RON'S TRANSLOADER 411
I was honored when asked by Mary and George to write an article for the HPO Report! So, here's a bit about me and the history of how RON'S TRANSLOADER 411 came into being:
My name is Ron and I am a retired hairstylist of 32 years. I was born in a small town in NW Missouri and lived most of my life in another small towm in central Mo. called Fulton. I moved to California in 1972 and lived here for about 14 months and moved back to Mo. in 1973. I finally moved back to California in 1982 and settled in Long Beach, California. I now call this home.
In December of 1997 I was surfing through the TV channels one night and caught the last few minutes of an infomercial. I pretty much HATE infomercials, but...this one was different. It was advertising the wonders of owning a WebTV. I was interested!
A couple of weeks went by and during this time, I kept catching the endings of the WebTV infomercials and learning a tad bit more about the units each time. One night, I finally saw it from beginning to end. I knew that after that infomercial, I HAD to buy a WebTV.
In late December, I went looking for a WebTV unit and because of the Christmas season, everyone was sold out. So, I waited until Januray and found a newly-released Mitsubishi Plus model in a store and promptly bought it.
Because I live only two blocks from the beach, I wanted a nickname that would reflect that. So I came up with my username of "atthebeach". This would also become the name of my first homepage.
After learning basic html on my sig. box as everyone does, I wanted a homepage! So I signed up for my first one at GeoCities. A friend then helped me with setting up the basic page and introduced me to the StarBlvd Transloader. He explained that by transloading the files I wanted on my page, I would not be stealing bandwith and they would always be there at my disposal.
He tried to explain thru e-mails about using the transloader. After I finally did it, I was amazed had how really simple the process was.
After learning to transload, I joined into the discussions about homepages. I started posting in alt.discuss.homepage and alt.discuss.homepage.opinions where I learned so much about building and designing homepages. I also made many, many friends.
I kept reading SO Many postings, along with receiving e-mails from people wanting to know how to transload. These people, like me, found the instructions quite lacking.
It was at this time I decided to write a tutorial on using the StarBlvd. Transloader. I was tired of writing the instructions over and over so many times. After working in management positions all my life and doing lots of complicated paperwork, I knew the tutorial had to only be one thing. Simple.
I started writing my tutorial and called it RON'S TRANSLOADER 411. I thought the name would convey the fact that it was information, hence the 411.
I wrote all the instructions as simple as I could using for my basis, the fact that I wanted a child to be able to read it and understand the steps. So on September 30, 1998, RON'S TRANSLOADER 411 was born! And the rest, as they say, is (WebTV) history.
Afer writing the tutorial and sending it along to friends and other people who needed help, I thought I would post it in a number of the newsgroups. To my amazement, it was an overnight success! I was constantly checking my counter numbers and was completely shocked as to the number of visitors the page was getting. As people visited the page, countless Thank You! mails from complete strangers filled up my mail box.
Thinking I would just write this page to send to friends, I had no inkling as to the response this page would have after making it public, nor the fact that almost everyone on WebTV now knows who I am and knows about RON'S TRANSLAODER 411.
After designing the page, I realized that many people work better with instructions in front of them. This is when I decided to do a graphics-free page so the instructions could be printed. I later added, RON'S TRANSLOADER 411 MESSAGE BOARD for people to ask questions and post other tips about transloading.
As I write this editorial for the report, RON'S TRANSLOADER 411's counter sits at 27,494. I am happy my page has helped so many people. It is my most popular individual page.
I currently have five homepages, AT THE BEACH, RON'S BEACH HOUSE, The WEBTV AWARDS ARCHIVES, TIGEREYES GRAPHICS I and TIGEREYES GRAPHICS II. You can visit my PAGE LINKS page by clicking here.
Ron
WEBRING STATS
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In our next issue, we would like to have a Letters to the Ringmaster section. If you have any comments or just want to introduce yourself, send an email to HPO_WEBRING@hotmail.com, and we will print it.