For those of you who wonder how a Web site works, we provide the follow documentation in reverse chronological order. Years from now when Little M is one of the 5,000,000 channels on your interactive TV, you'll be able to come back to this page and marvel at how primitive Internet technology was back in the early 21st Century.
2011: Dave Aronson becomes Webmaster, and starts moving it to Google Sites so the next webmaster doesn't have to wade through PHP. Progress on moving content is rather slow... but putting it on Google Sites makes it much easier to put up new pages, modify pages, etc. Long-term, the plan is that it will be so much easier to be Webmaster, that Dave will have no trouble handing off the role to someone else!
????: Chris Rittweger becomes Webmaster.
????: Loren Kropat becomes Webmaster.
????: Rawligh Sybrant becomes Webmaster.
????: littlem is renamed mwm.org to reduce confusion with the Yahoo group (see below).
????: The littlem Yahoo group is created.
1-13-99: Online events calendar and SIGs list published, thanks to the efforts of Programs Officer Leo Cotnoir and SIGs Coordinator Lila Mallette.
1-1-99: Discussion forum opens to members without publicity. Conversation has been infrequent and unstimulating, but the service works! It's still unnamed. We'll let it grow gradually.
9-22-98: Trials begin on new discussion forum, as yet unnamed. Proposed provider is eGroups.com.
7-20-98: New subdomain names added to make Little M accessible through a standard naming scheme. While our primary Web address is www.mwm.org, we are now also accessible through standard Mensa subdomain terminology: www.mwm.us.mensa.org and mwm.us.mensa.org. American Mensa is www.us.mensa.org.
6-16-98: Interactive maps added to Open M information.
Mid-1997 and early 1998: 10,000th hit recorded; not as many browsers as we expected. Few changes during this period in Little M's structure and content; both Webmasters are about as busy as they can be with various professional and personal challenges. Our goals for this Web site remain unchanged. We're too stubborn to give up.
10-2-96: ExComm approves guidelines for linking to members' Web pages.
July '96: Eric moves Little M to a new server and fiddles with the addressing. We are briefly lost in cyberspace. Relatively few people notice, though by now we've logged over 900 hits on our site.
4-1-96: Little M arrives on the World Wide Web at precisely midnight on April Fools Day.
3-26-96: WebCounter (TM) activated so we can start logging "hits" on the main page. Excited Webmasters account for most of the traffic on this page.
3-25-96: Web address (http://www.mwm.org) announced in Capital M. We post first teaser page at that address.
3-23-96: Mary figures out how to send page frames only to people with frame-capable browsers; declares herself "world's most incredibly gifted genius." No one on Little M staff dares disagree for fear he'll have to do the work himself.
(Early March): Prototyping continues. Mary goes for fancy formatting (which it turns out does not work with America Online's Web browser).
2-17-96: "Little M" chosen as the site name, leaving such worthy candidates as Maxi-M and Mini-M, L'enfant M, and Magnificent Worldwide Mensa Web/MWM (mwmwmwm) for others to fight over. Bud finds another little m out there and hopes Angie can handle the competition.
(Mid-February): Eric sets up account on synergy.uccomputers.com server. We begin uploading prototype pages.
2-13-96: InterNIC approves mwm.org as our domain name.
1-28-96: We request mwm.org as our Internet domain name by applying to InterNIC Registration Services.
1-23-96: Mary Matthews volunteers to be "Sancha Panza, faithful henchwoman, and doer of all the boring scutwork that you don't wish to do yourself" and is immediately (and gratefully) pronounced Associate Webmaster Supreme.
1-7-96: Bud okays Eric C. S. Dynamic's synergy server at U.C. Computers, Berkeley, California as MWM Web site's host. Thanks, Eric, for your generous offer!
1-3-96: ExComm authorizes Bud Stolker to set up official Web site for Metropolitan Washington Mensa. He pronounces himself Webmaster.