© 2005 Christopher M. Spalding
A friend's family was opening up a restaurant in downtown Huntsville in an old, civil war era
building. On the upper level, she was opening up a banquet hall for a side catering
business as well. Thus, I was presented with my first opportunity to create a commercial
website.
The design was simple. There was nothing really groundbreaking. All of the graphics and
backgrounds were "borrowed" from sites off of the internet. There were a few animated gifs
that were quite incredible. All of these were lost in the PlanetOut incident, however.
There was a menu page. That main entrees at the restaurant changed daily, so this had to be
updated quite a bit. The restaurant also offered delivery, so people working downtown were
able to look at the menu from their desks, e mail their orders, and have it delivered right
to them.
The next page was dedicated to the owner's catering business. A brief overview as well as
menu items and price lists appeared here.
The last main page contained a diagram of the restaurant's upper level, where the banquet
hall was located. The diagram was an orginal creation, one of the few on the website.
The website was more about function than design and was really abandoned when I pursued other
interests besides the restaurant. The site is now gone, vanished when PlanetOut decided
to discontinue offering websites to its members. They erased everyone's pages without
notice and I had no hard drive back-up.
Though not a true commercial website, this site presented itself as one. Truly, it was a
jumping off and interlinking point for all of the websites on which I was working at the
time.
There was a link to my personal website, The Mysterious Alleyway. The second link was to
The Wild Rose Cafe. The last link led to the Homosexual Aware Youth Archives. At this point,
the group was defunct, but the website remained only in archival form with working links to
stories and events as they appeared before the group's demise.
The design was quite simple. Like seemingly all of my early homepages, the background was
plain black with the "Chrysss" logo featured prominently at the top. Under a dividing line,
were original graphic links to the websites described above. Also on the page was an e mail
link, web counter, and guest book.
I tried to create a professional and almost businesslike approach with this site. The site
is now gone, vanished when PlanetOut decided to discontinue offering websites to its members.
They erased everyone's pages without notice and I had no hard drive back-up.
This was my first website. I was one of the first members of Tripod, which has today grown
into one of the largest and most popular website-sites in the world. In the beginning, one
didn't really need much skill to build a site. Tripod had everything you needed.
The site itself was rough and maybe kind of boring (by today's standards.) The URL was
extremely cumbersome (I created it before I knew the significance of an index page.) The
font of this site never strayed from the default. Graphics were clip-art like and cheesy,
but, hey, it was my first attempt. I was excited as hell.
I really can't remember much about the site. I converted most of it directly to the second
version of the group's website just a few months later. I remember there was a simple
homepage with no original graphics, a history page containing a story I wrote about the group
for the local Metropolitan Community Church, a people page dedicated to the group's members,
and a links page discussing all of the excitement of gay life in Huntsville.
The only page that remained was the links page from the original site. I think it was called
"HAYSville." I had it archived as a part of The Chryss Network, but that page is now gone,
vanished when PlanetOut decided to discontinue offering websites to its members. They erased
everyone's pages without notice and I had no hard drive back-up.
HAY is for Homos was really just an update and expansion of the website created only about
six months before. But this website came about from a second purpose as well- I took it on
as a semester project for my Technical Writing class at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville.
I had discovered how to use fonts and change table spaces and widths. I had learned to
use color more efficeintly. I had gotten photographs scanned to add a more personal touch.
The result was the new and improved Homosexual Aware Youth website- HAY is for Homos...
Homsexual Aware Youth, that is.
The site was colorful and vibrant with more exciting background colors and many animated gifs
in use. The content was expanded, with sections for member profiles, e mails, poetry, and
stories. This website was accessed by more than a couple of young people who would have
never found the group without it.
I probably learned more about HTML during this undertaking than any others. I had yet to
expand into the use of Java. I was extremely happy with the site and it earned me a B+ for
what turned out to be one of the hardest classes I had ever taken. I did an oral
presentation about the site, one of my crowning moments in my early webmastering.
The entire site was archived under the site The Chrysss Network. The online version is now
gone, vanished when PlanetOut decided to discontinue offering websites to its members. They
erased everyone's pages without notice and I had no hard drive back-up. Luckily, however,
I still have a hard copy of the site, one created during the Technical Writing class.
Begun just a few months after my initial site was my first attempt at my own personal site.
At first I thought that I would just integrate my own site into HAY's, but I realized that
with it's dedication to that cause and the cumbersome URL, I needed my own.
This site, like all of my other early ones, was simple and basic. There was a story page,
a life page, and a links page (my sites today very rarely even have links pages. Back then
they were mostly for filler.)
The caricature of me was actually drawn by a friend of mine on a napkin at Denny's or IHOP or
something. I scanned it and placed it at a prominent place on the site. Credit needs to be
given to Jessie Walker for one of my favorite pictures.
This site was all raindows and triangles. The backgrounds and fonts varied page by page.
There was no real theme, just that I was screaming out to the world who I was. As far as
an initial personal site goes, I got some pretty good comments from others.
The entire site was archived under the site The Chrysss Network. The online version is now
gone, vanished when PlanetOut decided to discontinue offering websites to its members. They
erased everyone's pages without notice and I had no hard drive back-up.
© 2005 Christopher M. Spalding
This one I will always remember as my largest and funnest website. I worked harder on this
one than any other, although graphics themselves were not all that great. This site was all
about content. It said a lot. Maybe too much. But my friends and I loved it anyway.
The first page presented a choice of facilities- The Loft, The Eatery, The Club, The Gym,
The Gallery and The Center. The loft was a page about me. The eatery was dedicated to
family and friends. The club was dedicated to dancing and society. The gym was about
staying healthy. The gallery contained personal photos. And the center was all about gay
Huntsville, containing both a guide and links.
What made this site so fun, in my opinion any many others, were the "Unlocked Doors" and
"Secret Passageways." They were represented by little icons located in various positions
on each page. These led to places such as "Poofter's Secret Hideway," the roof of the loft
and an underground maze where one wrong turn could separate you from the warm confines of the
Mysterious Alleyway forever. In the center, one such door led to a classroom where there was
a small quiz about the site. Pass, and you were rewarded. Fail, and, well, ick.
This site was where I really started and creating my own graphics, including the "John
Lennon-like" work in the loft. This was a fun site to create as well as to surf.
The entire site was archived at The Chrysss Network. The online version is now gone,
vanished when PlanetOut decided to discontinue offering websites to its members. They erased
everyone's pages without notice and I had no hard drive back-up.
I know I've mentioned a lot about the PlanetOut incident. Let me explain a little more
about it.
I was happily a member of Tripod, but discovered a place for member websites on
PlanetOut.com. Theirs, like Tripod's, were free. But they didn't require banners on top of
their pages. I moved all of my material from my Tripod sites to PlanetOut. All seemed to
be going well until one day when I tried to log in. Everything was gone.
I emailed the administrator about it. They said that they were discontinuing member
websites, but they would get back to us on how to retrive our material. That they never did.
I did all of my work online back then and had absolutely no backup on my hard drive. The
original HAY websites, Chrysss' Home o' Sexuals and The Mysterious Alleyway were lost and
gone forever. You can bet I have a backup of everything now.
I was working on a new and updated website when this occured. The Mysterious Alleyway was
still fun, but was becoming dated (in my opinion, websites need a complete "renovation" at
least once every two years.) The original spaldingcm city represented my first use of java
(simple mouse roll-overs.) The hompage was laid out like a list with links to my personal
page, a page about ghostly stuff ("i invoke thee", now called "dictum corpus fides"), a HAY
archive, and future space for a travel site (one not realized until this version of my site,
under the heading "NONRevenation.)
When my material was gone, I started from scratch. My personal site was small and easy
to recreate. "i invoke thee" had much more material and was a lot harder. I decided not
to try and redo the archived sites and started a new one called "Studio CMS," which itself
was the forerunner of drAwn. It was really just a place for my drawings. Today, the
phrase Studio CMS is its own domain and represents the entire present website.
When creating the material all over again, I decided to go with a new hompage layout and my
first domain name, www.spaldingcm.com. The background color was darker with modern wording
over an orginal city skyline. Java was once again employed in links to my three main
sub-sites. This website remained until the present one was released in early 2003.
