The Stars.com
domain name was granted on December 22nd 1994.
WDVL was acquired by Mecklermedia for its
Internet.com family of sites
in March 1998.
I resigned in March 1999, having spent 5 years developing WDVL.
I was one of the first people to collect and publish links to web development resources.
It was in 1993, on a NASA computer,
on which I established one of NASA's first web servers, and one of the first 300 in the world.
As the links list grew larger and larger and became more of a personal hobby
(or obsession), I decided to move it to a non-government server.
It went briefly to Nyx under the name of
The CyberWeb, and thence to Charm Net
in Baltimore, where I established Stars.com in 1994.
I left NASA in 1995 to establish a web development company
(CyberWeb SoftWare), but found that I could get better, more reliable revenue
from banner advertising on WDVL. Initially we (Lucy and I) handled the clients
ourselves, but we found that to be a difficult task and so we gladly joined
the DoubleClick Network.
Mecklermedia acquired the site in
March 1998.
"WebStars: Astrophysics in Cyberspace is for those who are interested in the application of computers & networks -- especially the World-Wide Web -- to support the work of astronomers & astrophysicists"
WebStars,
at NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center,
is about astronomy & astrophysics;
cyberspace;
data formats;
the Space Science Web Group;
software & icons downloading;
WWW technical pages & style guides;
on-line articles about astronomy on the Web;
HEASARC/StarTrax Browse and other online services;
and virtual reality.
