TEN YEARS OF THE ANTI-ORANGE PAGE!

(Written in 2006) Wow, has it been that long?? I started The Anti-Orange Page back in April of 1996 just as "something to do" with my UGA comics and stuff I had collected through college. I had just graduated from UGA in 1995 and at the time was learning about this thing called the internet. I was completely amazed and excited by all of this (yeah, nerdy, I know ) and wanted to create an internet page.

When I first started the AO Page, it was a very simple one-page website stored on my Earthlink account along with my other website Tales From Band Camp. Thanks to my friend Brian Sugrue (aka Groo and a visit to Steverino's in Athens, GA - R.I.P.) plus an HTML for Dummies book, I soon learned HTML and wrote it straight using Notepad. I then moved to the program HotDog 1.0 (wooo!) which is basically a glorified Notepad for HTML. I eventually moved on to Dreamweaver and some CGI/Perl/PHP programming which I still use today. Both The AO Page and TFBC soon became so popular that I created the domain DAWGToons.com to encompass both of them.

The Anti-Orange Page has gone through countless changes throughout the years from a one page format to a vast collection of graphics and text that uses PostNuke to organize it. A few of the original pages and content still exist, like the Hall of Shame and the What is FOAOE? pages.

A mainstay of The AO Page is the gameday comics that I "publish" each football season. These are inspired by the Harry Dog comics drawn by Don Smith that used to appear on the front page of The Athens Banner-Herald back in the 70s and 80s. You can view the gallery here and see how the comics have evolved throughout the years. I've also drawn longer comics from time to time as well. I drew a comic for almost every single game from 1996 except for the first year and a brief hiatus during the 1999 season when I moved states, changed jobs, and planned our wedding.

I wish I had kept every bit of feedback (including flames) through the whole 10 years. I've gotten some pretty interesting (and weird) letters from both UGA fans and UGA haters - especially Tennessee fans. UGA football has certainly changed during The AO Page's tenure from Jim Donnan's hiring to today's success. FWIW, Georgia's overall football record is 92-32 since 1996. Georgia's record against orange teams since 1996 is 16-19 (yikes!). Georgia's record against GA Tech since 1996 is 7-3.

So what will the next ten years bring? Hopefully many more comics and UGA championships!