5 years ago today, on July 22 1999, brindleweb.com came on the scene! At that point it was really just a place to share pictures of my furry babies, and other pics, since most of my friends and family lived so far away. Before that I hosted my homepage on a few free sites like homestead and geocities, but got fed up with restrictions, lack of space, and especially ads. So I decided to register my own domain and pay for ad-free domain hosting.

The site has undergone quite a few design changes since that time and has really expanded. It now takes over 250 MB of space and uses over 10 GB of bandwidth a month. The space is mostly used by my photo album. The bandwidth is mostly used by the BC Pet Rescue board.

I have moved slowly from using almost all "homegrown" HTML pages and simple scripts, to using PHP templating and lots of different software packages to manage the site, like MovableType for this blog, Gallery for the photo album, webBBS for the bulletin board, etc.

In addition to being my personal "homepage", I have also used my space to host sites for friends and family over the years, either as subdomains or add-on top-level domains. Currently hosted here are my sister's homepage, and another BC pet rescue site, bcpetrescue.ca, for an online acquaintance who was having trouble with her hosting company.

Brindleweb.com is also proud to be home to the BC Pet Rescue Resource, a sort of stand-alone part of the site. This project started out when Ted and I decided we'd like to adopt a Siberian Husky and I went about searching for one while living in Vancouver, BC. I found that many places in the states had rescue sites with directories of all the different places available to find a dog, message boards for people to discuss local issues, etc. There wasn't any such thing available for British Columbia. During my search I collected quite a list of bookmarks to shelters and rescues. It developed into a webpage resource in response to a challenge from a woman called "Leilah's Mom" on the AcmePet Rescue Board that I used to frequent (the site has since disappeared). She challenged people to choose an area and develop a complete rescue resource for that area, so I decided to transform my bookmarks into a website to meet that challenge. The results of the challenge are still available here, a great site, and a great place to look for rescue links in any area.

A very pivotal point in brindleweb's history would be the day I decided the BC Pet Rescue Resource site could use its own bulletin board. At first there were NO visitors and the only posts there were BC-related things I found on other boards and crossposted. After a while I lost interest in doing that and just left the board alone... but to my surprise it developed a life of its own and is now the most vital part of the site. These days it gets ~140 posts a day and has over 500 registered members (although lots of them are inactive). Although maintaining it has at times been a pain, I am very proud at the role it has had in helping many homeless animals over the years, and the great group of animal-lovers who gather there. Since I am no longer involved in volunteering or fostering at this time, I am happy that there is still something I can do to help out.

I would say another, although somewhat lesser, pivotal point in brindleweb.com's history was the addition of this "blog" on the front page in September 2002. This was inspired by our good friend Coreman who has been blogging for years. I am not a very active or interesting blogger, but, I really like the idea that it keeps the front page from seeming "stagnant", our latest news is always up here, and it's a good way for far-away family and friends to get a quick update of the latest news with us.

Well that's about it, a brief history of brindleweb.com. It's been pretty fun and I'm sure it'll be around a long time yet!