When did you become interested in Calvin and Hobbes?

Oh, wow, years ago. I picked up one of the books and I was hooked,

 

Did you have a website at this time?

No

When did you first get a website?

Early/mid 2001 when I made a simple page using a page building wizard on Webspawner. It was originally a Wallace and Gromit fan page, but I converted it to

Calvin and Hobbes in 2002 I think. The Calvin and Hobbes version is still up at http://calvinandhobbes.michaelgoonan.net/version1.html
At the time that was the best anybody could really do, but now Webspawner seems to have all the extra features of say, the Freewebs site wizard.

Did you ever expect more than 5 people to visit it?

Ha ha! Well, at the time I created the webspawner site, I wasn't really interested in who visited, just having a site that I made. I pretty much forgot all about it until early 2004 when I started a new version on GeoCities using PageBuilder, but no, I never expected it would get this kind of exposure. Last couple of days I've had over 1,000 unique visitors and about 2,000 page views. It was beyond my wildest dreams that it would ever get that kind of attention.
 

At what point did you feel “hey, I think I could offer something that people will want to see and will think is cool?” And was this the point when you turned it into more of a site than a links page?
 

Well, that was sort of in 2004 when I first opened my GeoCities account. Although really at the time I just wanted to have a more elaborate website and I didn't really update it much. The time I really felt like I had something to offer was in November 2005, around the 20th anniversary of Calvin and Hobbes and when The Complete Calvin and Hobbes came out. Not long before I joined Everything Calvin and Hobbes. I think lots of people had their interest renewed around that time.
 

That makes sense. Your site was ort of the reason I started mine. I remember you saying that you got more exposure from everythingcalvinandhobbes. How many page views were you getting per day before you joined?

Before I joined I didn't really have an effective way of counting it, but I think I was getting about 10 unique visitors per day or so. Everything Calvin and Hobbes helped, but I think that the big boost I got was that I actually tried to market my site. Beforehand I guess I was under the false assumption that people would just visit the site even though there weren't links anywhere. Basically what I did was join some webrings, post it to the group, ask a few prominent C&H webmasters to link to it, and it was off!! I was getting about 50 or 60 unique visitors per day then, and in a couple months that upped to around 100. Recently, my site has gone way up on search engines and was posted on Stumble Upon, so I'm getting close to 1,000 per day now

Why did you decide to get a domain for your site?

Come on Adam, I know you've been there. I was constantly exceeding my bandwidth, and I thought it stupid to run a popular website if it's just going to be down 50% of the time. Also, I wanted to lose the annoying ads and get an easier URL.

You’ve done many redesigns. What were your influences for the first one and the newest one?

The move to GeoCities from Webspawner was simple: Like I said, at the time I created the Webspawner page, I just wanted to be able to say I had a website. There was really nothing on it, just a links page on a white background with a poorly written introductory paragraph and lots of ads. I wanted to make something worth looking at, and that I can be more proud of myself for, and so I started the Geocities site.

   The addition of the sidebar came when I got seriously interested in updating my site, and it was really so that it would be easier to navigate with all the new pages I was creating
   But the biggest rehaul I've made, and the one I'm most proud of is the change to The Calvin and Hobbes Online Museum. I made the change because I wanted to move away from PageBuilder now that I was building my html hand coding skills, and because I thought the site to be rather tacky. I also wanted to create the next super-site.

   We all know that Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's used to hold that title, but there's no real clear cut best now. I think the best is, and still is {…} even compared to mine. But other people have differing opinions. So, I made the whole site over from scratch. I thought it was a great opportunity to get practice at web designing as well as to make the site look a lot better and add more content. I'm really proud of all the new stuff I've written and added, and the way I've put it together, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Well, it really does look great... any snippets about what's to come?

Yeah, I've haven't put all the pages up yet, I've been kind of busy and haven't had much time to update the site, but I do know that I will be putting up the animations and downloads pages soon. Animations page will consist of animations from various people, and visitors could submit their own. Downloads page will feature forum avatars, C&H font, etc. Also, I will be bringing up the polls page soon, as well as writing those pages that I just have the Wikipedia entry thrown up on at the moment.