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Introduction
This website started as an out of curiosity Photoshop
practice, but in 4 years got totally out of control.
Some history
Back in 1997 I started to experiment with Photoshop
(v4 if I remember well) to try and design some cool
graphics for a website about flightsimulators. At that
time a new simulator was about to be released, called
TFX, standing for Tactical Fighter Experiment, from
Digital Image Design. This simulator featured the F-22
among some other planes and once I flew it, I was lost,
spending many hours flying around and shooting at everything
I came accross.
This had to be told to the world asap. Photoshop and Frontpage
became my best friends.
Work on the flightsim site resumed and release 1 of the
site gradually grew. I spent hours and hours on the internet
looking for the - at that
time
- sparsely available information about the F-22
and the technology which makes it such a special
plane.
Many companies were contacted by email for background
information, which I hardly got because of the confidential
nature of the material.
Another activity was to add the site to virually
any search engine |
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I could find and the amount of visitors grew bit by bit,
although the site was hosted by Compuserve on one of such
impossible compuserve url's like ourworld.compusere.com/homepages/blablabla...
Growth
Somewhere in 1998 the domainname changed to www.f-22raptor.com
(thanks mike!) and from then on my visitor numbers started
to increase rapidly. Domainnames really can make a big
difference.
In the meantime my
Photoshop skills had evolved as well as the knowledge
on how to use JavaScrips and the site got it's first
facelift.
Although it was not a very spectaculuar one, I got
many very nice reactions through email.
Various browser imcompatibilities were resolved
and a way to send |
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feedback as well as a guestbook were implemented. A news
section was added to inform visitors about the political
debates about continuing the F-22 program, or not and
of course the technical developments were closely monitored.
Things are becoming serious
During 2000 I started my own webdesign company, called
SiteLab, allowing me to spend even more time on the project
:)
We are talking 2001, when I started noticing a relationship
between world events and the amount of visitors I got.
During for instance the Kosovo crisis, Saddam screwing
up, bombings of US property and the deeply sickening events
of 9/11 the amount of visitors the f-22raptor.com was
peaking. CNN.com even linked the site for background information
on the F-22 program. In other words, F-22raptor.com was
becoming a serious F-22 information source for the internet
community.
Time for a new release of the site, with the goal of becoming
the #1 F-22 site on the internet. This meant clear to
underastand language, the largest collection of pictures
and video/audio material on the net.
Release 3 of the site
was being made during 2002 and put live in january
2003.
Besides an entire new look a lot of background information
has been added to the site, like the "Learn
more" pop-up boxes which clarify issues, mentioned
on each page. Links to related websites have been
added as well as ways to inform more people about
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I have had a lot of fun until now building the site, which
currently serves around 10~12000 visitors every week.
Your positive and very nice feedback is really appreciated,
so keep it coming.
Cheers,
Wim van Diermen
Webmaster f-22raptor.com
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