16 March 2007

The Second Decade

Almost ten years have passed since I first started assembling the information that became my first web site. Chess had always been good to me and I wanted to do something for the game. No one had yet put anything on the web that tackled thoroughly the history of the World Chess Championship, so I decided that it would be my little gift to chess.

I spent a month or two collecting the data, then bought a book on HTML while touristing with my Belgian family in California. I studied it while the rest of the family slept. After returning home, I started creating the pages that make the site. Within a week or so, I had loaded the first version onto the free web space provided by Compuserve.com, my first Internet service provider. Today the site has the same appearance that I gave it in 1997, and even though it looks badly dated by current standards, I doubt that I will ever change it. Reference sites don't have to be pretty; they have to be accurate.

Times change and people change with the times. For a long time I've wanted a more powerful method to maintain my World Chess Championship News. I am convinced that blog technology is an excellent choice. At first I wanted to integrate this blog into the WCC site, but scrapped the idea when I discovered that it required giving my domain's password to Blogger.com.

If you have anything to say about the World Championship, don't hesitate to comment against any post on this blog. The comment doesn't have to be related to the subject of the post. Blogger.com sends me a copy of all comments and I always enjoy hearing from other chess history amateurs all over the world.

1 comment:

Ryan said...

I just wanted to say a big thanks for your original WCC website which is a really useful online resource.

Good luck with the blog - I think it's an excellent way to continue the project.

There certainly should be plenty of material for you in the coming months!