Before I start blogging here at Webcrossing Rocks, I thought it would be appropriate to say a little about myself, perhaps to give some credibility to the information that I will be relaying.
You can read some details on my profile, but the history at WebCrossing is a bit more complicated. I started at Lundeen and Associates (L&A) back in 1993, before the WebCrossing product was even a pipe dream. We were working on a cross-platform word processing/drawing type application which would have competed with Microsoft Word in many different ways. My job was to convert everything to work on a Windows platform, which included the database, windows, drawing, mouse functions, windows events, etc. which was all written in the C language.
Even though the Macintosh platform was the where most of the development happened, (and my preferred platform of choice) my task was quite daunting and took a couple of years to get right since I was the only Windows developer on staff.
During this time, funding became difficult and L&A took some outside contracts to keep the cash flowing so we could finish our product. One of these contracts was for a web community called "The Well" based in San Francisco. They wanted a cross platform "browser" which could act like an off-line reader for their massive bulletin board system and community that they had developed over the years.
We were able to modify our existing code base to produce just such a system and added several underlying technologies like Telnet and a TCP/IP system that would work over simple dial-up modem to modem or through the VERY new Internet system that was becoming public and popular at the time.
I worked on many of those underlying technologies as well as moving these to the Windows platform. We added our own scripting language system so that we could create the many changes that the client kept adding to the system. This was called "Author" and is the basis for WCTL that is still used today.
Weeks before we were to deliver the final product for "The Well" to roll out to the public, the owner of The Well decided to scrap the entire project, which had grown to quite a good system at that time.
This was a devastating blow to our small company, but we decided to take lemons and make lemonade. Michael Krieg, over the course of just a few weeks, was able to convert our "Author" system into a very simple bulletin board/forum/community system which we named "WebCrossing" and began selling in 1995.
It was a slow start, but we became quickly well known in the relatively small field of internet companies up until the Internet bubble burst in 2000 / 2001 where we then had to downsize significantly and enter a hibernation mode.
The product continued to be developed quite heavily according to massive customer input. We were constantly changing the software to meet new technology requirements that customers asked for. It has since become what we refer to as "The Swiss Army Knife of Web Development Technologies".
It has everything you need to develop an entire website - scripting language, dynamic Object Oriented Database, SMTP, POP3, NNTP, RSS, massive scalability through source/mirror clients. You name it - WebCrossing can do it.
It was an amazing time to work for the Internet industry and a great learning experience.
I look forward to sharing some of my insights, development secrets, coding techniques, and tricks of the trade in implementing a great site through the software.
We all welcome your comments as we begin this blogging collaboration.
Dave Jones
dave@lockersoft.com
http://www.youtube.com/lockersoft
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