosearch was introduced. During the following month again nearly all pages had to reviewed to transfer the pages from the old to the new layout. The review was almost finished in November 2000.
Changing the Server:
Nov 2000 - WWW.JUNKERS.DE.VU is born
June 2001 - Move of the Hugo Junkers Homepage
The new millenium brought the domains ... a nice invention to address URLs in more human like language. You could spent money to get your .de domain, I decided to go for a free provider denicvu and I am still today satisfied with that decision. For six years the Hugo Junkers is now reachable through the domain name
WWW.JUNKERS.DE.VU
which is not to be mistaken with the German Junkers site WWW.JUNKERS.De!!!!
The introduction of that domain name for the Hugo Junkers Homepage was the preparation for a larger task, the movement of my complete site. At the end of the nineties Compuserve lost more and more power ... AOL and T-Online were market performers and I had already changed my Internet Access to them in 1999, but still kept Compuserve as a provider of my homepage. Meanwhile the free space was extended to 5 MBytes at CompuServe, but even this amount was already reached by the contents of the Hugo Junkers Homepage. So the time was ripe for a move. Using the new domain as a link would prepare my frequent visitors to find the page at its new location as soon as it has moved.
Several providers with free homepages were available, most of them did not offer opportunities to publish free pages, but forced their users into their own environment. Others just of 1 MByte or less more, which would not be capable to pick up the 2001 size of the Hugo Junkers Homepage. Others were cryptic in their handling, were poor of performance or forced their users to integrate massive and dominating advertisments on their pages. Finally I decided to join the Geocities.com group.
It took three month from March to June 2001 to move the complete site to the new server. Since March the Hugo Junkers Homepage was located at:
www.geocities.com/hjunkers/
and on 2nd June 2001 the old site at Compuserve was switched off with a final link page, which routed visitors to the new Geocities location. The Compuserve Site was completely turned off somewhere in 2002 or 2003.
From the beginning, the new site was divided into several subsites. I had already started to use Geocities.com in the end of the nineties, when I started to publish images at my site. I placed these images into a geocities site, used as a file server and loaded the images from my former Compuserve site. Of course I continued to use this storage area, even when the storage base at Geocities.com was increased to 15 MBytes. I opened new subsites for storing the large Flight Simulator files and the increasing number of Junkers Museum Photos. Meanwhile the Hugo Junkers Homepage is divided onto seven storage areas with more than 100 MBytes of storage volume all over the net.
Further Contents Improvement
With the new space the contents was further extended. A lot of reviews were made in all sections of the Hugo Junkers Homepage with new textes, new images, new links to other pages. As a new feature the Junkers Flightplan 2001 was first published in June 2001 offering a list of all Junkers memorial flights of that year.
In 2002 Geocities limited the free homepages. First of all foreign access was limited, that means, that images in a storage area could only be accessed by pages in the same storage area. That forced me to distribute my page far more, than I liked. Further limitations were introduced regarding the amount of download volume. When the amount is exceeded, the page is not accessible for further visitors. The first limitation was dropped after a while, however the download limit is still operational today and fustrate visitors from time to time with the Yahoo page, which is coming up instead of the Hugo Junkers Homepage. That's the price visitors have to pay for a free homepage.
To overcome these restrictions, I decided to break down my large pages into dozens of smaller pages. The advantage for the user is a quick loading of the section, he is looking for with just the images, he might like to see. The advantage for the webmaster is, that the site traffic is a little bit reduced as the visitors are just loading 20kBytes files instead of 100 or 200kBytes files of which they are just reading less than half.
However again, that meant a massive redesign of the Hugo Junkers Homepage, but this time not from the outer appearance, but from the contents structure. The work started in January 2003. The pages were not only broken down in several smaller pages. At the same time an aircraft oriented structure was introduced. That meant, all sections (Aircraft, Production Lists, Model Kit Section, Museum Section, Literature Section, etc.) were combined for one aircraft type together via a button link line on the top of the page. That's the structure you know from the current site. It took until December 2003 to finish this structural redesign.
The year 2004 was the year of the renewal of Junkers Facility Section and the Who is Who Section. The local production plattforms of the Junkers Companies were introduced in that time. Also the vertical structure was stepwise added to the page, that means, you now have one entry point via the aircraft and a second entry point via your topic of interest (i.e. the Flight Simulator Section).
Only a few updates became available in 2005. One was focused on the Junkers Airline History, which was completely renewed since its first appearance in 1998. The second was focused on Junkers Philately Section, which also saw its first major extension since its introduction.
After ten years of developement the Hugo Junkers Homepage has changed its face several times. It was never intended to make the design a state-of-the-art design. The major approach is useability and information. The optical appearance is important, but secondary. Introduce, what supports the primary targets ... all the rest, if it is an easy-to-win run or drop it. Therefore the Hugo Junkers Homepage might not be a typical private homepage of today. It has absorbed several state-of-the-art techniques of earlier days and still use these techniques together with more modern methods. Probably you might compare it with an often restyled old luxury liner.
Tenth Online Anniversary
In January I thought of the tenth anniversary for the first time. Initially I was intending to simply forget that date. But then I thought of those very early days of the www in the mid-nineties and the massive developement of the web during the last ten years, which also could be traced on the developement of the Hugo Junkers Homepage. I decided to take the opportunity to recall these early days of the WWW developements at the 10th Anniversary of my Hugo Junkers Homepage. I also like to thank you all visitors of my page and all those guys worldwide, who provided tons of informations about Junkers from all over the world! The Hugo Junkers Homepage developement was just possible through the massive support of our worldwide friends. And a final greeting to all webmaster friends from the other sites, greetings specially to those, who had started their homepage projects in those early days as well ... and don't forget your anniversaries!
The Hugo Junkers Homepage 1996 - 2006
Ten Years of continious Developement
*** Check also ***
Statistic Figures
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