Happy Fifth Birthday to Us!

It's hard to believe. This web page is five years old. That's like fifty in web years. It began life on March 3, 1995 with a name only a father could love, "The Indiana Jones WWW Page"

As a student at Indiana University I had just discovered the web. I saw tremendous potential for this new medium, but mostly as a user, finding obscure information and connecting to resources farflung from Bloomington, IN.

It wasn't until web searching turned up a half-dozen different Star Wars sites, and not a whiff of an Indiana Jones site, did the idea of becoming a web publisher even make it on my radar screen. I had been completely amazed by the depth and breadth of knowledge available at the click of a mouse, and wasn't about to let this lack of information shatter that idealized view of the web. So, for the sake of the web and for the sake of Indy I had to right this injustice. :)

Interviews around the time of Last Crusade were pretty clear that it would be the final Indiana Jones movie. But Lucas and company just couldn't let the adventures of their swashbuckling creation end so definitively. Development on Indy IV started around 1993, but apparently yielded nothing after two years of work but a mediocre script. The chances for Indy's return were bleak, but that didn't stop Indy fans the world over from hoping. In fact, with this world-wide web of hoaxes and liars mixed in with spies and insiders, the rumors were as optimistic (though mostly false) as ever. Five years later, little has changed.

In mid-1997, I bought a plot of the cyber-landscape for my growing website, rechristening it Indyfan.com. Soon thereafter, I installed the Forum. For the first time, there was a widely-accessible place to discuss Indy and only Indy. I'd been flamed a couple of times for posting Indy stuff to rec.arts.sf.starwars, and was happy to find a friendly place to hear from like-minded Indy fans.

Over the years I've ridden herd on a few nasty Forum fights, briefly went commercial for good reason, cowered in fear from a wholly imaginary pack of Lucasfilm lawyers, squelched false Indy rumors, and shot my mouth off when I shouldn't have.

I'm hoping for another fifty...

--Micah (indy@indyfan.com)

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Site Author: Micah Johnson Page Author: Micah Johnson Created: March 3, 2000 Last modified: March 2, 2000

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