About the StrivingLife.net network

• October 5, 2005
• James Skemp
• StrivingLife

First, let's talk about the StrivingLife.net network.

To do that, we'll have to talk about how I got to this point.

Way back in '97 or so, I started creating Web pages that I published for public consumption. They were rudimentary, at best.

My first pages were under an AOL member account, under the username of jrogue14. I don't have any editions of that old content.

The next pages I remember were at Tripod. I dabbled in a number of other free hosts as well, but Tripod is what I most remember, and where I stayed. jamesrskemp.tripod.com became, in December 2002, an actual domain - jamesrskemp.net

JamesRSkemp.net had a number of different versions, but I wasn't quite happy with the direction it was going in. JamesRSkemp.net was very personal and specific. When I offered to host the articles of a fellow student, Gavin Schmitt, there was a real problem with hosting his files under my name. While jamesrskemp.net/gavin was used, it was still 'me' that was being focused on.

For this reason, I began planning a new domain. I decided I would keep the old domain, and all it's content, but create something that would hopefully appeal to a larger audience. After a good deal of thought, I finally decided upon StrivingLife.net, and, in September of 2004, StrivingLife.net became a reality.

A brief aside about StrivingLife.net. According to Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th Century German philosopher, the 'world', in the largest sense of the word, is will. And the will is constantly striving. That's all you need to know about why I picked StrivingLife. The .net was easy enough - I wanted StrivingLife.net to become a network for ideas.

While it's been less than a year since StrivingLife.net was created, the number of sites related to it has grown.

If we remember back a few paragraphs ago, there was jamesrskemp.net and jamesrskemp.net/gavin While I kept jamesrskemp.net, I began converting the old files into a new format for StrivingLife.net. This new format consisted of PDF files created from Word documents. Since the previous pages were in HTML, this resulted in some amount of work. However, I was able to gain structure, and the ability to allow people to print documents in a standard, and non-coloured, format. See, the old HTML pages were quite the colour beasts.

Gavin's site, after a little bit of discussion and thought, became FramingBusiness.net, in February 2005.

While I stopped maintaing JamesRSkemp.net after getting StrivingLife.net, redirecting old files to the new when I could, and while FramingBusiness.net was Gavin's content, I was still doing all of the layout work for the latter site. So, I was creating an even larger project than originally attended.

Anywho, therein lies the beginnings of the StrivingLife.net network. In June of 2005, I added two more sites to the fold, but sans content. ClownsStealSouls.net and StopStriving.net were based on ideas, but I've yet to find the time to expand upon them.

In August of 2005 I was able to create DoNotDenyMyUnicorn.com, this time having content to post. Originally intended to be a joint production, it appears that upkeep is solely up to me now, and with no way for anyone to contact me (without doing a whois, that is), it appears I need to either continue producing it by myself, or add some contact information.

And that's the StrivingLife.net network.

Tomorrow, I'll be talking about site specifics, like how I get these sites online, how popular they are, and what I'm using to create these pages, among other things.

~Jk