Are you new around here? Take a minute to tell us a bit about yourself, share something you've made with CoffeeCup software, or just say hello.

With that, let me think where to start....

I was born in 1970 in Flushing , Michigan. If any of you have seen the Michael Moore movie, Roger & Me http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098213, this is the lovely town I leaved near.

Initially my first experiences with computers was not a good one. I had one programming class in high school and I barely made a passing grade in it. I swore I would never have anything to do with them ever again.

When I turned 17, I joined the United States Army and left for basic training between my Junior and Senior year in high school. I graduated high school in 1989. After my senior year I went into my advanced training and stayed in the Army Reserve until 1994.

I started college in 1989 and got a part-time job in the educational offices helping teachers with their classes. They needed a way to keep track of their students grades so I started working with Lotus 1-2-3 for MS-DOS. I actually found this stuff interesting and decided to get into more computer related things. Six months later I got an intern position with the college and I was running all the computer labs (6 in total) Two years later I received my associates in Computer Information Systems. In 2005 I was also inducted into the Mott College distinguished alumni along with two federal judges and a state representative (my mommy was so proud). After that, I transferred to the University of Michigan for my bachelors and almost graduated (17 credit hours away), but got too busy with life and stuff to finish.

Upon graduation from MCC, I applied for a position at a local library cooperative called FALCON (Flint Area Library Cooperative Online Network) as a system administrator for their new HP K-Class server and started working for them full-time. Some like to say this is where I became a librarian and started with my fascination on collecting and organizing things, but I swear I was a system administrator

While at FALCON, I helped create and run a Gopher server (I would love to know if any remember that technology) for the Greater Flint Educational Consortium as well as well as the Genesee FreeNet http://gfn.org/gfn/about/donors/charter/ These two organizations were pretty ground breaking at the time and I learned a lot about computers, network and server technologies.

Around 1994/95 I found that the librarians needed to learn how to connect to the Internet and use the Web. There was no AOL or ISP's really at this time and since we were all using Windows 3.1, connecting was extremely a pain in the ass So I started writing documentation on how to do all this and built a list of applications you can use once you are on the Web. This list was the foundation for a software download site I created called Tucows (The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software) http://www.tucows.com You can see one of the oldest versions of the site at http://web.archive.org/web/19961023235110/http://www.tucows.com/ Remember at this time, we were still on HTML 1.0 specs, so you did not have a lot of tags to choose from.

I was running Tucows as a hobby and it did not turn into a career for another few years when I sold it to Internet Direct based out of Toronto, Canada. An interesting tidbit; not long after selling, Gateway computers tried to sue us over the usage cow spots http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1997/01/1585. I posted all their letters on the Web and got the Internet community to help out. After a few months they backed down. To this day I refuse to ever have anything to do with that company In 1999 Tucows because a publicly traded company with over 250 employees as well as an ICAN registrar.

In 2003 I left Tucows and came to work for CoffeeCup Software. I had known Nick extremely well from reviewing all of his software for so many years it seemed like a nice fit. Now almost 6 years later I have seen CoffeeCup grow from a 4 person operation to over 25 people in multiple countries; as well from 5 applications to over 30.


Family:
In 1992 I got married, '93 my daughter Emily was born, '96 my daughter Ashley was born, 2000 my daughter Sarah was born and in '09 by son Lucas was born.


So there you have it

Scott

Have to join in here...

I'm Inger from Norway. I'm a retired teacher (elementary school).

Computers came into my life during the 1980ies, first as something weird which I couldn't understand. After a while, I had found out how to play Solitaire and Snakes, so I wasted some time with that. Then I got a PC myself in 93, a toy that I pulled apart and put together again, and to my great amazement it was still working! That got me hooked.

Life got a real new meaning for me as I got my first internet connection in '94. I had to try out everything, so I had my very first attempt at a website in '96, using notepad. No graphics, just plain text. Very boring result.

I became the IT rep at the school I was working at, and I assembled some 20-25 computers, and during the time of Win 3.1, 95 and 98 I had a network of about 30 machines in a peer-to-peer network to maintain. Old machines, I had to upgrade/repair/'unclutter' most of them regularly.

On the web design side I tried various software which was said to make the job easy, but it was not until I came across an early version of CC HTML editor that it really became easy. Since then I have stuck with it.

Privately I have 150 bee colonies together with my partner John. We also have a small holiday venture in western Turkey. I speak Turkish, along with English, German, some French and of course Norwegian, my own language. We live in the countryside in southern Norway, but we spend at least two months every year in Turkey.

Here I guess I'm seen as one of the rather 'exotic' members, not from the US, not even from any English speaking country. I see it as one of my missions with CC to remind them that there is world outside the US, with a whole range of languages, and that all the CC apps. must be able to understand non-US alphabets and keyboard layouts.

At present I live on the edge of the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire, UK, but hopefully in the near future I will be moving a little further north to actually live on the edge of a small town within the Park, I have always been a country person and I am not going to change that.

My father worked in the coal mines all his life and I always assumed that is where I would end up working, but no, my father would not let me and so I had to decide what I was going to because at that time I had no idea at all, the main qualification I got from school was a 99% path in my Maths GCE exams which I thought was good at the time.

Getting a job in the Civil Service was the thing to have at the time, the wages were not very good but once in it was almost a guaranteed job for life, so I decided to go for that. It didn't take long to get an interview, my sister at that time was Telephone Switchboard Operator at the main Head Post Office, so that helped me, the management gave a slight preference to family members at that time. 4 weeks later I started work as a Telegram Boy, yeah, I was going to deliver telegrams, I did this for the first 2 weeks by riding a bicycle, with no gears may I add, on the 3rd week I was given lessons to learn to ride a motorcycle, that is what I wanted, a motorbike. The lessons lasted for 5 days, on the sixth I had to take my driving test which thankfully I passed, then I was given a regular motorcycle, a BSA Bantom 125cc.

BSA Bantom

More to follow.........

Hi
I was born in Mozambique, the former Portuguese colony in the year of 1955. Made my studies there and when start University, engineering and I choose as optional programming language. I hated that, I knew computers were wonderful machines but that lessons were so boring...
After the revolution and colonies independence I came to Portugal to Navy to be an officer and a gentleman but revolutionary times in Portugal faded my dream. I followed to Merchant Marine and start sailing at 79. When start the computer revolution, the Sinclair's machines and I bought a Spectrum 48K and start playing with this, learning Basic. Later in a ship the owner supply us one IBM without HD, the firsts one. It has Symphony and Dbase. I remember when I switch on the pc and got only a vlack screen with a a:> blinking. With zero knowledge of DOS and DBase. After 3 week i was building my first .prg with DBase. I was sailing as an engineer, doing watches in an average of 10hrs a day in engine room.
After 9 years sailing went got a job ashore as maintenance manager and I only requested one pc to work, company supply me with an Amstrad. After one year I had built (DBASE) a system to manage my equipments developing a lot of technologies (all my knowledge was got through try and error and later with some books and always alone).
Later my company went bankruptcy and i worked several months for a commercial department developing reports with Dbase.
Change job again and need to stop computers business (in Portugal they were very expensive that days).
One day I decide to make an internet website to my wife, she is an artist and start digging for data. Got an html reference from Microsoft site, a copy of Homesite and start building the page, took to me 1 week until publish my first page using frames.
Start upgrading my computers and internet access. Then need to return to sea life where I' am now.
Clean all my computers from "strange" copies of software a decide to make a bet with CoffeeCup and now using 21 CC programs, I really like this stuff, I build websites for my wife and for me and if somebody ask i will give an help. I spend 1 month in a ship and 1 month ashore, working as technical support at my company office. I'm a photographer (amateur) and now I'm trying to publish one book... and i maintain two blogs (sorry, both in Portuguese).
And maintaining the try and error technique to learn...
PS Married with an artist, two sons and one lovely granddaughter.

I guess I will chime in.

I jumped into the world in late '63 and rarely have slowed down since! I have always been "around" computers since my Dad was a systems analyst for Cummins Engine Company. I could not begin to tell you what those room-sized computers did. The most fascinating thing they did in my mind when I would go to work to "help" my Dad on long weekends or evenings was they printed my name in fancy punched holes on kraft-colored cards. That was cool and awe inspiring for a 7-year-old.

But when I was in high school, my math teacher's approach to teaching computers was slow, boring and just simply made no sense. But then that was the early 80s and I could easily dismiss this new technology as something I did not have to worry about! At about that time, we had a computer at my place of work, my high school job in radio. And this "computer" would oft-times over-heat and even catch on fire and make the whole radio station smell of burnt machinery. To say the least, I was not impressed with computers at that time!

It was not until the late 80s after I had moved West to California, when a friend had a PC and let me tap about on the keyboard and I was struck by the (get this...) word-processing abilities! This was nearly a decade before the Internet...

And a funny story there. I recall a car ride with my then-husband when he was talking about reading about this military technology which was going public and they were going to call it the World Wide Web! That was sometime in the early 90s...little did I know what an impact that would have on the world!

A few years later, when I had a brick and mortar store, I decided a computer would be a good means to track inventory and customer lists for special requests. Worked fairly well until someone broke in and stole the computer in the middle of the night. I soon replaced the stolen machine and one of my customers talked me into a website. That was in 1998 and I really saw no use (again an under-estimation) but decided to be her test site as she was starting a web design business. A few months went by, the site went live and being one of the first e-commerce sites on line, did quite well. I was a single parent with two small children and decided to close the brick and mortar store and run the e-commerce site from home so that I could be home for my kids. By then I was maintaining the site myself - often with an HTML book open in my lap and Notepad open on the computer.

A couple of years passed and I moved the site and in moving, I "lost" my form program. Such programming was then way beyond my scope and I began looking for a solution online. That was when I found CoffeeCup's form builder program. From there I began trying many of the other programs and "graduated" from the dull black and white Notepad to the CC HTML editor. Still a raw coder by heart, I have found so many beneficial aspects of the HTML editor that I rarely use Notepad

I have probably tried every CC program over the past few years, and I also love to write my own code. For the past 5 years, I have been designing websites for others as well as maintaining some of my own. I have delved into other code languages and still find that many of the CC programs fill a niche!

I still wish I had paid more attention in high school to that first computer class, but I have found that I have learned so much from the fine folks at CoffeeCup and on these forums, that I have made up for that lost time. And I must say, they teach "real" computer skills in high school now. I am amazed at what my sons know!

OK, my turn to fess up.

OK, my time to fess up

I was born in 1962 in Errington Ontario Canada, a small town that no longer exists. At the ripe old age of one, I moved with the family to Port Arthur Ontario (a city that no longer exists) and attended grade school at Oliver Road Public School, (it no longer exists). High School was at Port Arthur Collegiate Institute a pure academics school that no longer exists. I did spend one semester at Fort William Collegiate Institute (I was dating a girl there ) it no longer exists.

Off I went to London Ontario (1983), a 23 hour train ride, to attend Fanshaw College, graduating with a certification in Ambulance and Emergency Care, and a provincial license as an Emergency Medical Care Assistant, (the pre-cursor to today's Paramedics).

Over the next 23 years, were many postings, to many communities, Windsor, Timmins, Gogama, Red Lake, Nakina, Geraldton, and many positions, Medic, Supervisor, Station Supervisor, Coordinator, Manager, finishing as a District Supervisor for the Eastern Region of Superior North District, an area covering from Thunder Bay, east to Wawa Ontario (about a 5 hour straight highway drive).

I fell into computers and the internet almost backwards, when in early 1991 when a budget line showed up on my service 'Electronic Typewriter' - 5,500.00 so I purchased a 286i based computer with a whopping 32Kb memory and 24Mb hard drive 16 color screen, dot matrix printer and this new thing a 1200 baud modem.

Shortly after that I had a Hayes 2400 V.35 modem that came complete with all books, wires, and a t-shirt all in the box. I was leaving the computer on all night long, running RemoteAccess BBS and being the only node suddenly found myself a coordinator with Fidonet. I was hooked.

Pretty soon I was sitting with the local librarian and she was telling me about this new fangled thing called an internet that would be coming into the library. We learned HTML together using Hot Dog and Coffee Cup HTML editors, Coffee Cup won out and I have been a loyal fan ever since.

I am also mostly house trained :-)

Hello! Every Coffee Cupper! I feel glad to here!

I’m from New York City. I was born in Hong Kong. In early 2000, I have been starting my biz on the internet. I wish if I could have a business that working without me appear and never sleep; work for me in anytime anywhere even although I ‘m at work or school.

The first place I began was eBay. I sold some Japanese tableware and recipes. Then, I made another business for providing the legal service papers. I realized I should make a website to run it. My first business website was born on 2005. It was pretty nice software for beginner to easy handle of site building. However, the software only created one site, it didn’t match my plan – be a web biz entrepreneur – I aware of the best web biz development if I hosted and published my sites.
Finally, I found Coffee Cup for my biz main software to support my sites building and developing. I have been using Coffee Cup since 2008. So far right now, Coffee Cup products are really helpful on my web biz sites development that I have used such as VSD, Flash menu, photo gallery and Jukebox. I learnt a lot of them.

My first site used form Coffee Cup easyfastdivorce.com that free to provide the information for divorce help in USA. 1st published on 2008, the new updated on April, 2010.
2nd site is tostartmybiz.com that to share my experience of business and management. It was published on August, 2009. I’m going to renew and the new version is coming up.
3rd site is lovelyapple.com that to connect my reseller store of domain and hosting service.
4th site is fungs.info for introducing my web biz development.
The newest one is www.wealllovemj.com " class="bb-url"> www.wealllovemj.com that the site for Michael Jackson tribute includes music and videos.

Recently, I suggest the website developers to use Coffee Cup software; I posted at my web pages and the other forums.
I admire Coffee Cup always upgrade their products to being well. I believe my web biz would be going that way.

Hello all,

I'm from Wisconsin and will be 50 yrs. old tomorrow *gasps*. I'm currently living in Alabama with my hubby of almost 19 years. I've been enamored with computers since my first TI and commodore 64 was my best friend for a long time. I never really got into the learning of the programming as much as just copying code others did so I didn't really get into that part of anything to do with computers until I started messing with web design a year or so prior to finding Coffeecup Software.

Used many many different free versions of editing software and landed in Homestead's system for too long which kind of stunted my growth in learning how sites are really made since it's pretty much WYSIWYG and not any coding (not sure if there's any coding ability on it now even). Got away from that when they started charging people to use it and moved on to other free places that allowed you to code things too. That's when I really started falling in love with web building.

I never have gotten really good at any of it, but I've learned lots of things in bits and pieces, and probably forgot as much and as fast as I've learned some of it LOL. And then came Joomla, which to this day I still say was a wasted couple years or so as you really don't learn much with that either. Sure you can alter a lot of files manually, but if you don't know the PHP well or even a little, you're pretty much just altering styles by what everyone else says to do and that's it. And you're sooooooo dependent on other people's addons that you are stuck with modules and addons instead of learning anything.

Don't know what made me decide to stop using it. I guess maybe when I accidently wiped out my Joomla site (shush all you nasties out there! ) and spent days trying to get the company we purchase our hosting reseller package from to restore it (another long story that ain't worth the frustration to think about right now lol), I just lost a lot of interest in the Joomla system. I guess maybe because it's such a hard thing to keep backups and to be able to restore properly where doing your own pages is so much simpler you can just put them right back up as is and not deal with all the junk like databases and such unless you want to.

Soooo having decided to get back into HTML and CSS again and start really learning the more detailed aspects of it, where else would I go but back to Coffeecup of course! I've always loved the software here, and only really used a couple different pieces of it so it has been an adventure to really dig into some of these new ideas and new softwares for me.

I'm sure I'll never be anywhere near an expert in any way of any kind of code, but I love to help out and hopefully can at least "try" to pull my weight a little and help others as much as they have been helping me. You guys have been so helpful and great and I really love getting on the forums and seeing what's going on every day and who I might have an answer for or might have one for me.

Knowing that my voice is being heard, even if my ideas aren't always great, or even feasible I don't feel awkward voicing them anyways just because if I don't I'll always wish I had anyways so I've adopted the same policy as I've mentioned before here, "The worse they can do is say no" and who knows, they might actually like it!

Current CC Software I use regularly:
HTML Editor
Form Builder
Website Access Manager
Shopping Cart Creator
Shopping Cart Designer Pro
Website Color Schemer
DirectFTP
Sitemapper

My name is Kim and I live in Oregon.

I have been working with computers since the mid 80s. I use to work for a huge rare metals company and decided to leave corporate world to work on my family farm, train horses and work on our website. It was the best decision I ever made I finally had to give up the horse training, due to back surgery. But we still have horses and I just have to be more picky on what I ride. But I turned my riding experience into helping kids learn how to handle and train horses. It is just for fun. On the farm we raise longhorn cross cattle and produce hay. When I slowed down on the horse side, it was quickly replaced by full time website design. I created my first website, when I found it to be too expensive to sell horses via printed publications. With in weeks, I was requested to create other people's websites. I started out mainly building ranch and farm websites. With lots of training, reading and developing my skills, I now do a huge variety of websites (html, php, mysql).

My husband Tim and I are having our 25th wedding anniversary this year. We have two kids, 1 dog, 3 cats, 4 horses, 1 mini stallion, and a sheep called Freckles (who thinks he is a dog, don't tell him other wise or he will head butt you!)

We love living on the farm and there are times that my live is really hectic, trying to meet everyones needs and demands. But I would not want to change it, God has truly blessed me with a great family, friends and wonderful life.

Some of my favorite things to do (and it does not include a computer!) : Welding, Gardening, Horses, Build Fence, Art stuff, Camping, Walks, Remodel or Build new things, playing with the family.

I enjoy building websites and appreciate Coffeecup and their software. I use the html editor about everyday and not just for html. It is a great tool and very helpful.

Well that is me in a nut shell

Hello,
My name is Hope. Web design has been sorta of a hobby of mine for a long time now. I learned a little HTML language in the '90's and just experimented when I could. Since then I have really focused on learning different software programs that help in my career as a Paralegal. Recently I have had a lot of health problems and I am unable to return to work for a little while. I am hoping to spend more time doing things that I like such as web design.

I am completely new to CC. I am in the search of an easy software system to assist in building sites. So far, I really like CC. I believe I like it better than Microsoft Expressions and that is hard for me to admit because I love most Microsoft programs.

I have tons of questions before I purchase CC, so I am sure I will be seen in the Help section often.