Website Chronicle

The official date of the website's birth is 23 December 2000. Exactly on that day my friend Oleg Akimov and I decided to create our own website and to publish it on the Internet. Of course, the very first version (or, to sound more correct, the zero version) should not be called a website as it contained only three (!) pages, the first one of which looked like it is shown at the right. All this was deployed on a free host server called “New Mail”, where the website successfully used to live up to March of 2005. The domain name (stingray.nm.ru) had been chosen using my computer nickname that had also formed the name of the resource – “Mr. StingRay Website”. From the very beginning the website was planned as bilingual, and it still remains, with a remark that the English part is about 7-10 times less than the Russian one, that is also reflected by the visiting statistics: English-speaking visitors compose about 10% of all the website visitors.

The content of the website's zero version was not only poor – it was impoverished, moreover, to tell the truth, it was perverted. Now, recalling that my creation, I am ashamed of myself… I will not put the screenshot of the most disgraceful thing here but I tell you there was an immodest ASCII art picture… However, that time I had no scruple to show this and being flushed with joy I gave the link to my fellows and friends, and here are the first comments: “Debauch and whorehouse”, “Pervert”, etc. Of course, I was a little bit disappointed… The first time in life I tried to create something and publish it on the Internet – and such a failure. Fortunately, my then passion was enough not to stop and not to quit the idea at once, moreover, the first comments taught me to listen to my visitors' opinions and to constantly improve. The truth is, very soon I was in fact alone who worked on the website – my first associate did quit but forever he became number one in the website's thanks list.

The next day, on 24 December 2000, trying to purify myself from the disgrace, I released the version that should be considered as the first (the previous was zero version). The website's news page described this update as “The beginning of the Russian part of the website”. I started with the so-called frame architecture (the left frame contains the main menu, the right one shows the main contents of a page) but later I desisted from using it (in favor of tables). From the very beginning the logo stayed in the top left corner but in fact that was not either my logo or the website's (as it is now), just an abstract picture that I created from a occasionally found photography using my favorite accessory called Microsoft Paint (that time I did not ever hear about Adobe Photoshop); that picture had the F1 key somewhere in the middle of the keyboard – by this I tried to reflect my then principle of mutual help (help on help) taken from the same legend of my nickname; thereafter I was time and again asked about that strange keyboard. This first version of the website had already five (Russian) pages: “Author”, “Thanks”, “News”, “Search” and “Pictures” – all of them in similar views stay on the website even now.

… (to be translated from the Russian origin)

On 23 December 2005 the website became 5 years old. By that time the web counter displayed more than 300'000 of hits. Celebrating the 5th anniversary due to forgotten reasons was moved on 11 March 2006 and took place modestly and with the minimal presence of the invited:

…

18 November 2008 is the date of the 1'000th update of the website.

On 6 September 2009 the HotLog web counter displayed 1 million of hits.

On 13 August 2010 “Life Research” and “Professional Research” subsection were united back again, now as a subsection named “Articles, Reports, etc.”

On 2-3 October 2010 the HotLog web counter displayed 1 million of visitors (unique).

On 23 December 2010 the website became 10 years old! As one of my friends who took part in celebrating the anniversary noted, remembering that the whole hypertext Internet (World-Wide Web, WWW) is only 20 years old, 10 years for a website is quite a long period. :-) The celebration of the anniversary took place on 25 December 2010 in a “cafe zone” of a mall. Despite that during the 10 years many of those who participated in creation and development of the website lost any interest in it, and along with those who are geographically far away accounted about 87.5% of refusals (!) to come for the celebration, this time I managed to gather even more people than for the celebration of the 5th anniversary; moreover, three of the presented were at that celebration! And thanks to my colleague Sergey Lakeev here we have a more interesting and larger photoreport:

To be continued…