The History of Frogstar

A long time ago, in this galaxy here, I was driving to work with my father, listening to the radio in the car together.  A strange British voice came over the airwaves, which was not so unusual in the morning, but comedy was.  Science fiction certainly was unexpected.  A radio play that would remain a common memory for my father and I for years to come.  Our daily commuting listen to BBC's The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

Frogstar 1996On July 30th, 1996, Frogstar was chosen as the domain name for my personal web site.  It was an inside joke, and a nod to the memory of HHGTTG and a catchy non descript word.  I wanted a domain that would be easy to remember, a bit quirky, and not specifically linked or related to anything.  It sounded fun.  To be fair, I tried to register about 20 other names before Frogstar, but all were taken.  Even back in 1996, many of the good domains were already registered.

Prior to the Frogstar site, I had run a BBS for years.  The first Frogstar site was aimed mainly at my personal post-Comspec career of doing onsite in-home computer support and training.

Frogstar 1999On the personal side of the site, the HICCUP CURE first apeared, some of my personal childhood writing and memories, and the start of my sound clip collecting phase.  For the first ten years, the site remained ad-free.  It was a hobby site that was paid for by the serious side of the business.  Since I owned the hosting server, it had no real cost - however the bandwidth required to host the WAV files was actually more than double what the entire company needed for all the other customers combined.

This new iteration of the site re-introduces my experiment with banner ads.  Frogstar has always been a very personal web site,m offering only content that personaly made me smile.  It is a collection of new and old Internet humour and has always been a sharing with the world of content that made me happy. 

Advertising bothers me because I don't have enough control  and a lot of the sites I advertise are for products and services I don't petrsonally endorse or believe in.  In fact, a lot of the ads are for sites that personally offend me.  I have struggled with the descision for a long time.