During the first three months of 2000, I focused on changing the Georgia State flag out of concern that the design of the flag demonstrated support for racial segregation. In January and February of 2000, this website hosted the content for "www.RestoretheGeorgiaFlag.com" when I bought that domain and put an automatic forward to this free site. After one year, the domain certificate expired, and the focus of Lavender Central steered away from the flag issue. Most of what remains of this feature has been transferred to a companion geocities site (geocities.com/romerodep2), but is linked from Lavender Central under "embattled flag."
Between 2000 and 2004, Lavender Central underwent formatting and content changes and gradually grew from approx. 18 webpages to 40 individual pages by the end of 2004. In July of 2001, a webpage devoted to drug policy reform was created and drug control policy became the most prominent theme of the site behind the United Kingdom travels.
After moving to Washington, DC in August of 2002 and taking up a job where I had constant access to a computer, the Lavender Central of today began to be conceptualized. One major change was the introduction of photo "albums" that featured recent images taken just days or weeks prior. This was an exciting new development since earlier photos on the site had to be scanned in and were usually dated by more than two months. From 2002 to 2004, the homepage background colour was a shade of purple or deep blue. Prior to the summer of 2003, the homepage layout had not changed much. There were several thumbnail images spread out on the page that were matched up with links to webpages. Many of these thumbnails dated back to August-September of 1999 and reflected what each webpage offered. During the summer and fall of 2003, the index (home)page of Lavender Central underwent major layout changes. These included eliminating the thumbnails, scattered links and extraneous text in order to line up links to individual webpages in a column on the left side of the homepage.
Since January of 2004, the website has grown and changed the most. The "latest news" feature was introduced on 10 February 2004, and "news archives" were created on 27 December 2004. Two lavender coloured strip images were introduced to the homepage in August of 2004 and the current (January 2005) appearance was perfected through the fall of 2004. Several websites were updated, including drugpolicy.html, and others like becoming.html/became.html "the way we were" have been introduced. Additionally, a growing collection of my research papers, journal entries and reflections were made available in late November 2004 as downloadable documents from Lavender Central.
On 18 January 2005, the domain "www.lavendercentral.us" was purchased for two years, and visitors to that address are forwarded to Lavender Central. This arrangement reflects how Lavender Central has grown and persevered over the years. From May of 1999 until January of 2005, the site was run free of charge. However, this has changed since the domain purchase. The purpose and future of Lavender Central is uncertain. One substantial issue is the lack of storage space left on the free Geocities account. As of 27 January 2005, there was 0.1 MB left in a 15.0 MB account. The introduction of photo albums and downloadable Word documents (at compositions.html) has pushed storage of data to its limit. At some point, additional storage space may need to be purchased to allow the site to grow further.
Lavender Central has come a long way, indeed.
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2. All names have been changed within the context of all stories and articles, except where the author feels it appropriate to employ actual prenames for identication or stylish purposes.
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