2000
Birth of the Mixsonian.com
In September of 2000 I decided I wanted to create my own public website. After working at AOL Internet Services for over a year, I had learned a fair amount about web hosting and thought I would be able to create one. For a website you first needed a web domain name. I had wanted to use Mixson.org but when I tried to register it, I found it was already taking by a relative, James Mixson#6896. At the time there was only a choice of .com, .org, .net, .edu, and .gov. Since Mixson.org was taken I could had chosen Mixson.com but thought it would be too confusing to have a Mixson .org and .com. Having often visited the nearby Smithsonian I decided on the name “Mixsonian”, and I registered both Mixsonian.com and Mixsonian.org on September 14th 2000. Mixsonian also seemed appropriate as the main focus of my website was to be about Mixson genealogy. I next needed somewhere to host my website; a computer somewhere connected to internet. I checked around at AOL since I worked there, and they provided no such service. A loss of opportunity I always thought. One of the system administrators in our Internet Services group said he could get me set me up on one of their test and development systems, but it be only temporary and could be shut down at any time. No problem, there were quite a number of companies that provided computer hosting services for websites advertising in Computerworld magazine. One requirement I had was that the hosting company provide Microsoft Windows server for the host as I used Microsoft’s FrontPage web editing tool for the site creation. After researching them, using the internet of course, I chose a company called Interland, mainly because they provide Microsoft Windows server support. With a domain name, a hosting company and website creation software, by the end of the year I had the first Mixsonian.com website setup that had basic genealogy history of the Mixson family starting with me and going back to John Mixon the 1st who came to America in 1650.
Updated: 05-06-2024