Twenty years in the past in the present day, on April 4th, 1999, INeedCoffee.com went on-line with our first article. We’re nonetheless right here, nonetheless brewing, and nonetheless posting.
Historical past
INeedCoffee was began whereas I used to be residing within the Washington DC Metro. I had simply moved there from Tampa Bay, the place I had one other web site referred to as the Tampa Bay Espresso Information that reviewed native espresso outlets. As soon as I moved to the DC space, I shortly realized that I may now not replace my previous web site, as this was nonetheless the age of dial-up modems, and connecting to my Tampa-based Web Service Supplier would have been a long-distance cellphone name.
I needed to begin one thing new. I appreciated espresso and creating internet pages, so on September 1, 1998, I registered the area INeedCoffee.com. Through the years, I’ve each appreciated and disliked the identify. At one level, I attempted to vary it to AllCoffee.web, but it surely didn’t stick, so I reversed course and stayed with INeedCoffee.
A screenshot from the unique INeedCoffee design.
My crew chief at work provided to host INeedCoffee from his house server totally free. This turned out to be a nasty resolution, because it was typically down and I couldn’t connect with the server more often than not. Months had been wasted on that setup till I moved the location to a professional hosting firm. Had I employed an actual internet host from the beginning, INeedCoffee would have had a 1998 beginning date. Lesson realized. Since then, I’ve solely used wonderful internet hosts.
The primary article went reside on April 4th, 1999. Espresso Historical past Primer was written by Ryan Jacobs. Ryan additionally taught me the way to house roast espresso, which is as cool because it sounds, particularly for those who’ve by no means finished it earlier than. House roasting grew to become an essential subject for a number of posts within the early years.
Within the first decade, INeedCoffee experimented with accepting content material from many writers throughout many coffee-related matters. Some matters, similar to brewing tutorials, house roasting, and comics, had been standard, whereas fiction, poetry, and journey articles weren’t. We stopped publishing these matters. Our agriculture part grew so large that we spun off that content material to EcoFriendlyCoffee.org, which releases new content material month-to-month.
Through the years, now we have more and more targeted on espresso training, which has turned out to be our area of interest. When INeedCoffee began, most Web customers used dial-up modems and had these horrible heavy CRT pc screens. Pages had been small and gradual, so we needed to preserve our pictures small so they’d load shortly. Immediately, that’s now not a difficulty. Having photo-rich tutorials helps us talk higher with our coffee-loving readers.
A photograph of the Hearthware Precision roaster from 2000.
Hearthware I-Roast 2 picture taken by Chris Arnold in 2007
Lately, we’ve taken new images for a lot of older articles. It’s one thing we proceed to do occasionally.
Immediately INeedCoffee relies out of Seattle, a legendary espresso market. Our web site is safe (runs on HTTPS), cell and pill pleasant, and makes use of a CDN (Content material Supply Community) to hurry up the location, particularly to readers exterior of North America. We proceed to publish a number of articles every month.
Classes
Over the past twenty years, I’ve seen many websites begin and give up. I’ve additionally seen individuals who need to begin a weblog however by no means do. Listed below are a number of suggestions.
- Don’t anticipate all the things to be good earlier than you launch. It by no means will probably be. Begin with one thing plain and fear about making it fairly later.
- You don’t want to purchase a site and internet hosting to see if running a blog fits you. Go to WordPress.com and arrange a free account. Later, you possibly can switch it to your area, both with them or a third-party internet host.
- As soon as you understand you need to weblog and are dedicated, register a site identify and buy hosting.
- When selecting an online host, discover one that gives Let’s Encrypt, a free method to make your web site safe (HTTPS). There are a number of causes you need your web site to be safe.
- Don’t deal with making a living first. Concentrate on getting a invaluable message to the reader. Try this sufficient occasions, and the site visitors will come. Then, if you need, see if there is a chance to earn further earnings. That is in all probability the first purpose individuals give up. They do it for cash, and the cash isn’t that a lot, so that they lose their motivation and give up. INeedCoffee went the primary 8 years with out a single advert or associates program.
- Be certain that your web site is quick and mobile-friendly. If you’re searching for themes, seek for Responsive design. Most new websites are nice, however many older websites nonetheless have designs that look terrible on smartphones.
- Keep updated with safety patches and make common backups. I do know of 1 standard health web site that misplaced all the things. They didn’t patch their weblog software program or make any backups, after which they obtained hacked.
- Don’t let your area registration expire. INeedCoffee.com is often registered out 5 to 10 years.
I didn’t embrace any social media suggestions as a result of I’m not superb at them, and the principles are altering always.
Thank You All!
I need to thank all our readers, contributors, and sponsors. Right here is to a different 20 years! Powered by espresso, in fact. ☕❤
20 Years Comedian by Todd Zapoli
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