Here’s a brief history of this website.
We started 20 years ago, but took a hiatus around 2015.
Newly energized, we decided to upgrade TheWeirdCrap.com, one of the first sites on the web that posted user submitted fiction. Back then, we posted an email link, and folks just sent an email with their story. The original site was hosted for free on Angelfire.com. You can take a look here.
We had a lot of different looks back then as I experimented with web design. The oldest version can be found from 2001 on the internet archive…you can take a look. Personally I like this version from 2002.
So as time progressed, I had college, jobs, then a family. I had to choose between the family and this silly hobby because I couldn’t do them both. Despite other financial obligations, I kept paying to keep the site up because I just couldn’t let it go. Now that the kids are grown and I don’t need to dedicate all my time to learning new software for work, I decided to go back to my original silly hobby from back in the day.
Around 2008 I moved the fiction section to a wordpress platform (then a blogger platform). I manipulated the site with a lot of java script so it would behave as a web host platform and set it up so folks could submit and have their stories posted automatically. A great idea at the time, as no one else was using wordpress this way. Unaware of the power of spammers, the site was attacked from all directions and it was no longer a safe browsing experience. Likewise the columns were set up in a similar fashion on blogger.com.
Until recently the original site was linked to wordpress for stories, and blogger.com for columns. The old comic section didn’t work anymore. So I consolidated these three separate websites to the site you see today. Everything under one roof all nice and neat. From a technical point of view, the current site is quite the accomplishment.
At this time, I really don’t know if we’ll get the participation that we had in the past, but I’m willing to wait and find out. If you’re new to this site, I encourage you to read some of the fiction from the past…it’s very entertaining. If you like what you’ve found, put us in your favorites toolbar and come back for more when you can.
