Farewell to Woodville

After 5 years of running The WDVL, I've decided it's time to move on. Scott Clark, of JavaBoutique fame, will be taking over as managing editor, while I will be taking a break to rediscover my family and life, and to tinker with our new web site (we'll invite you over when it's ready!). I'll continue to write occasional articles for The WDVL, and Lucy (cofounder and my other half) has started work on the Great Anglo-American novel (Spielberg awaits with eager anticipation).

While there's no clear date on which we decided to "Let there be WDVL Lite!", December 22nd 1994 was when we received the Stars.com domain name, on Charm Net in Baltimore, MD, on which I placed my ever-growing collection of web developer links, started while I was at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The WDVL.com domain, on Iserver we actually acquired well after we started calling the site "The Web Developer's Virtual Library", as a sort of afterthought... The tutorials grew out of seminars I gave at expos and conferences such as the IW3C2 series. Gradually we recruited advertisers and authors, and the site traffic grew and grew.. The site was acquired by (then) Mecklermedia in March 1998, to become part of the internet.com family.

Many people have been involved with WDVL over the years, too many to mention them all - but I'd like to mention a few who have been especially helpful. My apologies if I omit anyone who played a rôle that deserved a mention here.

Our authors' works have been a huge asset to web developers, both new and experienced. All their efforts are highly appreciated, but I'd like to single out for special mention Selena Sol, Ken Sall, and Aaron Weiss. Selena is famous for his extensive and comprehensive tutorials, all of which you'll find listed in WebWare. Ken, another NASA/GSFC person, has established our XML section as one of the finest and most respected, with links from the likes of IBM and Sun. Aaron has written some very fine articles on JavaScript and DHTML - his JavaScript Tutorial for Programmers being one of our most popular tutorials.

Linda Cole, our associate editor/webmaster, has been with us about a year and a half, and has been absolutely indispensible. The site would not have been anywhere near as good without her, and we owe her a special debt of gratitude. Thank you Linda! Rhonda McGHuinness, our promotion agent, has been terrific in spreading the word and getting WDVL noticed and picked for 'cool site' awards. Thanks Rhonda! My thanks to Lucy for having been my business partner, webmaster, sounding board, critic, etc etc these past 5 years. I couldn't and wouldn't have done it without her support. Thank you Lucy! My thanks to the folks at internet.com for their support this past year.

Last, but most, I owe thanks to you, our readers, for choosing to visit this site, and for letting us know when we went wrong, and when we went right. Your feedback has been crucial to shaping this site - please keep it coming!

Farewell, Woodville!