This is a brief history of the A/V Woman Productions website. You might find it helpful to have our front pages gallery open in a separate window for reference.
Thursday 19th November 1998
c.7:00pm - S Jesper enters the computer room at the top of Goodricke College, York University, to kill some time before having to present a university radio show.
c.10:45pm - S Jesper leaves to present a university radio show.
Friday 20th November 1998
c.1:10am - S Jesper returns
to Goodricke computer room.
2:01am - welcome.htm
(the original index page) saved for the first time.
2:47am - don.htm
(The Don Brennan Page) saved for the first time.
c.5am - http://www.york.ac.uk/~sgj101
(A/V Woman Media Productions) goes on-line.
It is later readdressed http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~sgj101 when
the university reappraises its directory structures (don't recall quite
when... Easter?).
Monday 23rd November 1998
c.3:40 - Images are stolen from across the net, with a view to them featuring on a gallery page entitled "Morgan Greene's Chamber of Horrors".
Tuesday 24th November 1998
c.8:31pm-9:10pm - More images are found for ugly.htm (Morgan Greene's Chamber of Horrors), which is finally placed on-line.
c.9:58pm-10:56pm - More image pilfering, results in the construction of a second gallery: sheep.htm (Des & Jock-Strapp's Amazing World of Sheep).
Thursday 26th November 1998
c.9:11pm-10:37pm - Yet more image pilfering, leading to the creation of end.htm, the "Celebrity Endorsements Page" for lockin.htm (The Thursday Night Lock In), the radio show website which is created at much the same time. Also created by this point are "DDT's Unix Page" and "Poetry Corner".
Diary entry reads "running out of ideas for web-site".
Monday 25th January 1999
craven.htm (John Craven: A Short Biography) is created.
Tuesday 2nd February 1999
c.3:02pm-4:04pm - A little more image theft for end.htm.
Friday 12th February 1999
12noon - don.htm
updated.
12:03pm - ugly.htm
updated.
Wednesday 17th February 1999
4:32pm - A stolen .avi of Chorlton (of Wheelies fame) saying "Bye Bye Little Old Lady", is linked to the index page. It seemed a good idea at the time.
Thursday 25th February 1999
c.8pm - end.htm
updated again.
c.10:50 - pinkbanana.htm,
a page investigating rock music's infatuation with pink bananas, is launched.
Friday 26th February 1999
1:43pm - The New Soap begins to be transferred to the web site.
Monday 1st March 1999
4:33pm - The Gong mandala is added to the bottom of the index page. It links to the Chorlton clip.
Friday 5th March 1999
10:58am - end.htm
updated again.
1:27pm - lyrics.htm
(the John Craven lyrics page) is created.
1:31pm - craven.htm
is updated (links to the lyrics, etc).
The "A/V Woman Commercial Sector" (http://www.netcolony.com/members/avwcomsec) is initiated around this time. It comes into action because of disc-space issues at the original York site.
Friday 12th March 1999
c.2pm - The lyrics to a concept album "Turn to Face the light" are published in ttftl.htm.In the last week, band.htm has also been added. It is a description of the short lived musical collective "Hunter's Moon".
Friday 16th April 1999
2:41pm - unix.htm
updated.
3:35pm - soap.htm
updated.
Monday 26th April 1999
12:11pm - The first screenshot
in out front pages gallery is from this time.
The original website looked
much the same except for the following differences:
1) less items in the index
2) no Commercial Sector index
3) no pink banana or Gong mandala
images.
By this point, Poetry Corner, the Pink Floyd Pages, Links, The Pink Banana Page, and the Hunter's Moon Page have been sent to the Siberia that is the "A/V Woman Commercial Sector".
Incidentally, the mandala on the York index now links to the Hunter's Moon page, despite the text below it suggesting it still links to the .avi file.
By now, the Commercial Sector is properly up and running.
(See the front pages gallery for an example screenshot.)
12:38pm - fred.htm (Fred Harris's Basic Page) updated.
1:56pm - lockin.htm updated with new images.
Thursday 29th April 1999
The Commercial Sector is overhauled, and the New Soap pages are expanded to feature character biographies.
Saturday 15th May 1999
c.3:15pm - The quite probably libellous "The Right Reverend Derek Rawcliffe Page" is erected in the radio-show section of the site.
Monday 29th June 1999
4:39pm-c.9:04pm - the author's Page of Self Indulgence is created using images taken on 22nd May.
Thursday 8th July 1999
By this time, Fred Harris's Basic Page has been replaced by George Lucas's Star Wars Spoilers Page (on the York part of the site).
The York index has been ever so slightly altered (see front pages index). There's a chunkier font for the title, and new wording in the blurb.
Finding their way onto the (at
this point some-what temperamental) Commercial Sector are:
Morgan Greene's Chamber of
Horrors
DDT's UNIX Page
Fred Harris's Really Dodgy
BASIC Page
The Slightly Pathetic Don Brennan
Page
and another new page: textbrowser.html,
designed
as exclusive web content for people who can't see pictures. It is currently
linked to via the mandala.
The Lock In radio-show pages have (yet again) been expanded, and now straddle both sites. The expanded pages include badgers.htm (created at 2:40pm) - a not entirely factual analysis of the much celebrated mammal.
In coming weeks the Lock In
pages will expand to include mp3s, sketch descriptions and episode reviews.
It is also around this time that the A/V Woman Corporate Suite (http://members.xoom.com/avwoman) is launched.
The Xoom site (as it becomes known) is brought into action simply to house a .avi excerpt from the New Soap, in which Hitler gives a speech about Sarah Michelle Gellar. In order to use the site more productively, a new page, heavennet.html,is created, which purports to be the official website of God.
Later, the New Soap Prequels are also housed here.
No copy of the original index for the Xoom site survives, though it looked not unlike the image from 12th April 2001. The differences were as follows:
Less flashy title, more akin to the title on the other two sites but perhaps in a seriffed font
No Mr Chips image as far as I recall
No cyber-coppice disclaimer
No fake sponsorship
The items in the index were: Hitler animation, New Soap Prequels, and links to the other two A/V Woman sites.
Sunday 22nd August 1999
8:17pm - band.htm
is updated and now incorporates an animated
.gif of an exploding moon.
8:27pm - The mandala on the
index page is now animated. It spins.
A spinning Mr. Chips animation
is later added, at some (undocumented) point. It can be seen in action
on the 22nd October 2000 index.
Friday 15th October 1999
midnight-12:08am - The New Soap
pages are re-worked.
By now they are too big for
the York site. Episode One remains at York owing to being firmly tied there
by some awkward links, but the rest of the episodes, and all the guides
and biographies, are moved to the Commercial Sector. The Prequels, however,
remain at Xoom.
Friday 7th January 2000
7:12pm-10:26pm - The Great York Pub Guide is erected. It is the first part of the site to make use of directory structure, and is accessed from york/index.htm.
Monday 10th January 2000
4:31pm - The radio-show is rebranded as Last Orders, and a new page, orders.html,is created to reflect this.
At around this time, the Netcolony site gets a new set of pages for a spoof construction firm called ACNC, and index.html becomes the welcome page for this company. The Commercial Sector index is consequently renamed index2.html.
Friday 11th February 2000
10:50pm - The New Soap T-N-G poster is unveiled.
Friday 18th February 2000
11:46am - The T-N-G website is created.
As a consequence of various web-space issues and server problems, the New Soap pages are scattered across all three A/V Woman sites.
Tuesday 22nd February 2000
7:29pm-8:03pm - The T-N-G trailers are produced.
Saturday 26th February 2000
c.8:41pm - The trailers are put on-line.
In the meantime, Xoom begins to host more and more of the original site, including a new section, The Book, which is an attempt at an internet novel.
circa June 2000
As a consequence of leaving
university it becomes necessary to transfer everything over to Netcolony
and Xoom. As Xoom is working better at the time, Xoom receives pretty much
all of the site bar the ACNC Files, which remain at Netcolony. Netcolony
also hosts a guestbook and forum.
Due to lack of internet access,
the site remains unchanged during the Summer.
Sunday 22nd October 2000
The original York index page remains for a while. See the front pages gallery for an example of how it looked by the end.
Sunday 12th November 2000
The John Craven pages on Xoom are expanded to become "John Craven's Black Pages".
Thursday 11th January 2001
The John Craven pages are yet again expanded. They now include extensive coverage of his old group "Et Cetera".
Between now and April, the New Soap is taken down as part of the cyber-coppicing programme.
Thursday 12th April 2001
12:04am - The Xoom index page now looks like the example at the front pages gallery.
Soon after, it goes off line, and A/V Woman effectively disappears from the internet for the first time since November 1998. That said, fragments remain on Netcolony, although only the ACNC pages exist in any sort of formal structure, and Freeserve plays host to an "under construction" card (see the gallery).
Friday 31st August 2001
The Freeserve Site (http://www.avwoman.freeserve.co.uk)
is formally launched.
It uses the same colours and
graphics as the Xoom site.
The site is split into the following sectors (making full use of directory structure for the first time):
york/index.html: The Great York Pub Guide
newsoap/index.html: The New Soap (in a revised and recut format (ie. stripped down, with none of the guides or biographies, and reformatted as green on black))
clustcwyr/index.html: Recordiau Clustcwyr (incorporating all the John Craven / Et Cetera material)
dincomp/index.html:
Dilapidated Crumbling School (a tribute to Dinnington Comprehensive School)
The Pink Floyd pages, and Poetry Corner are finally put into retirement.
The ACNC Files remain on Netcolony.
Monday 15th October 2001
Chronicles (chronicles/index.html), a future history of the human race, is launched.
Sunday 21st October 2001
The index page gets a make-over.
A version in the front pages
gallery, from 23rd December 2001, illustrates the change.
It is around this time that
the "Latest Updates" list is added beneath the image links.
Wednesday 24th October 2001
The AView pages (aview/index.html) are put up.
Wednesday 31st October 2001
12:38am - The ACNC Files are moved to Freeserve (at acnc/index.html), and so the Commercial Sector is given a new index page (see the front page gallery).
Monday 24th December 2001
2:30am - The New Soap Special Edition DVD (newsoap/dvd.html) is launched, replacing the stripped down "revised and recut" version. While the biographies have not yet returned, there are a host of other "special features" such as a documentary and a director's commentary.
Friday 18th January 2002
The York and Sheffield pub guides are overhauled.
Saturday 2nd February 2002
c.11:30pm - The A/V Woman Archives (archive/index.html) are placed on-line.
Sunday 17th March 2002
John Craven's Black Pages are revamped, enframed, and given their own directory: clustcwyr/black/index.html.
Tuesday 19th March 2002
The Clustcwyr site is overhauled. Band pages are added, and drop-down menus are incorperated.
Wednesday 22nd May 2002
The main page is revamped to minimise scrolling and load-time. See room two of the front page gallery.
Friday 21st June 2002
From now on, the front page is modified on a monthly basis.
Subsequent changes are listed in the Updates
Log.