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 [3] 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 [4] 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 [5] 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!