The WDVL Website
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This article traces the evolution of The WDVL, probably the longest -
running site of its kind on the web. Why and how was it created, what
principles guide it, how is it structured and maintained?
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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.
Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 15, October 7, 1996.
This article, by Neil de Mause, gives a snapshot of our thinking about WDVL in 1996.
Some people
like to classify people into two mutually exclusive categories - e.g. those who
like to classify people into two mutually exclusive categories, and those who don't.
This kind of thinking is usually a gross over-simplification of reality
(people might be more accurately placed somewhere on a spectrum between the two extremes,
or there might be other relevant dimensions needed to characterise them).
But, such thinking at least creates a starting point.
So, here's how I classify web developers - to a first very rough approximation.
- Visualists (e.g. graphics designers) see a website as a collection of layouts
and images, glued together with HTML.
- Abstractionists (e.g. programmers) see a website as an information architecture
supported by scripts and databases.
I belong more to the abstractionist camp rather than the visualists.
My graphics talents aren't so hot (or cool), but I can code a pretty mean Perl script
(no surprise, with 20 years of programming in scientific projects).
Consequently, WDVL focuses more on
languages
than on
graphics.
And, the file system is so thoroughly worked out, you can often read the
page title (or a good alternative one) from the URL.
Try this one.
Classification systems have always played a leading
rôle in the design of The WDVL. In the early days I classed the
Library links by whether their subject was mostly
client-side, server-side, or 'on the wire' - 'Internet', which also served for
topics that were neither or both client/server side. Eventually this proved to
be too coarse, and so there was a big restructuring into the present top-levels of
Authoring,
Internet,
Location,
Multimedia,
Software,
Reference.
This has proven to be pretty useful, although a slightly better one might be based
on the categories shown in the Index.
Although The WDVL has a very strong hierarchical backbone in the file/URL system,
user navigation is by no means constrained to that alone. In particular, there is
rich cross-linking between pages. We try to ensure that all relevant
topics are linked from keywords in the pages, so that a user can easily follow-up
on any topics they might need for better understanding of the present article - or,
for serendipitous learning of new topics.
Also, the Index/Search and
Site Map are only one click away from every page,
from which all other pages can be reached in a click or two.
Almost every WDVL page is generated by some
Perl script.
The
webmaster
is responsible for running those, and for
responding to user comments and feedback.
Maintenance Procedures
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