Hey everyone - May 29, 2010 marks TONMO.com's 10-year anniversary. Cool, right?
I had actually reserved tonmo.com in 1996, but I was publishing my content on an Earthlink page for whatever reason. From 1996 through May 27, 2000, my site was... well, sometimes called the "tonmodome" and it was basically my own blog. I talked about my interests in giant squid on a couple of occassions but it was mostly about random stuff. My Silverfish article from 1997 was pretty popular.
Then, on 5/29, TONMO.com as a cephalopod interest site was born.
I sort of blogged about cephalopods for a few months, highlighting news, and even syndicating my content blurbs on Dr. James Wood's cephalopod site. With that syndication and also some very excellent search engine placement, people started visiting TONMO.com regularly. I began answering "letters to the editor" which are still available on TONMO.com. The site contents were divided into the following categories (a couple links provided):
Site Contents
Current Issue
News Archive
Article Archive
Site Reviews
Letters to the Editor
Kid's Corner
Image Archive
Shopping on the Web
TONMO.com Store
Message Board
About TONMO.com
/ / / / O \ \ \ \
Before we had Forums, I used a guestbook (remember those?) to let people introduce themselves and sign into our directory. It's fun to see entries from eventual Staff members such as Colin and Nancy.
Our Forums were firmly established around 2002, with the "Octopus' Den" being a memorable place to hang out and have general cephy fun. I experimented with a few different pieces of forum software before settling on today's vBulletin software in 2003.
Today (as we know) we're a vibrant community and arguably the best cephalopod destination on the Internet.
THANK YOU for 10 years of cephalopod discussion, collaboration, research, and information-sharing.
I had actually reserved tonmo.com in 1996, but I was publishing my content on an Earthlink page for whatever reason. From 1996 through May 27, 2000, my site was... well, sometimes called the "tonmodome" and it was basically my own blog. I talked about my interests in giant squid on a couple of occassions but it was mostly about random stuff. My Silverfish article from 1997 was pretty popular.
Then, on 5/29, TONMO.com as a cephalopod interest site was born.
I sort of blogged about cephalopods for a few months, highlighting news, and even syndicating my content blurbs on Dr. James Wood's cephalopod site. With that syndication and also some very excellent search engine placement, people started visiting TONMO.com regularly. I began answering "letters to the editor" which are still available on TONMO.com. The site contents were divided into the following categories (a couple links provided):
Site Contents
Current Issue
News Archive
Article Archive
Site Reviews
Letters to the Editor
Kid's Corner
Image Archive
Shopping on the Web
TONMO.com Store
Message Board
About TONMO.com
/ / / / O \ \ \ \
Before we had Forums, I used a guestbook (remember those?) to let people introduce themselves and sign into our directory. It's fun to see entries from eventual Staff members such as Colin and Nancy.
Our Forums were firmly established around 2002, with the "Octopus' Den" being a memorable place to hang out and have general cephy fun. I experimented with a few different pieces of forum software before settling on today's vBulletin software in 2003.
Today (as we know) we're a vibrant community and arguably the best cephalopod destination on the Internet.
THANK YOU for 10 years of cephalopod discussion, collaboration, research, and information-sharing.