Hello and welcome to Black Coffee. I'm going to explain the purpose of this site and why I decided to make it. This page is best enjoyed with a good cup of coffee, so relax, take a sip and read on.

Back in the heady days of April 2000, I bought myself a computer with the aim of learning desktop publishing, as it was an area I fancied working in. I did buy a DTP package, but before I got into it, I was hooked by the internet and web design. My first attempt at a site was on a domain I bought and was a 2 page site the first page being a nude piccy of Britney Spears, which was sent to me by my brother as a laugh (he cut out Britney's head and taped it onto a page3 models body.. It was fairly convincing from a distance lol). From here, I developed the site into a personal site with pictures of cats of myself and a 'Gallery of Grossness' which was basically some gross pictures sent to me by email and stuck onto the site. At the time, I was using Worlds 3d chat and I noticed that a lot of people on there had web sites based on the program with pictures of their avatars and friends from the program on there. I followed suit (I thought my site was the best,lol, cos it wasn't done using Homestead like the rest were, therefore no adverts and I had my own domain), and created a Worlds section there.

By this point, I was using the web a lot, and I wanted to create a 'homepage' full of links to sites that that were useful to me, that would come up when I opened the browser. This was the embryo for Black Coffee, but didnt realise this at the time.

Shortly after the start of 2001, I started writing HTML and found that it was so much better than using the Seirra Web Studio that I was used to. Also, I was using an unlimited access provider called redhotant, and they went bust, so I had to look for some web space that I could use on any ISP (my domain was hosted with a company that offered unlimited space, but I had to dial up via a local rate number - My first 2 net phone bills shocked me lol). I plumped for Fortunecity, who provided 100 megs with ADVERTS! I sold my soul to the god of free stuff lol. On this, I hosted my first attempt at HTML and frames with a site called D7's Domain which was a Worlds chat based site (D7 was my name on Worlds). By now, my previous attempts at web sites had been deleted off the web. I was pleased with D7's Domain though, and it got some pleasing comments in the guestbook.

The name for my next project had already been decided: Black Coffee, cos that was what fueled my web designing! The idea for a massive links site was also forming in my mind, so when D7's Domain was done (it never was finished, sadly, and still had 'Under Construction' pages the day I took it down ). Now I wanted to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), so started learning about those, and incorperated them into the first version of Black Coffee, which was now a free stuff and web links site. In my usual style, when I put the URL onto a forum, it wasnt finished properly and had some dead links. The point of BC was to provide directories of free suff such as email and webspace that were available, and also for things like chat, ISP's etc. To be honest, it was a mammoth job researching all of the free stuff that was available, let alone researching the other categories, which is why a lot of links were non existant.

I was rapidly coming up with ways I could improve the layout of the site, but, because I used the same template for each page (so they all contaned the menu etc), any changes meant copying and pasting into about 30 pages, which was NOT fun. I happened upon SSI (Server Side Includes) which allow you to include the contents of a text file with in your HTML; very useful indeed, and if you want to make any alterations, just alter the HTML in the text file and it will be included. However, because I was gonna redesign the whole site, I left the old one intact, but moved it to a Tripod site, cos their servers support SSI and CGI.

For the next installment, CLICK HERE!