Welcome to our new regular column. This month the webmasters ramble on about the history of this web site, though future installments may involve whatever topic happens to be on their minds at the time.

JANUARY 2001 WEBMASTER WRITINGS
by John-Paul and Willa, ATF Staff Writers

Hi. Allen here, though most of you may know me only as the loud John-Paul, rose rogue. If you haven't read a brief history of my (and Lindy's) involvement with renaissance festivals, please see the About ATF page. It has some background which might help you better understand why we do this.

Over the past seven months we have put so much effort into building this site, all for the amusement of our friends and those who may stumble across it. I've always held the belief that any hobby that can be made to at least pay for itself is better than one that can't. Because of this, I started selling roses at festivals. This helped me justify the expense from gas, lodging, food and trinkets. When the amount of photos I had grew large enough to require paying for web hosting, a decision was made to try to resell service as well to make a few bucks and offset my own server fees. So far, it's worked out quite well. I don't think we've quite reached a break even point, but it certainly has become less financially painful to operate this site in the past few months.

Each time we did a major update we tagged a version number on it. The original 1.0 site was "imortalized" on T-shirts and business cards which were made for the 2000 festival season. 1.1 seems to have vanished in history, while the 1.2 site took style lessons from Lindsy and became the first version that didn't look too much like a personal web page. 2.0 came about to make things look more "professional". We used a layout similar to that of Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. I guess you can really see web styles evolve alot like clothing -- today all the major sites seem to use very similar layouts, and At The Faire is now proud (?) to be part of the trendy "dot com" business.

Dozens of hours have gone into the creation of this site and we hope it shows. Over the next few months we will continue to tweek things as we find out what works and what doesn't, and collect feedback from our friends and folkes such as yourself. Thank you so much for being one of our early visitors. I hope you enjoy the new enhanced site and that we will still be seeing you when 3.0 comes out.

-- Allen

Help keep us online. Book your travel here, or patronize some of these folke:

1. Des Moines Ren Faire (IA)
2. Iowa Ren Festival (IA)
3. Iowa-Minnesota Pirate Fest (IA)
4. Greater Quad Cities Ren Faire (IL)
5. Midlands Pirate Festival (NE)
6. Nebraska Ren Faire (NE)
7. Ren Faire at Sleepy Hollow (IA)

1. thescotsdragon.com
2. threegryphons.com

1. danzamystique.com
2. gypsycomedyshow.com
3. mydragonstories
4. phoenixswords.atthefaire.com
5. piratecomedyshow.com
6. queenbea.atthefaire.com
7. revelers.atthefaire.com
8. wenchville.com

1. anothercrappypodcast.com
2. atthefaire.com
3. crocolyle.atthefaire.com
4. perin.atthefaire.com
5. renbanner.net
6. renreporter.com
7. sirclisto.com

Host your site with ATF and be listed here! $50/year (and the publicity is free!)

Permanent festivals in our area: Kansas City Renaissance Festival, Bristol Renaissance Faire, Des Moines Renaissance Faire and Minnesota Renaissance Festival.
Other ATF sites: DisneyFans.com DMHauntedHouses.com