Keep reading this article for some free gifts from Soap Opera Central.
It is with great pride today that I am able to announce that Soap Opera Central marks its 10th anniversary. On March 23, 1995, this site first went live on the internet as an All My Children only mini-site named The AMC Pages. At the time, the internet was still very much in its infancy. There was no Internet Explorer and anyone who was "in the know" was downloading Netscape 1.2 - on their then state-of-the-art dial-up connection.
The AMC Pages grew out of what was then my own personal page. Sadly, no one really wanted to read about me and my life in Philadelphia - but they loved my All My Children recaps. Since none of the networks or shows had "official" web sites at the time, other soap fans emailed me to ask if it would be possible to add other soap sections to my web site. One by one, I made the additions to the site and Soap Opera Central was born.
For those of you keeping track, here are some milestones in Soap Central history:
- March 23, 1995: Surprisingly, 50 people per day tuned in to Dan J Kroll's personal homepage to see what was going on on AMC. As more people grew interested in the small site, Kroll began adding features and incorporating new ideas. After a short time, the site grew too large for a non-commercial server and Kroll was forced to move The AMC Pages to another server.
- September 1995: Volant Turnpike announced that they would begin charging for the space previously given for free. Upon this announcement, Louis Allen, of Cyberland Mall, wrote Kroll an email telling him that he did not want to see the pages disappear because of the no-longer-free server situation. He then offered space at Valleynet.
- October 11, 1995: "The Dan Kroll Pages" moved from Volant Turnpike to ValleyNet where they remained until March 31, 1996.
- April 1, 1996: The AMC Pages got their own unique domain name, www.amcpages.com. The site then became a completely AMC oriented site, eliminating Kroll's personal web pages.
- September 1996: Yahoo! Internet Life magazine rates The AMC Pages as a "four star" web site.
- January 1997: ProWebSite/MSI began unethical practices of tinkering with various pages within the site and limiting access to the pages. Because of this, The AMC Pages had to seek out a new server.
- February 3, 1997: The AMC Pages moved to a server hosted by PSOTowers.
2001: Soap Opera Central licenses content to SOAPnet for the development of their web site.
- February 2005: Due to increased traffic, Soap Opera Central launches a second server just for its message boards.
- March 2005: Soap Opera Central marks record traffic, becoming the most-visited soap opera web site for the first time.
- March 23rd, 2005: Soap Opera Central marks its 10th year on the internet.
Through the miracles of internet technology, I was able to track down some archived incarnations of this web site - all the way back to December 1996. Simply click on the links below and the oldie-but-goodie versions of the site will open in a new window. Please keep in mind that these are shown for display purposes only and the links on these pages are not entirely functional.
To mark this special anniversary, some special desktop "wallpapers" have been created for you to use on your computers. The images featured are of some of daytime television's most recognizable personalities. More will be added as our anniversary year continues.
- To download the desktop wallpaper, check out the thumbnail images below. They are available in two different sizes, depending upon your monitor's resolutions. Click on the size that you would like, and a full-size image will open in a new browser window.
- Right-click (use the right mouse button) on the full-size image.
- A pop-up menu will appear. Select the SET AS BACKGROUND option. This will set the wallpaper as your desktop pattern.
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