Web Hosting 3.0 - Part 1

This is probably not the first time you've heard of a 'dynamic' web site. There are numerous definitions for a dynamic web site, most of those refer to the ability to create and update items without having to change any of the actual web page. Dynamic web sites are the center of Web 2.0. Invenotech's goal is to take 'dynamic' to another level. Before we dive into dynamics, let's go into a little history about how Invenotech was born.

My name is David Dyess II and I love building (and designing) web sites. I started out with an all HTML web site, containing approximately 30 HTML pages, in early 2000. I was hooked immediately, but it was really difficult to keep 30 HTML files in sync. In 2001, I began using a content management system called PostNuke. It was my first experience with a dynamic web site and it made life so much easier. My web site wasn't really about anything, it was just a developer type site featuring free PostNuke themes and a blocks module I hacked together called Nuclei. I caught on to PostNuke rather quickly, but I joined the Air Force in 2002, so I had to take a 6 month break from my web hobby. After those 6 months were finally over, PostNuke had been forked by most of the original developers and I followed them over to Xaraya.

Even though Xaraya was created by the same people, it was totally different. It was built with a difficulty knob, so to speak. It can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be. Since moving over to the Xaraya project, I've built or helped build countless web sites and designed many themes for it. The problem with building web sites using a standard content management system or framework is having to deal with so many copies of code and doing similar tasks over and over. Every new web site project meant a new copy of a theme, a new copy of the code, a new server, a new database. (I know the more experienced of you will ask if I've ever heard of 'multi-sites', the answer is yes...but I was creating sites for different people, with different servers, and different needs.)

After a long while of reproducing the same results many times, at the cost of lots of time, I decided I needed to do something about the way content management systems handled web sites. In 2004, I began writing ideas down in a little black notebook. Over time, I spotted a few of the ideas here and there on the web. MySpace got it somewhat close. Facebook got a little closer. No one ever provided me with a tool like my ideas suggested.

In 2005, I began the Digital Identity Project. It had several hiccups and a few false starts. I went back to my notebooks in 2006 and decided I had to do something about those ideas that no one had been able to fully satisfy. I built a back-end, some test cases, and slowly paced myself out of the project, yet again. Finally, at the beginning of this year, I talked about my ideas with a couple of guys from work (AF) and we decided to make it happen. Here we are, almost 9 months later, and things are almost ready to let the world see what those other companies have been doing wrong (or not entirely correctly).

There is still a lot of work left and it will take years for the original ideas to fully develop. By then, I'm hoping there will be plenty of other ideas to keep us chugging along. In the meantime, we are hoping to provide individuals and businesses a better way to build their web sites. Not to mention, I'm ready to use it myself ;)

to be continued...