An Anniversary, a day or four late. And a thank you.

Nowadays the wp.com domain resolves to the WordPress website, but fifteen years ago that WP stood for Web Pages. On January 24 of 1996 I began work on what would evolve into MWLguide.com, but the site’s original URL was www.wp.com/JOWO/. The first page, built from a template supplied by my Web Pages host, was an early draft of this biographical page–that bio’s structure remains basically theirs–and two days later I’d composed A Fan’s Guide to the Midwest League in Lotus Word Pro and uploaded it to the site. Within a week I’d started what was originally a weblog, about the inaugural season of the Lansing Lugnuts. I’ve discussed the evolution of the site into a Midwest League history effort elsewhere, and shan’t repeat that here.

I moved the site to MWLguide.com–and off the WP domain–on December 1, 1997. As you likely know, a few months back I stopped maintaining that website; what you probably don’t know is that SABR now owns the site (speaking loosely) and moved the content to their servers as the year changed. My thanks to SABR, and especially to SABR webmaster Peter Garver, for taking steps to preserve fifteen years’ work. It’s much appreciated.

And my thanks to John Skilton and his Skiltech support team (especially Wade Minter) for their unfailing helpfulness over the course of a long, and still continuing, business relationship. That, too, is much appreciated.