Author Lori Soard had the germ of an idea for Word Museum in 1996. Talking to her author friends, she realized there wasn’t a space for authors and readers to come together and have a community, classes and training. Back in the early days of AOL’s rise to popularity, Lori had a workshop in the communities area each week, where she shared writing and grammar tips as well as held round robin style writing sessions with a variety of attendees. The internet didn’t look like it does today. There were few websites and resources outside of AOL and some online message boards.
Lori studied HTML coding and learned to put a site together using code and early tools such as Frontpage–a now defunct WYSIWYG HTML editor and management system. The graphics were rough at first. The site was mostly text.
The Wayback Machine only grabbed screenshots in 1998, but you can still see how rough the design was at that point and how limited the features. I worked around it, promoted authors, met readers and built the site up to have hundreds of authors involved and a staff of about seven. Unfortunately, the original graphics are lost to time, but the Hall of Authors was a little graphic with an old fashioned door open and leading to a hallway. Word Museum was a wordmark.
By 2000, I’d begun to play around with some graphics and server side includes. Although there are broken images in the Wayback Machine, you get the gist of the changing face of the site and the growing features.
Next, came our “where writers grow and readers unlock the magic” tagline as you’ll see at the end of Amelia’s story. I remember having so many ideas that we couldn’t implement them all and had to pick and choose. I also had some amazing staff members who would bring more ideas to me. I loved growing the site and getting to know so many skilled people.
In 2002, our look changed again as I discovered better navigation practices and created my form of early tabs. It was a much neater, more streamlined look. The site continued to grow and change. In 2006, we had a hacking incident. I had to rebuild the site from scratch.
Meanwhile, my kids were getting older and needed my attention. We were going through a lot of personal changes, sick family members, deaths in the family and any number of other situations. I didn’t want to let my loyal readers and authors down, so I asked someone who had volunteered for a while and I thought would carry on the site if she wanted to buy it for $1. It had authors and renewals built in. It was a thriving business to a point, but didn’t bring in a fortune. It was a labor of love and always has been. She jumped on the opportunity and I had a contract drawn up and sold it to her for basically nothing. The site promptly didn’t get updated and went down for several years but then became part of something else the new owner had going on. Word Museum seemed to be a memory.
In 2012, I noticed the site wasn’t being utilized, so I worked up my nerve and asked her if I could have my original domain back. I offered to pay for it, but she was kind enough to happily transfer it back to me. I was now at a point where my children were older, ill family members had passed on, and our transfer to a new location was complete. I had the extra time, funds and passion to revamp the site.
I used to be very tenderhearted and cry. I rarely do anymore. Life has a way of making your tears dry up for all but the most touching moments. I embraced a new content management system in 2012 called WordPress. Shifting to CMS and PHP coding allowed me to take my design skills to another level they hadn’t been at before. Design had changed a lot in the years I stepped away from the work. However, I picked it up fairly quickly and continued to hone my skills. I turned the site into more of a blog than a promotional site and featured my clients who I picked back up here and there once I got back into design.
Today, the site has morphed again as I enter a new phase. I am taking Word Museum back to her roots. We are once again a site where readers and writers can connect, but we’ll also pull in other elements that have grown popular this decade, such as social media platforms. I hope you’ll stick with me as I move into the third decade of WordMuseum.com and transform her into a modern version of what she once was with a mix of other skills I’ve learned along the way, including some SEO, UX and better design elements. There’s no telling where she might go in the future, but she will always be a labor of love and I will continue to pour my love into her and hope she makes some small difference in your life and brings a smile to your face like she does mine.
I love you all!