The Internet is the hottest topic in the computer world today, and the Web is the hottest area of the Internet (three years after making it, that statement is still true!). I think it is the most interesting and exciting technological development in a long time. I won't even attempt to tell you how to set up your own Website; there are already far better resources than I could create myself. Suffice to say, it's not that hard.

Fishmonger started life as a Mac IIci, used only 700K of RAM, and less than $100 worth of software (site-licensed by UC Berkeley, where I was working at the time). More about the technical details of the old Fishmonger site is available on another page.

These days, the Fishmonger web site is located on a Unix box at my ISP (Internet Service Provider), who provides 25 megabytes of disk space to each user from which they can create and serve a site. My ISP is DNAI in Berkeley, and they run the Apache HTTP server, version 1.1.1.

I create the pages which make up the site on my personal computer at home (a Macintosh), using a product called Frontier. I am using Frontier version 4.2.3, which is available to Macintosh users for free, from the Frontier website (a Windows version is coming soon).

Frontier began life as a scripting environment for the Mac, but in the past three years has grown into a superior web site management tool. While it is not the easiest tool to learn, it returns the investment a Webmaster makes more than any other product I've used.

The reason is quite simple: web site organization is hierarchical by nature, and Frontier allows the creation of a hierarchy of pages inside its own object database. Various scripts written in the environment allow the management of the pages, the generation of updated pages and uploading them to my host server, the insertion of standard HTML, etc. I have also written my own scripts to create special features in my site, like the guide bar at the top and the location path at the bottom of each page.

I can't begin to describe all of Frontier's features, but you can investigate the product yourself, by visiting the Frontier web site. It's free! Frontier is being ported to Windows, too, so if you're using that other platform, you'll soon have the opportunity to use a very powerful tool.

IMPORTANT NOTE
This is a dead web site. I have moved my web presence to several different sites:

• Personal Information: http://www.michaelandrochellessite.com/
• Professional Information: http://www.alderete.com/
• Consulting Information: http://www.aldosoft.com/

Please visit me there instead. Thanks!
-- Michael, October 2000