I've been in the States since January 1998, from England. It was a shock coming here - in England I didn't know anyone who had a computer at home, including me! Here in Atlanta, Georgia, everyone has one and email is more common than picking up the 'phone.

So, it didn't take long for me to buy a computer, then to start tinkering with a "home page" for my family and cars.

I'd heard of FrontPage at work (I'm a C++ programmer), and being a web virgin I decided that was a good place to start. If you're in that position now, THROW IT AWAY!

It took a year before I realized that this was not the way it should be done. I started playing with ASP, and bought a better editor - SausageTool.com's "HotDog". That was a breath of fresh air after FP, but still a little too "helpful" for me.

In June 2000 I registered a domain, ShawThing.com and started writing a new website, this time with EditPlus. Now THAT'S an editor!

After talking about cars and family, I thought I'd experiment a little with some ASP code. Little did I know. By the end of August, just 6 weeks after I'd published my first article on ASPcode.com, I was getting an average of 500 unique visitors a day, viewing 2,000 pages. Over 60,000 page views a month.

So, on September 9th 2000, I took the plunge and launched this site, CoverYourASP.com. My home page went back to family and cars, and ASP officially took over as "the other woman".

As I write this, in the week before Christmas 2000, the site has been live for just over 3 months, and the traffic keeps increasing. Many thanks to you guys and gals who spread the word and give me such positive feedback!

Best Regards,
James

Update November 2002 Things have come a long way since I wrote the above! CoverYourASP of course became very popular and opened a lot of doors for me - including Microsofts! With 40 other ASP site owners I was invited up to visit the ASP.NET team in March 2002 for a week in Redmond which was an amazing experience.

Now I'm concentrating on my greatest accomplishment to date - the amazing OurLittleNet neighborhood site. It is a network of neighborhood web sites that allow the residents to unlimited create FREE web pages! My personal one is the Roswell, GA neighborhood where I live.

Update March 2008Wow, I'm still having fun with websites after all this time! I've written a CMS and subsquently sold the company - now I'm trying my hand at building a collection of retail web sites. You can already buy tiki products like Hawaiian Tiki Statues and Tiki Masks! Follow along at Clever Chaps..