MobileMe/dotMac Expiration on June 30

As I wrote last Summer in the post, Future location of website, I have to make some domain address changes for my websites.  More than a year ago, Apple announced a move to iCloud as a replacement for MobileMe.  What this means for me is that the iDisk which was used to store my webpages would no longer be available as of June 30, 2012.  For now, it will be Dropbox which will store all my webpages on the Class of 1979, Devil Mountain Run and Rancho Romero Turkey Bowl.  Any address which uses "homepage.mac.com/JohnBRamsey/" should be changed to "dl.dropbox.com/u/36395968/".  Not exactly catchy, huh?  Well, most of the sites have simpler domain links like "1979.SanRamonHigh.com" or "TurkeyBowl.org," or "DevilMountainRun.com." But underneath the simpler domain name was the real address which WAS homepage.mac.com and now will be dropbox.com.

Please let me know if you find any outmoded links that refer to mac.com or aol.com or geocities.com.

Future location of website.

This blog originally was created to help publicize website address changes. In 2008, AOL shut down its free hosting services, where the original page had been located since 1998. Soon thereafter, Yahoo shut down its GeoCities page. I decided to store all the files on my Apple MobileMe/"Dot Mac" servers. Well, Apple has decided to shutter its MobileMe service in favor of iCloud, so that means that the homepage.mac.com/johnbramsey/SanRamonHi/classof79.html address will be defunct. Fortunately, Apple has given us until June 30, 2012, which is a lot better than the usual 30 days notice these companies give.

I've got ownership of domain names SanRamonHigh.com and SRVHSClassof79.org, so the goal will be to make the actual location of the files less relevant than simply knowing the domain names above.

I have just began using Dropbox to store up to 2 GB of files online. They offer a public folder which should be adequate for storing my high school memorabilia files. The address doesn't exactly roll off the tongue -- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36395968/SanRamonHi/classof79.html -- but that's why we own srvhsclassof79.org, right?

I hope to keep this site going for many years to come. Much of the content is static -- like yearbook photos and school newspapers. Although there now are websites out there that have online versions of old yearbooks, I still plan to keep this site alive.

GeoCities to shut down October 26

The old free web hosting service, GeoCities, will shut down on October 26, 2009. While I had moved much of the website files from GeoCities, I still had most of the Wolf Print files there. They will be moved to a new location soon. Ideally, in the future I will re-scan the Wolf Prints at higher resolutions since computer speeds are so much faster than they were when these sites were created in 1999.

If you have a Yahoo GeoCities account where you may have stored some files in the past, you should make sure to download them to your computer soon. If you have a lot of files to download, I recommend the Firefox browser add-on called Down-Then-All. Here is a link to a step by step download tutorial . The "Down-Them-All" link is also at this tutorial site.

1979.SanRamonHigh.com

Well, after almost ten years of having the Class of '79 website at the "members.aol.com" address, I had to move it to another site last October. Since then, it has been at the "homepage.mac.com" site. Apple recently announced plans to close the Homepage service. Fortunately, Apple will NOT be deleting any files, but it will no longer be possible to make modifications through the Homepage service.

So, I recommend that everyone uses the address: http://1979.SanRamonHigh.com and that will get you to the correct page, wherever it may be hosted!

Obama Class of '79

With the election of Barack Obama, Punahou HS '79, I got to wondering what was on the web about Barack and his old high school class.  Back in my college days, there was this guy in the dorms who seemed to wear a "PUNAHOU" shirt everyday.  So I knew about this elite Hawaii high school way back in 1980.  Anyway, one of "Barry's" classmates posted a page of their yearbook on the web in January 2007.  She made some cute comments and thought that would be the end of it.  Sadly, people misinterpreted her intentions and in this highly volatile and hostile political atmosphere, a lot of folks slammed her and she had to cut off the comments. 

My opinion is that the mere fact that some publications, such as high school yearbooks, happened to be published before the internet existed does not mean that they should not be converted to this new medium.    

Easier web address

I just learned that I can create subdomains with the domain names that I own.  So, you can now use http://1979.sanramonhigh.com to go to the homepage.mac.com website.  A little easier to remember!

goodbye AOL --

Well, AOL stuck to their word.   "Hometown.aol.com" and "members.aol.com" -- the FTP sites that hosted AOL member webpages -- are now down and will not be revived.  Thus, the SR Class of 1979 website has officially moved over to the homepage.mac.com location.  

Sad that this has happened so suddenly as I am sure a lot of folks will not find the new location for a long time.

Updating

It turns out that changing the address from aol.com to mac.com is just a small aspect of the transition to a new location.  As I look at all of the webpages associated with the main site, I see so many links to images or pages hosted on aol.com.  After 10/31, those links will be dead, so guess what?  I get to crawl through all of the code and search and replace all the aol.com references.  (At least it's done with the "search and replace" function on Dreamweaver.)

My kids and family  have already been neglected this last week as I have had to hurriedly make this move from AOL's servers.  So, if you find some dead links or graphics that won't load, please leave me a comment and I will fix it.

Thanks...

Working on the website

Given that the SR '79 website is almost 10 years old, it goes without saying that the page is looking a little tired.  Whatever HTML skills I have were all learned on the fly in 1998 and 1999.  Sadly, I've not done a whole lot more with websites since then.  Mostly just using templates.  But I have Dreamweaver, a web authoring application, so I've been trying to clean up the old web page a bit, as I prepare it for its new home over at mac.com.

I only created the page in the first place back in '98 to post all of our high school senior portraits from the yearbook online, since I thought a  lot of us might not have ready access to our yearbooks.  And the web was pretty new and it just seemed that it would be awesome to try to help everyone get psyched to see their old friends from high school.

But I was having fun with the scanner and I found my old Wolf Prints and other such high school memorabilia and just scanned and posted as much as I could. 

One of my favorite aspects of the SR '79 site was the biography page.  It was cool to read about the lives of my classmates.  With the demise of AOL's FTP service, the website will lose the Guestbook function which was what I used to create the Biographies page.  Most of the biographies were written in that first year -- 1999 -- but occasionally someone will drop by and post something from Taipan or some far off place.  Most recently. Spambots ( I guess that's what they are called) had found the site and posted some spam messages that kind of cluttered up the  page a bit.  So, I reluctantly shut that down.  

Welcome to the new SR '79 blog

With the news that AOL would soon be discontinuing their support for member created webpages, I have been working to transition the members.aol.com/SanRamonHi/classof79.html website to a new address.  Back when I created the site, Bill Clinton had recently been impeached by the House of Representatives  but not yet acquitted by the U.S. Senate.  December 31, 1998.  So, the page lasted 9 years and 10 months at the exact same address.  Shoot, it was only created to help publicize the 20 Year Reunion, held 9 years ago today!  It did it's job, garnering 4,000 hits in its first ten months as we lead up to the 20 year Reunion.  I worked hard at adding content and keeping it fresh that first year.  Since that time, I have allowed the page to remain up and have occasionally added some new content.  By the time AOL shuts the original address down, we'll have gotten over 16,000 visits to the page.

I hope the blog will be a way for communication to take place in a positive manner as we prepare for our 30 Year Reunion!