How I Built the Shoreline
Community College Website in 1996

In March 1996 I built the first SCC Website presence. The full site was completed, with all available information, in August 1996.  I started with zero information and a previous 3 months that someone else had done and yet had not completed a single page.  I started with the college "view book" and had that online as a mini site in 2 days.  After that I scanned and OCRed (turning paper printed text into digital text files) any class schedules, brochures, and catalog content I could find. After about 1 month I had the main site up.  After that I added each new class schedule as it became available and any other content sent my way.

Up to that point I had been the photographer and graphic designer (including typesetting) for the campus.  This was a new direction which changed the course of the last half of my professional career at the college.

Because of this ongoing project the college sent me to the ICE Conference in Los Angeles:

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In the fall of 1997 I attended the Internet Commerce Expo or ICE; September 8-11.  This expo and seminar not only dealt with the latest trends in Web commerce, transaction, and security issues but with the entire Internet and Intranet networking that Shoreline Community College will face in the next few years (the ICE conference happened about half way through the first phase of this project). These new technologies will have to be implemented just to stay current with the emerging technologies. We're not talking fancy "bells and whistles" anymore, but functions that need to be implemented on the SCC website. 

Once again I was back at the LA Convention Center, as I was for the Showbiz Expo (that one I attended at my own expense). What a great place the LA Convention Center is, really nicely appointed. Palm trees, of course, around a modern steel and glass structure. 

There was a hard new truth in the world of the Internet of 1997, and it goes like this: Our future is tied to business on the Web. Internet Commerce and the growth of the Institutional and Internal systems are the driving force behind a revolution that is changing the world of education as we know it. Which means the more we know about it, the better we'll be able to succeed as an educational institution... now and into the next century. 

At ICE I learned many new things about the Internet and Internet Commerce (i.e. doing business on the Internet). Some of the areas covered were:

• • How Intranets can give the college a competitive advantage.

  • Market directions for Internet Commerce.

  • How the college can unleash the power of marketing over the Web.

  • How we can establish security computing for Internet solutions.

  • Real case studies of companies that are using successful Internet solutions.

The ICE conference is certainly the most comprehensive program dedicated specifically to the use of Internet commerce and Web applications. The ICE offered a mix of both technical and business topics that focused on Internet Commerce, Web Marketing, Intranet and Internet Infrastructure, Emerging Technologies, the Software Explosion, and Security Solutions. 

At this point I certainly feel much more "in the loop" as far as the overall picture of the commerce side of the web which has a direct bearing on the college topics of:

• Marketing the college

  • Public Information about the college

• On-line Registration

  • The commerce side of the college which is where we actually "sell" our product (educational programs and courses)

• Intranets

  • The internal communications within the college and within the Community College System

  • Online student information available to faculty

• Internet

  • The Public side of the website for students and perspective students

  • On-line student information services (Student Services Department)

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"I consider my trip to ICE to be a very successful trip. This experience is one which really gave both a national and international perspective to my own personal view of the Web and our place, as a community college, in that overall view."

----- David Holmes 1997

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My involvement in this project ran until 2013, so 17 years in total.  The bulk of the work was finished by me in 2012 after I converted the entire project (around 6000 pages) to what is now called a Content Management System.  I was replaced by at least 3 people (4 people if you include the decades of work that I accomplished as the campus photographer).  I guess I did a reasonably good job.  

----- David Holmes 2018