My Web Sites

I posted my first web page in March 1996 after CompuServe, which was then one of the premier online services, created Our World for its members. The old URL for my first web page still works, though before I left CI$ I put forwarding information on all the pages that I had. I hope that's proven useful, as there are still plenty of web sites that point to that old site.

One of the things I thought I'd do then was have a detailed page of Christian and Lutheran resources, turned into a much bigger project than I ever imagined, but since the World Wide Web and my site developed over a few years, I didn't really notice how big a project it had become. Created near the end of 1996, Pastor Zip's Christian Web Links grew in length and spawned Pastor Zip's Lutheran Web Links in mid-1998. By then I'd came up with the idea of having a link there, with a brief description, for every Lutheran church body that had any English pages. Pastor Zip's International Lutheran Web Links was branched onto a page of its own at the end of the year 2000 (and I've been thinking I need to break it into regional pages as it is a pretty long page). As I discovered more a more small Lutheran synods and associations—and as more of them discovered my site—Pastor Zip's US Lutheran Web Links was branched in mid 2002.

Actually, I had first branched an Our World Site for Zion (with its unwieldy http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/przip/zionpeo.htm URL) within weeks of putting up that first simple page. And while I had intended a broader based series of personal pages, except for my pages directed towards space exploration (the currently rather out-of-date I Want to Go!) they've just never happened as I've focussed on the Lutheran links and Zion's site.

The World Wide Web has somewhat settled down. Wonderful sites might move or disappear (and sometimes re-appear) every few months as internet services firms went broke and/or consolidated, so keeping on top of a site full of links could take some time. And as more and more came online, some of my initially simple ideas proved that they would be far too time-consuming for someone doing all this on the side as a "hobby."

And yet, through all this, Pastor Zip's Lutheran Web Links—especially the subsidiary church body pages—has filled a still-unique niche. And it is just plain fun when someone half-way around the world writes me, or I meet someone new for whom Pastor Zip's Links are a favorite and oft-used bookmark.

Anyway, I've just updated my original Steven P. Tibbetts Home Page for the first time since December '06! Same with Pastor Zip's Anglican Web Links, which I'd not done anything with in almost 2 1/2 years! Zion's pages, most of those basic Lutheran links, and the US Lutheran Links were updated earlier in August. You're certainly welcome to look around—and tell me what you think!