Ken, President of Maximized Online and developer of UnInstaller for Windows, lives in a morass of papers and books. I wanted to ask him if he had one of those plaques that say "A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind," but I knew he wouldn't be able to find it in the mess. The office belonging to Danny, the person most responsible for building the sites you see online, is clean, neat, and seemingly unused. In fact, after making myself comfortable in Danny's office I realized the uncomfortable feeling I was experiencing was caused by the stark white walls, devoid of posters or even notes; I was surrounded by blankness. Housekeeping differences aside, this pair is living proof that opposites really can work well together.
The Odd Couple of Maximized Online met in the early '80s as college students at the University of California, Irvine. Ken worked at the radio station, KUCI 88.9 FM, down the hall from New University, the student newspaper where Danny worked. They became friends as they regularly bumped into each other in the hallway. Eventually the friendship between the two developed into a successful business partnership.
In October 1994 Maximized Software was working on new Windows utilities. When they got their own Internet connection and Web server, Ken and Danny began to talk about the Internet taking off. It occurred to them that no one in Orange County was helping people get onto the Web, so they decided to start a company that did just that for small and medium-sized businesses. Ken hired Danny and history, as they say, was made.
WWWiz: How did you start the online side of the company?
KS: We had been thinking about the Internet for a while. There were a lot of fascinating opportunities that we saw, and we knew there were a number that would be popping up that we couldn't see yet but if you wanted to be in the game you had to be in the game. We fantasized for a while about starting this division and finally I put Danny in charge and we jumped in. He's an interesting person with a lot of charisma and a lot of ideas; he's a good leader.
Danny likes to say it's like the Bill Gates thing. When the Altair computer, the first home computer made, was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics, Bill Gates was over at Harvard and he gets a copy of the magazine and he sees this and says, "Omigod," and goes running over to Paul Allen and says, "We're missing it." That's sort of the way we felt. We weren't missing it yet, but if we waited too much longer we were going to.
The access market was defining very well, but the presence and the content had yet to be defined. We figured it was a fascinating opportunity to provide excellent content and be an excellent provider, and a chance to help shape things to come. We felt we could help get Orange County online and get some publicity at the same time. We have certainly become an impact on Orange County and we'll see how it will expand beyond that.
WWWiz: Did you write the original HTML and do the coding yourself?
DS: I did the El Toro and the KEZY sites. We also had to create the marketing materials and decide on rates. The first sites had to be simple enough to get people on the Web but flexible at the same time to handle the most complex situation.
WWWiz: Did you write the initial sites yourself?
DS: The KEZY site was sort of all my doing to begin with. Started simply and had a freelance artist help with the logo as needed. The InfoPages pages we put up ourselves with me doing almost all the HTML work. Now I just sit back and decide what we want done and we have the HTML people who are doing programming full-time do it.
WWWiz: Maybe you could tell me a little bit about designing the Build-A-Card URL?
KS: As Valentine's Day was rolling around we were brainstorming on ways to get people to visit our site. I don't remember who had the idea but I remember immediately knowing how to do it technically, how it would look, how to store variables, and so on. I thought, this will be easy--I can whip this out in two days. Conceptually it was easy but the reality of it was there were a lot of subtleties. In fact, there is still a problem with the AOL browser. It's just a bug...we have done a lot of work to make it work with the browser but the browser just caches too aggressively. It doesn't reload some of the images like it should. In fact we just got a message from one of the AOL guys and I've got to respond back to them and maybe they will get it fixed. It definitely is a bug on their side.
We were pulling our hair out by the time Valentine's Day was approaching because of problems we were having. We had to change servers at the last minute from a 16-bit server, and moved over to a Windows NT server that helped the stability.
We got selected as Cool Site of the Day on Valentine's Day and Glenn Davis sent us a message asking if we could handle 60,000 hits, and we said, "Of course we can!" [lots of laughter] It turned out we couldn't. It would be nice to see what kind of equipment he is running. Also Build-A-Card uses a lot of overhead when it makes a card. We got 11,000 hits and something like 600 cards were built. That's about-- what?--one percent. A lot of people must have gotten the message, "Sorry, it's busy; please try back later." [Editor's note: This happens to a lot of people with a Cool Site listing.]
WWWiz: How long did it take for the Cool Site of the Day burst to die off?
KS: The day after, you get a lot of hits and it is a gradual ramp down. It's interesting that we are actually getting more cards built each day than we did at the peak of the CSotD traffic. Now everyone is coming in and building their cards successfully and that total is now well over 500-600 [hits] per day.
We plan to sell advertising on it. It won't be too intrusive for the user; if you can imagine, when you get to the end it might ask if you would like to buy some flowers, then click here to go to...flowers.
WWWiz: When you first started doing HTML were there books on the subject?
DS: No, not really, actually. There was one book out, I believe, by Laura Lemay. It was an excellent book and we used it as sort of a reference manual. So by no means did we pick up that book and say, "This will tell us what we're doing." Really the primary source of knowledge was Ken and Joachim [Vance], who worked the software side. Joachim was a fountain of Internet information and knows HTML up and down. Ken came in and gave sort of a crash course in HTML.
As anyone who has gotten into it knows, you find out it's really not that difficult. The real difficulty is in writing it to work in a variety of different browsers. It's easy to write for one and it's easy to pick up the tricks that everyone else is doing; you just take a look at their code and say, "So that's how you're making that background change like that." Also, we had our documentation that came off the Netscape site and some other places that Joachim had come and printed out. Maximized Software had already had a Web server up and running for about two months at that point, and they had already had to put documents out on it.
WWWiz: Did you originally start with your own servers, or did you rent space on other people's systems?
DS: We always put everybody on our own servers. It's been interesting because you have access providers who are also trying to be presence providers, and you have presence providers who are offering a little bit of access; we decided we're going to be a presence provider and we're going to concentrate on doing Web presence and we want to have our own servers, also.
We don't want to be in a position that we have to depend on someone else's machinery. In particular, we think that's going to give us a lot more control when it comes to running statistical reports. We provide reports that make sense and don't just tell you that on this day you transferred so many bytes and on this day it was a lot more bytes so that you can look at your site and say that your index had this many hits and your subsequent pages had another specific number of hits. What that means is that it gives you an understanding of the number of people who were actually there. You know, we separate out all the GIFs and other things. If you have five images on the home page we don't say, "Hey, look! That's five hits, plus the home page, so that's six hits."
Also, running our own servers allows us to be quicker in setting people up. It gives us a little more custom control over the things we want to do. It also give us a little latitude for promotional reasons--such as helping someone who is a nonprofit group and we want to give them a little break--it's our server and we can do it. We don't have to figure there is another comp that we have to trade out to a separate company.
WWWiz: What kind of company do you think is the perfect customer--the one who could use the Web site the most? Have you identified them?
DS: It's interesting. In general, every company should have a Web site, and we believe this. We see Web sites as telephones. People did not have telephones when telephones first came out. I'm sure companies thought, do we really need that? It seems nice but how many people have telephones? Now nobody would think of not having a telephone. You've got to be reachable even if it's only for the fact that you have one page of information up. Someone may be trying to find you and if they can't find you, you've missed out. We really think every company should have a Web site. Companies ought to not spend a hundred thousand dollars to produce a giant multimedia Web site that's not going to serve their purposes.
Web sites are funny because they are a lot like TV. What we have found is we put people on and they get really into the sites and they want to program it, and that's good. The problem is, some companies are attracting a global audience and not serving anyone in their audience. It becomes useless to them. Most are happy to get hits and hope they will spill over into something.
WWWiz: What do you advise people to do to make their sites more demographically correct?
DS: We would not suggest to KEZY that they should build an interactive toy that would attract people from all over the world. Or something that allowed the deejays to be viewed but would be expensive and difficult to maintain. They don't have to worry that people from all over the world are viewing their site. If it would help them get more notoriety then it would be of value. You want it designed so people can find out what they do and what they play.
WWWiz: Let's assume I'm a company that doesn't know anything about getting on the Web. Maybe you could explain to me what some of my options are at that starting point.
DS: The options are unlimited. The important thing is for you to have a budget in mind and what are your goals, what do you plan to accomplish with the site? They may not have answers, so we help them sort out the options. We may start them with a five-page site that will allow us to find out what people want to know about them.
If you are a company that sell homes, you might put online how to buy a home, how to check out a home...will it survive an earthquake? People may come to your site to find out about the information you provide, and in doing that they find out about your company.
You might want to have big visibility by paying $8000 per week to be on Prodigy to attract people.
WWWiz: What would be the first steps I would take once I've decided I'm going have a site? For example, how do I get a domain name and so forth?
DS: That's a good starting place. What name do I want and how do I get it implemented? Let's assume you don't want to have an address. You can get an extension to someone else's address. For example, they could be under our InfoPages. We tell people that an advantage to that is if people can't remember your name they can go to the InfoPages and find you.
Most of the companies are dealing with it with a note: "If you want to visit some of our customers, click on the list below," and they list every company on the page below. It's okay when you have five or ten customers, but when you have a 100 or 200 names, that's not very flexible. We don't recommend people do that--grabbing your domain now is better because you probably won't get the name you want later. Second, you guarantee you will be found in the future because your address will never change.
We recommend that you get your own name. We have two different charges; we'll give you your own domain and give you a slash with your domain. So, if people get your name wrong they will end up at InfoPages. As people get more familiar they will realize, when they see a name like Companyname.com/company, that a company is not spending enough money to run their own system server. Image-wise it will not be as good. We are set up to make you Company.com.
We usually measure up a company by asking, "How important is it to have a name?" If it's not important then we don't even get into the whole domain debate. If it is important then it's just a cost issue.
WWWiz: As a small company, how do I go about finding out if my domain name is available?
DS: Some people can do it at their own computer by running Whois. You can ask us. We register names for people and we can tell you in a short amount of time whether your domain is still out there. There's this sort of "twilight zone" during the three-week delay while you wait for the name. Editor's note: Recent Internet automation has shortened the delay to one or two days.] We just had that happen to someone; the day we went to register the name it had just come through with someone else. It had been registered just the day before. I think the people who went to register Annie Lennox online went to register Lennox.com, and found out that two days before someone had registered Lennox.com and they were out of luck.
WWWiz: Now I have mycompany.com and I am ready to start building my site. I know some HTML and have some graphic design skills. What's the next step in the process?
DS: If you feel confident with your HTML skills and graphics, then you can find someone to host your site. They're not going to manage it or maintain it; they are basically going to rent you server space. We do that for some companies. We write some scripts for tracking hits or special functions but basically you are on your own. You must manage every aspect of your site. Some people have no skills at all, or a few, and they are smart enough to know that they have a business to run and don't have time to develop and run a site.
Sometimes they don't have any skills, and they can come to us with just a brochure and some material and we can translate them into a Web site.
Then there is a middle ground where you have a company construct the site for you, but there might be one page that is constantly changing, like prices or something. That page can be changed; all you really need to do is change the one file. That can be changed with an FTP, and give you the flexibility to constantly update your site, and some cost savings because you don't have to go through someone else to change it, but you're not having to take on the whole burden of running that site. This middle ground allows you to avoid the worry of checking all the browsers because we do that. It's a good middle position.
HTML is seemingly easy but your palate can shift for one type of computer to another. People are taking advantage of our knowledge of these areas and don't have to worry about it themselves.
WWWiz: So once I make the decision to have a site and I have a program that writes HTML, do I bring you the text or the HTML?
DS: Give it to us as an ASCII file or on disk; it's easier that way. It's easier and faster if they don't add HTML. One thing that happens, like with Word, is it will stomp on any Netscape code you have been using, which is not very polite for a program. It's not such a problem if someone is giving it to us, but if we give it back it can be a problem.
WWWiz: Now I'm online and have a domain name. My next worry is: are you going to help me get listed in the necessary places on the Web?
DS: We offer what we call our standard Internet publicity. We go out to Yahoo and a number of key and good directories. Places that if we put you there we know you will be out in the mainstream of the Net. People will be able to find you. People will not be stumbling across you but they will be able to find you. It's not like you are out in a vacuum. Print and paper is a good way to put their name out there, such as ads in your magazine.
When the Orange County site went up, one of the things we did was put them in as "1995 Orange County Fair" and all of a sudden they were number four on the NCSA What's New list, [which starts listing with numbers, then goes alphabetically]. If you're smart you know these sorts of things. All of a sudden you're noticed, and we watched their hits go up to 100 or 150 hits per day; in two to three days they were at the top of that page.
WWWiz: What is the cost, in general terms, for this kind of service?
DS: The range with us for a five-page Web site under your own domain goes between $900 and $1250 with up to three pages and three pictures. It's designed to be simple and you don't have to worry about it; you know you are going to get on the Net thing, you're kind of taken care of, and you can sit back for a few months. It's a way to get a toehold on the whole thing. Some companies will put you on for free because they just want some people on their virtual mall, and some of the prices go up to $5000 or $6000 depending on the company. A thousand dollars a page is roughly the budget you could expect to pay for a five-page site.
It depends on what you want. Web sites go all the way up to $300,000.
WWWiz: Now that we've done this, how may hits do we expect per month?
DS: I think 200 the first month would be normal. Some sites, like our Build-A-Card site, get about 500 hits a day. It just depends on so many variables. It depends on the content and broadness of appeal you have to people.
WWWiz: How do you guys feel about making a site Netscape 1.1 recommended?
KS: I let Danny set the party line and toe the party line. My own feelings--I think you have to be careful. We see a significant number of people coming in from AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy, and if I were those users at some point I would feel insulted. I'm hoping that more and more browsers will be able to support those Netscape extensions. At this point we feel better with our customers to not just ignore the people who are not running Netscape.
WWWiz: How about Hot Java and other systems that are coming?
KS: I thing Hot Java is a good thing. I think Real Audio is an OK thing. Adobe Acrobat is a good thing. VRML is a good thing.
The problem is Netscape is going to put all these thing in their browser. It will soon be a 5-Mb program. Having said that, I think Hot Java is very exciting technology and we are also looking at the Microsoft Network technology because it's similar. It has a very simple interaction. Microsoft has some very powerful tools coming up. We are developing for it now. Java is the most interesting thing coming out there.
WWWiz: What do you think of the little guys who are doing it themselves?
KS: It is becoming much more mass market. Not everyone is going to bring the work in-house. You still have a lot that must be done to put a site up. We think more and more ad agencies will begin to provide this same service for their customers. We are beginning to work with ad agencies now in preparation for that.
WWWiz: Do you use contractors to do some of your work?
KS: We did more in the beginning. Now we do less because we want them to continue to work with the same customers. It's hard to find people who can write good HTML or organize a site...or spell. [lots of laughs]
WWWiz: What's your advice to the little guy who has a Pentium in his office and says, "I can do this-- I can put myself online"?
KS: It's great but be careful--it can suck your brains out. It's the most fascinating, engrossing, involving technology to come along since the printing press. It has so many significant and, some would say, revolutionary connotations. The effort will become the focus of your job. If you don't want that to become your business, then don't do it. A simple Web site would cost at least $5000 in hardware, and a monthly cost for connection and all the time spent putting it all together.
WWWiz: Where would you like to be in five years?
KS: We would like to be the high-end premiere provider. We will be worldwide by then.
RFCs and STDs from the InterNIC for programming Net apps.
Build-A-Card (Okay, so I'm biased!)
Includes three freeware contributions to the Internet, written by Ken
Gary Beene's Visual BASIC World
WebCom's Guide to Publicizing the Web Site
The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5
San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond
Southern California Freeway Report