Happy Birthday ByFaithOnly

Some people may think this somewhat silly. I mean celebrating a birthday for a web site but I have always looked at my personal web site, byfaithonly.com, very much like one of my children. I also feel this 10th birthday would be a great time to share the story behind the site.

First of course there was the pregnancy. My first experience with building a web site was with Geocities.com which is no longer in existence. I free site with all the graphics and set up built in. That site was very much like 1000s of other sites and honestly I can't even remember now the name or address of the web site.

Then after about a year online through one of those sites where you 'earn money' for doing things I was introduced to Homestead another free web hosting site and I earned a whole 50 cents for throwing together a web site on their system. Very much like Geocities I could do that in a matter of minutes but while searching their collection of free to use graphics I found a nice photo of a cross.

The site at Homestead took on a 'Christian' theme and at the same time I learned about 'web rings' and decided to join some to help build links and traffic to my site. One of those web rings was ~Let His Light Shine~. After a few months I became frustrated with the Homestead hosting so played with free sites at Angelfire, Tripod, and a few others that didn't last long.

Then, I found a Christian web hosting site TruePath which also offered 'free site hosting'. I'm all for 'free' and liked the idea of the Christian hosting company which worked wonderfully with the Christian theme of my site and the web ring. So, I moved my site totally to TruePath. No more using the control panel for pre-designed sites. I started doing my own graphics and had learned html.

For almost two years I had the free site at TruePath but during that time through a series of events I become the owner/leader of the previously mentioned web ring ~Let His Light Shine~. With all the talk about search engines basically listing free hosted sites at the end of the search results I decided it was time to move up in the world and get a domain of my own.

I had no idea on earth what domain name I might want so sent out an email to the members of ~Let His Light Shine~ for suggestions. One of my dear dear co-leaders, Alberta, emailed back almost immediately with 'hello, byfaithonly'. She reminded me not only did it fit with my religious beliefs but I, Faith, was the only one who worked on the site...

A quick check and I found the domain name was available, I contacted TruePath about hosting packages, and on June 8th, 2000 ByFaithOnly.com was born! Over the last ten years there have been many changes to the web site but it has always continued to grow as any child should. The web site has provided years of fun, frustration, learning, and growing for me also.

I have to thank the owners of TruePath for their assistance over the years. One year I didn't have the funds to renew my domain name so they covered it until I could pay it. They also backed me 100% when I came under attach by a group of people who did not appreciate or accept the requirements for becoming a member of the web ring (a sub section of ByFaithOnly now).

Never in a million years would I have thought that night I just wanted to earn a quick 50 cents that I would be celebrating the 10th birthday of my own web site but even though the company that was supposed to pay me the 50 cents folded and I never received my money I don't care now. I have been blessed a million times over by the opportunity to work on this web site and hope you will join me in celebrating ByFaithOnly's ten years online.