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The Employee's Tribute
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How the AstroworldPark website Began
When everyone found out the park was closing, they were going and getting everyone's phone numbers. Then it was mention that there should be central location for anyone to go and get contacts. How about a website? Someone suggested. Then there was talk about putting up a website, but it wasn't happening. I check with people to see if they were putting up a site. Never got a straight answer. I said I know how to do this and they said "Do it". I researched to see what name were available and we chose this name and it happened.

Originally it was just going to be a list of employees with their contact info. But we didn't want it to be exposed to everyone so, It was decided to do a membership where you have to have an account to have access. And so it was so. 

A member could build their profile along with a photo of themself. Adding their contact infomation with a chose on what would be visible for others to see.

It became more than an employee directory.

Then a page was developed for park photos. This grew to categories such as photos of the park, photos of the rides and park events and so on.
Since I had in my possession of all the park music, I added them to the website.

A forum was added which was open for anybody to see and keep track as to what was happening in the park and the rides. It was a busy time, the website was a success.


Reason for Closure AstroworldPark website.
I announced that I was closing the website down. For the lack of interest.

In the beginning it was well used and has over 800 members.

Over the years the website activities slowed down to several new members a month. The last couple of years there's maybe one or two for the year.

I understand that there is a saturation point where no new members would be joining, but no one was going back to updates their phone number, address, emails, which defeats the main reason of the website.

The website is also capable of sending webmail's to the members by group or individuals. The last time I sent a group email, about 50% came back invalided. Also it was capable of members sending Emails to other member without knowing their email address but it was never used. This has been disabled for a while.

Only a couple of member loaded a profile photo and no one has added any photos for the website. All of the photos that are on the website are what i had in my procession.

Once in a while I see on Facebook somebody asking about Park music. I refer them to the website. I also see people asking about yearbooks. I have several, but unfortunately I never got around to scanning them and loading to the website.

The website has be opened for everyone to see. The members information is for members only. Members are Astroworld/Waterworld employees only.


Reconciliation

After I made the announcement to close the website I was surprised the response I got,

I didn't realize and was moved.

That people said they enjoy looking at the website.
Please don't close it,
Can some else take over?
This is the last memory we have.

I might reconsider. 

I have until July to decide.
That's when the yearly fee are due.

Finances for AstroworldPark website.
There are those that have suggested that if finances where a reason on closing the website they would be willing to help. That's not the reason. It actually doesn't cost that much. About $15 a month.

There is a page for members to see that breaks down the spending for the website. Also any donation is appreciated and the info is found on the financial page.
What's behind all the pages you see on this website.
Technical 
Web browsers are similar to a word processor with less features. The main difference is word processors uses machine code for formatting where browser uses a mark up language. Thus the name HTML.Hypertext Markup Language. The latest is HTML 5  Version 6 is in the works and should be released soon.

The language use what the call Tags.  The browsers understands the tags and follows the instruction.

In additions to this process there are scripting languages. Because HTML is limited and cannot do functions that are needed to serve the worlds needs. HTML 5 will handle some of the medias, but only the basic and correct formats.

HTML cannot process any data but it pass data to the server.
There are several scripting language used today. Java Script and VB Script.
Java Script is part of Java and VB Script is ASP Classic. ASP Classic has been upgraded to ASP.Net

Today most websites are developed with PHP.  Hypertext Processing. It is an Open Source language used by the world and accepted with all browsers. This language runs on Apache Servers.

This website is built on the ASP Classic language mainly because I know Visual Basic at the time. It was 50/50 on which language was going to win.  PHP ended up leading the market.

This website started out with Frontpage web design software. Typical of Microsoft always dropping their product Frontpage went by by. They replaced it with Microsoft Expression Web 4 which was more universal webpage software. Of course that has been discontinued also, but is still available on third party site.

A scripting language lets you take information and do something with it. Store it in a database or do mathematics and return the results.  All of this is done on the server. You write the scripting codes and the server follows the instructions.
Script languages can write HTML codes.

There is third technology that is used in webpages. It is know as CSS3  Cascading Style Sheets version number.  3 is the latest.  This language will work with the web browser at machine language and give you some control.  Mostly for formatting text.

What these webpage uses?.  HTML 5, ASP Classic, CSS3 and on the server side Microsoft Access Database.
These webpages heavily rely on ASP scripting codes and Access Database.

There are other third party software that works with ASP Classic. I use Persist which will allow uploading photo to the website. ASP Classic does not have the capabilities . Being this technology is over 20 years old, it is getting hard to find a web hosting company that supports this technology..I had to move the website a couple of time because they would stop using them. Hope this one stays with these formats. A lot of features would be lost if they stop and I would have to start all over.


Thanks for everyone's support.  As I say, it has been a fun ride.

David Schuett your AstroworldPark.com webmaster.