William J. Bowlan

(360) 871-1422
Bill@Bowlan.com



Web Samples-Some Good, Some Bad and Some Ugly

These are examples of web sites that I have developed. I built my first web site in 1994. It was considered a marvel if anything was readable, let alone looked good. I used a straight text editor and HTML from scratch. They looked good for their time. I have since gone on to use MS Front Page, Hotmetal, Corel Webmaster and Dreamweaver/Ultradev. I really like Dreamweaver. It gives the ease of use of a 'drag and drop' editor and the control of a HTML editor. It has some wonderful features and the interface is great once you get use to it. Some much for my critique of the tools.

I am working on a website for a Not for Profit group that I am involved with. It is for the Route 6 Tourist Association. They are working with the people who live along Route 6 that travels from Cape Cod, Mass to Long Beach, Calif. It is the longest coast to coast road from that era and it is mostly intact. I also built the websites for the Mason County Public Utility District No. 3 (they made me use that picture). The first design was a collection of pages that pretty much repeated our paper brochures. Everyone was excited and thought 'How wonderful, we are on the Web'.

Then I got a few things completed, a complete hardware (AS/400) and software (HTE) conversion, new network and servers, and brought the webserver in-house, we redid the Web pages. We have added some forms and printouts to make it more useful. The utility, for legal reasons, does not want to put everything on-line. They want to be able to talk to the individuals.

I have built a number of sites for school. I seem to be taking a class most of the time. I have taken classes on the Internet and computing for the last couple of years. Last Spring I helped put together a website for a class at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. The class was Community, Communications, and Computers. It was concerned with the communications and sociological aspects of computers. A group of four students built the website. Be sure and look at the 'Credits' page.

I built a web site for another class. The class was called 'From Oral History to the Web'. It was concerned with taking an event in recent history and doing the research on the event and interviewing individuals who were there and building a web site to share that history. I did the migration of the Dustbowlers from Oklahoma to California in the thirties. I will be working on that web site for years to come. It is such an interesting era and I am fascinated by it.

The family history and genealogy websites can be accessed from the main page at Bowlan.Com. I have another website in the planning stages. It will be a history of the Washington State Ferry fleet. I have decided to redo the Ferry Fleet site using Active Server Pages (ASP) or Java Server Pages (JSP) and I am moving the Ferry Boat site. I have a real soft spot for the old ferry boats and we almost bought two of them. Buy me a beer sometime and I will tell you the story. Oh Yeah, you can still see remnants of my first website. I may actually have to update it pretty soon. Right after I get the garage cleaned up, the gardening done, the computer room cleaned, the engine rebuilt in the '67 Mustang...