ABOUT THIS SITE |
| A long
and boring history of the Tolkien Archives. If you read through all of it, you'll
likely fall asleep. Be that as it may, here it is for your perusal and
entertainment. |
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The original
Tolkien Archives was opened on August 26, 1997 by Paul Martyniak and Bryan Costa at
GeoCities. The old site is still up there if you want to see it, it is here. The GeoCities site
did alright, although it was more of a hobby site than a professional site and the
geocities pop-up banners and watermarks got very annoying. On the day of the first
anniversary (August 26, 1998) of the site and after about 6000 hits, the site was moved to
its own server. Paul and Bryan wanted a more professional site so they made a new design
and redid a lot of the info. Work began on revamping the expanding site. A few months later, on November 15, 1998, another Tolkien site
came into existence by the same name, with Matthew Bass and Jeremiah Lewis as the
webmasters. After a few days, both sites realized that they were sharing a name with
another site, so talks of a merge opened up. It was finally decided on the 1st of
December, 1998 - the merge had gone through, and the two sites immediately started
synchronizing their info. Each site would act as a mirror to the other, both having the
same information, only on two different servers.
After the webmasters at each site realized that it was
nearly impossible to try to keep updated and accurate information on both sites, they
decided to merge the sites completely under a single domain.
The site prospered and grew, but soon the webmasters
found it hard to find time for updates. Between school, work, and other activities, the
webmasters barely had time for updates. The site went into dormancy sometime in the middle
of April of 1999.
On August 7, 1999, Matthew Bass and Jeremiah Lewis began
revamping the site, and the Tolkien Archives came back to life. Massive future updates
were planned and the site began to grow once more. Now with a #1 listing on Yahoo! and the
site's 3rd anniversary nearing, the Tolkien Archives was once again quickly becoming one
of the largest Tolkien web sites.
In late September of 1999, Jeremiah Lewis took over as
full-time webmaster, cooperating with Matthew Bass to keep the general theme and purpose
of the Archives the same, and to also support the growing LoTR Movies Site. A few changes may be in store
for the Archives, but for now, just enjoy the web's biggest repository of Tolkien media.
December of 1999 was the final month of the Archives' old
site design. Jeremiah Lewis, having taken over management of both the web and
domain, redesigned the site, which was long overdue. New options were added that
made the site more interesting and dynamic. Special care was taken to ensure that
people would still be able to access all the information, but in an appealing way.
The Archives has experienced lots of change throughout
the year, but the fans have remained the same, and the original intent of the site is
still in operation. Without you, the visitors and fans, this site would have no
reason to exist. So I thank you, and hope you enjoy another wonderful year of the
Tolkien Archives. |
