Friday Tech Talk

We’ve come a long way. That’s right, I recently was sorting through a bunch of my old backup files and found some of the Oakseed Ministries’ website history… going back to around 1998 (Nine Years Ago).  So, I thought I would share this history with you.

There are a bunch of photos, so if you have a slow connection you may need to wait for everything to load.

The year was somewhere between 1998 and 1999:

It was big news that Oakseed Ministries was getting a website. Realizing that a major portion of our readership at the time was from all around the world, we decided to make a very simple, text-heavy website.

Mid to Late 1999:

This was a huge update to the website.  Now users could choose (from the below splash screen) to visit the low-bandwidth style website, or to the amazing graphical website that required users to have Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.

 

And then once you were inside you were greeted by an amazing website (with a table and clipart)

The year 2000:

Wow, a major facelift, with no more clipart.  Users were now able to navigate the site and see some of the faces of the children associated with Oakseed Ministries. (Hmmm.. what is that 3D Virtual World… a very crazy attempt to have people walk through the Oakseed Ministries World. I believe only 4 people at the time had the computer power and internet speed to be able to visit that section.)

 

Then later in the year the main table was resized to better fit browsers.

The Middle of 2001:

The next major rewrite of the Oakseed Ministries website. This time the site contains a navigation system so that now, people will always be able to click to different areas of the site, regardless of where they were located.

2002:

This site went back to full screen viewing, while trying to simplify the site and the navigation. (Side note: I’ve lost most of the graphics for this time period. So this was the best I had.)

2003:

Another huge rewrite and organization of the Oakseed Ministries website. This time there are multiple navigations (both on the header area and on the side bar). The multiple different ministries and activities were all brought into the Oakseed main site.

2005:

The website had stayed the same, with no major updates for the past year or two. In 2005, the next big update was done to the website. This update brought in a better functionality to adding content at a moments notice. (Like the rapidly updating status of the Huge Tsunami Flood Relief project.)

Late 2006:I finally came on staff at Oakseed Ministries as the Vice President of Communications and Development. This gave me a lot more time to devote to utilizing the internet as a valued communication tool. I rewrote the entire website starting with the backend database. This new database backend allows us to develop a very dynamic website. I started with a Content Management System called Drupal and I rewrote entire sections so that I could get things to work as I needed them.

Current Website:

The previous front end of the website was mainly to provide me with a solid testing ground for my database backend as we began to actively develop the site. And now the finished product is up. While the site may look like this for a while… it is a rapidly changing site with new content appearing every day. Plus, I’m constantly testing and adding new features.

Now I realize in the last Tech Talk, I mentioned something about the new Beta Testing Team. I’m gonna have to put that off till next week. But if you are EXTREMELY eager, just send me an email atbenjamin@oakseed.org.