Building Jeff-Z.com
Jeff-Z.com came into being on August 2, 2003...
Although I had a few years experience tinkering around with a home PC and the Internet, I had no formal computer training and knew zero, zip, zilch about creating web pages or html code. One day I purchased a book: "A Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Web Page". After spending about an hour just reading the first few chapters of the book, I was sitting at my computer composing web pages. It's that easy. If I can do this, anyone can. My book is way out of date by now, but I believe newer editions of the book are still published. So it's still probably a reasonable place to start.
Jeff-Z.com was entirely created using not much more than Microsoft Wordpad, my digital camera and a simple photo editor. I do everything manually in Wordpad as opposed to using some sort of web page editor. Everything you need is probably already on your computer. The book mentioned above also included a disk with many useful applications.
Jeff-Z.com is hosted by lowesthosting.com. I found this host using the guidelines in the above book. I don't really have anything to compare it to, but lowesthosting .com has reasonable prices, is easy to use and has been reasonably reliable. I also register my domain name through lowesthosting.com.
Beginning around 2008 I began studying up on some more advanced web page stuff. I'm now using cascading style sheets (css) for my formatting and server side includes (ssi) for my headers and indexes. My pages are composed to xhtml-strict standards. Tweaking is an on going process. Converting my old pages to new is an on going process. For a look at some of my original pages, click on Jeff's Archive Pages.
Good luck with your own web site!
20 Years! 2003-2023
As of 2023 I'm an old fart and my web page format is hopelessly outdated. And I'm pretty sure that the Google algorithms go out of their way to ignore me. These days everything is formatted with phones, video and shopping in mind. This is annoying to me because I don't surf on my phone and don't much like the newer formats I see. So I have no plans to update my look. But I still very much enjoy adding content to my website and I hope you found something useful. I also hope you're reading this on a PC. If you're reading this on your phone, well, tough shit I guess.
For a little historical context, back in 2003 there was no social media as it existed in 2023. The thing to do back then was to build your own hobby website which is what I did. Then along came blog sites, MySpace and other prepackaged applications. People gave up on their own hobby sites and switched to twittering on Facebook (or how ever that works). You may have noticed my lack of social media links. If you want to communicate you'll have to send an email.
Philosophy
The Internet is probably my all-time favorite invention. I love having a world of information at my fingertips. Even when I think I already know how to do something, I turn to the Internet for better or alternate ideas. I wanted to be a part of this global collection of information. None of my stupid hobbies are going to change the world. But I enjoy the idea that my experiences my be of some use to others. Moreover, I'm terrible at remembering details. Aside from sharing my experiences with others, my website serves as a personal record for my own future reference. I'm sure no one uses my website more than I do.
Thanks to Matt Shreve for my cool "JZ" graphic...
...and to Jon Johnstone for the next generation logo.
Business Cards
I wanted the simplest domain name possible. I found that "jz.com" was already taken. Also, "jeffz.com" was already taken. So I settled for "jeff-z.com". It seemed simple enough, but I found that people still weren't always remembering if I'd just tell them verbally. Thus, I decided to design a simple business card. I started with a preexisting business card template within Microsoft Word. Then I went to Staples and bought some matching sheets of glossy business card stock by Avery. Specifically I bought Avery #8879. You just stuff the 8.5 x 11 sheets into your printer and then the page snaps apart into ten smooth edged business cards. Now I carry a few cards in my wallet and pass them out as needed.
