EpistemeLinks Chronological History

EpistemeLinks has been around a long time, at least in Web-terms. I thought it might be interesting to provide a brief chronology of its development, especially for anyone who is new to the site. It has grown a great deal over the years, and many more features and additions are in its future! The following is a list of major milestones only -- obviously with a database of around 20,000 links there are additions/updates/deletions being made to the site on a regular basis.

1997 - The Episteme Links website was launched in January. Many longstanding features were started during this year.

1998 - Site moved from an old URL to its permanent home at www.EpistemeLinks.com. The project becomes a member site in NEH/MCI EDSITEment project. In September the site is converted from a collection of approximately 400 static webpages to an ASP/Database driven site.

2000 - EL receives over 100,000 monthly visitors for the first time (over 250,000 page views). In June, the large section for links to individual encyclopedia entries was started. In December, the browseable, philosophy events calendar was launched.

2001 - In May, the browseable Birthday and Dates of Death calendars were launched. The total number of philosophers indexed at EL tops 400. In December, links to hundreds of Google/Yahoo/AltaVista directory pages were added.

2002 - In June, the Quotations by Philosophers section was created. In September, the massive upgrade from ASP to the new ASP.NET code platform is completed. This involved re-writing virtually all of the code for the site (now using the C# language), and included some site design/appearance changes as well.

2003 - In January, the Philosophy-related Products section is relaunched with hundreds of direct product links. In August, the Software and Interactives section was created. In November, the Amazon.com search results and eBay.com search results sections were created and integrated with philosopher and topic sections.

2004 - In September, a new site-wide search feature is added. Using the index provided by Google, you can now search for EpistemeLinks pages with particular philosophers, topics, or other keywords by using the search box at the top-right of each page.

2005 - In February, the Philosopher Blog section is launched. Also in February, the EpistemeLinks Online Store was launched. The store provides a variety of products (e.g., T-Shirts and other apparel, mugs) with a wide variety of philosophy-related quotes and themes. In May, several Web forms were added that can be used to submit new or updated link information for inclusion in the EpistemeLinks database. As each form requests information specific to that category, using them will speed up the process and make it more efficient. In June, after seven years with the same hosting company, EpistemeLinks was moved to CrystalTech.com. This move will resolve some ongoing administrative issues with the old provider. It will also better allow for future growth of the site.

2006 - In early 2006, EpistemeLinks, Inc. was formed. A not-for-profit corporation, its purpose is to support the maintenance and growth of the EpistemeLinks website project (Donations are accepted and appreciated.) In August, the audio and video sections were merged and expanded into a new Audio and Video section, that now includes links to content available for download or streaming, such as classroom lectures, conference presentations, radio interviews, and more. In September the Course Materials section was expanded to now include links to course syllabi. Also in September a new Philosopher Timeline page was created and the entire site was upgraded to now use SQL Server 2005 as the backend database (a significant improvement over using MS Access). In October a new Selected Books section was created. Also in October the Fun and Humor section was improved so that the links are now categorized by philosopher and topic area, and the University Departments section was improved to now display the location of the department as well as the highest (advanced) degree offered by the department (where known). In November, the Sponsorship and Advertising program for pages at the site was re-launched, with space available in the upper-right of most pages at the site. In December, a 15-minute multimedia presentation was created to provide an introduction and overview of the project for new users.