I think it was 1996, or maybe 1997, when I first got online. We had had one previous computer, but that was a basic one, without a modem. At the time we had a rent-to-buy a computer, which meant that it was easy to upgrade, and so we did, swapping that first computer for one with a modem installed. We were so green! At the time, there was no broadband and the few isps in the UK charged a fortune. We got a deal with Compuserve; a good one we thought, until we were suddenly charged £80 for what was supposed to have been a "free introductory month". Sadly, my husband said that we had to give that one up. I liked Compuserve though, they had some good member-only forums and I had spent a lot of time in some of them. (Probably why we were charged so much!) Especially the journalling channel, with Willa Cline.

But all was not lost as the first cheap-rate isps had arrived. They were free to join and then you paid for your time online through the 'phone bill. I did my best to stick to surfing at off-peak hours, but the costs still mounted up. We had joined Demon Internet and I used the free space we got from them to start my first website. Our username was ribbon, so I named my first site, "Ribbon". It was a very basic, generic "my first site" and none the worse for that. I enjoyed putting it together and learning a few things along the way. Then the isps changed again, to charging a low flat rate and offering a free number with which to access the internet. That was what I had been waiting for. I was off and running as the saying goes! We joined Freeserve and looked set to stay with them for a long time.

By now I had graduated from the isp space to getting a Geocities site. I had also got myself a site at Fortunecity, which was a UK version of Geocities, with named areas, streets and house numbers. My first site there was in Ballykissangel and I became so involved that again, I was asked to be a volunteer helper. The duties were much the same as in Geocities with the same structure of taking care of a certain number of sites and reporting back. After a while, I was even asked to lead the Bally team. I had to build a website to promote our area and organise activities. It was great fun as well as a big responsibility. And Fortunecity were generous to their team leaders, sending us Fortunecity mouse mats, notebooks, mugs etc. I was sent a card on my birthday from them as well.

In the end, money took over and Geocities scaled their neighbourhood guide scheme to a minimum. The changes were too much and most of us left voluntarily before we were asked to go. The senior people did their best, but the people behind Geocities did not want us there anymore. Sadly, Fortunecity eventually followed. Both sites became just a mass of adverts. And of course, Fortunecity and Geocities have both gone. There were lots of other free webspace companies opening up, and I got myself a lot of accounts in them. But none of them had the community feeling that Geocities and Fortunecity had.

However, there was iVillage, a web community for women, that gave free space to its members. They were based on the old Angelfire model, which was also used by other niche community sites. Better yet, the websites board was a lively, fun place to be. The community leaders thought up competitions, challenges and themes for us to explore in our sites. I remember writing a silly piece about the iVillage winter olympics. Then everything changed. A familiar story. sigh The website board was so well hidden that it was almost impossible to find from the board index. And though the board was billed as being about websites and graphics, it was all about making huge sigtags and swapping them. After a while, iVillage took away their old style sites and everyone had to move to Tripod, which personally I could not stand, thanks to its vast number of adverts and popups (which also affected Angelfire too). I started to move away then, getting my own domain and finding out about hosting and so on. One could say that it was time I did move, but I missed the old comradery of everyone sharing the pages they had made, back when personal websites were not all about blogs, blogs and nothing but blogs.

The answer seemed to be in free webspace forums, where you could get free webspace, often with no adverts, for posting in a forum. The problem there is, while they were rather nice, the members tended to be teenagers and it felt a little odd to be posting among them, knowing that I was old enough to be their collective mother. But I did miss the sense of community from the old days.

In 1999 my sister bought me a domain for my birthday. I began by pointing it to my Geocities site until I discovered how cheaply I could buy hosting for it instead. No ads, no hassle; it was a real eye-opener. After dabbling with .co.uk domains, I discovered paypal and how to use it to buy com/net/org/eu/ws/nu domains as well. I got into making webgraphics for my sites and it has become something of an obsession. I spend a lot of time online as I don't work and have always tended to live a solitary life, due to circumstances and my health. The 'net is as the well-worm saying goes, a window on the world. It has introduced me to people from all over and led me to take up the hobby of making graphics and websites. It has been an amazing time and I'm hoping that the following years will teach me even more, though I am entrenched in Web 1 websites.