The story behind the domain

“Kiari” is the main character of my yet unwritten science fiction epic. I chose the name because it wasn’t taken on AOL and soon it became my online persona.

Kiari’s Corner came alive sometime in 1997, hosted at AOL. At first it was just a page of links to my favorite sites, most of them Hercules/Xena related. I was especially drawn to Kevin Smith (“Ares”) and Erik Thomson (“Hades”). Soon, I had separate pages for Kevin and Erik. My Kevin site grew faster, as there was more information online about him, as opposed to Erik.

I bought kiari.com in 1998. It was mostly out of frustration with the free webhosts out there (most notably the defunct Xoom). We were contemplating a move away from AOL and I wanted a place online that was dependable. Xoom was not that place, so I went with the wonderful Simplenet. They offered UNLIMITED webspace and although the price was a bit much, it was worth it to me. They were very reliable for a very long time.

So, my fellows were all moved to the domain: Kevin Smith, Erik Thomson, and Carlos Ponce (whose page began at Xoom in 1998). My Chris Conrad page joined the group as the first site to begin on kiari.com. A very modest Karl Urban page also went up soon after the Sacramento convention.

1999 saw the debuts of sites dedicated to Ryan Gosling, Dean O’Gorman (site now defunct), and 98° (site also defunct). I was having too much fun with my Snappy, so I had many screencaptures I wanted to show off.

The new millenium brought two more new sites, one dedicated to William Gregory Lee and the other to the musical group soulDecision. I was determined to stop with those two, as trying to update all the different sites was becoming a bit of a chore.

In March 2001, I began using weblogs (or blogs) as update pages for the main domain and my Greg site. In May 2001, I started my personal blog, which has now evolved into Moonlit Jazz, hosted as a subdomain on my personal domain. Sometime that year, Yahoo acquired Simplenet and I knew it would just be a matter of time before I might have to move the domain.

The time to move came in January 2002. I relocated kiari.com to OLM.net. Better prices and great service. 2002 also marked the last fansite (I think!) of kiari.com – The Jensen Ackles Corner.

Kiari.com moved yet again in November 2004, this time to its current webhost Vizaweb. I’m a slight tech geek and keep track of the former TechTV gang, including Leo Laporte. His site was (is?) hosted by Vizaweb and so I decided to follow along. Even better prices and much more control of the site. 🙂

And now, at this writing, Kiari’s Corner has been online for seven years. It has changed and evolved in those years. Sadly, my Kevin site is now a tribute and remembrance to a man I admired for his talent and graciousness. For as long as I have kiari.com, my site to Kevin will remain. My most popular site is Ryan, probably due to his burgeoning movie career. The most accurate and most updated site belongs to Greg.

I intend on having this domain for a long time. It’s all for fun and I enjoy stretching my creativity. 😀

[This was written in 2005 and probably needs an update. Someday? 😉 ]