How The Woodburner website came into being!

This is a reprint of an article I wrote on my website, The Woodburner.  I’m posting it here also so that I don’t lose or forget it (more likely to forget where I put it )

Hello and Welcome to All!

As I’ve said these 10 years have been quite interesting and wonderful, and now we are into the second 10.

10 years ago I was going to the university for my Business Information Systems degree. During some of the coursework, we had to investigate various aspects of the Internet as it applied to what we were doing. I think it was January 1999 that I was trying to determine what would be a fun project, what type of website I could setup; I just wanted to see if I could do it – build a website – never did it before, I thought about a lot of my interests, and did a lot of online research on those interests, to determine what would be useful.

I explored all of what interested me to see what was out there at the time. I actually started with a list, and went down the list doing searches on Alta Vista (I don’t think Google was around then) and actually making notes on what there was on the Internet related to my interests.

One solid interest I had was pyrography – I’ve always loved the arts, music, and I saw some sites that displayed very good works of pyrography by various people. The website of David Kreider (www.kreiderart.com) was the first one I found. He was and is a fantastic artist! And there were other individual artist/pyrographer galleries, and a few grouping of very good pyrographers. But what I noticed was that there were no websites were someone could go to find information on learning the artform from a very basic level.

When I first started pyrography back in the very early 1980′s, there was next to no information that I could find. All I had to work with was what I could find, and most of it was from Walnut Hollow. Now, that’s not bad, but it was a rather limited resource. So that’s how I learned and I improved a bit. I had done oil and acrylic painting before that, since about 1973. But I found that I could do pyrography in a much more relaxed manner. I had lived in Italy for 3 years from 1972, and it was the artwork of Florence, mainly, but also Venice, that really made me aware of what art was and could be. That’s what piqued my interest in art in the early 70′s.

So, I decided that I was going to start a website for those who had an interest in pyrography, but had no idea where to go to find the information they needed to get started. So I took some photos of what I had done, wrote some introductory lessons (very basic), and studied what was needed to be done to be on the Internet. By then I knew I could build the initial website (all simple html at the time), but I had no idea how people would find it. I did a lot of research, and I did whatever I found seemed to work for others. I did a lot of things to get the site our there, but probably the most valuable thing I did was to get the site listed with Yahoo. At that time, Yahoo wasn’t very large either, and they were still listing sites in their Directory free of charge! I listed it there, at Alta Vista, and several other web portals that I don’t remember, probably because they are no longer around. I still today get people who stop by because of that listing in the Yahoo Directory (not search engine, the Directory).

I also thought about the name for a long time before deciding on The Woodburner, with the domain of woodburner.com. I was asked by many people why that name, and I always told them because the site was for the beginning burner, not an accomplished pyrographer. And anyone, at least back then, who started burning when they were young, knew the ‘craft’ as ‘Woodburning’. And that’s the reason the site has the name it does. It was to be a site where someone who wanted to learn the artform could come to find out about it.

There was also a side goal. I thought that if I could get more people interested in woodburning, by providing the information they needed, then more people would actually know and learn about it. The more people who knew about it, the more would find out that it is so much more than a ‘craft’, but rather a valid artform. So another goal was to have some part in spreading the word about pyrography. And in some small way I think the website succeeded in doing that.

At this point, the website is actually the people who stop by to share their experience, techniques, and knowledge on this wonderful artform. The website provides some of the tools to allow that to happen, but it is definitely the people who keep it moving along. And I hope I am able to keep the website going so that The Woodburner Family will be around to assist others down the line.

I still go into the older Galleries of this site, 1999, 2000, just to see how this all started, and to look at the names of those who got the ball rolling. That’s why I keep those older galleries around. All of those Galleries are a kind of monument to everyone who has passed this way over the last 10 years. I hope there are many more!

Thanks to [link=http://www.southwestwoodcrafts.com]Bill (Mesquiter)[/link] for suggesting this story! And thanks to all who have stayed with us. It’s been quite a ride

And thanks to all the new members, upcoming Pyrographers, without whom this site would server no useful purpose!

I wish you all a wonderful day!

Ralph

http://www.woodburner.com