The history of this site.

This site was on ibiblio.org/herbmed (= metalab.unc.edu/herbmed = sunsite.unc.edu/herbmed) from August 1995 to November 2005. That's ten years ... then excessive spidering of my content (yes, just my content) kept crashing the ibiblio mysql server, rendering a lot of sites rather less than functional - including mine.

I do understand why they chose to cut off my mysql account at that time.

However, they also chose not to answer any of my emails for about a week, and faced with being stuck in limbo for an indefinite time, with a nonfunctioning site (... I had added lots of things to my mysql database by then), I chose to move the site to a domain I had acquired in 2003: henriettesherbal.com, which I had used just for my blog up to then.

I was quite happy to be with ibiblio for as long as it lasted. Thanks ibiblio, for all you've done, and all you do!

You've been on the internet for how long?

From 1992 or so I was on the internet over a friend's account; I didn't post much as I didn't want to bust a buddy for having two people on one account. Back then, you only got usenet access and email if you were at a scientific institution which had them. No commercial ISPs... my friend studied computer sciences, and had internet access as a matter of course. Ah, nostalgia... anybody else remember mining for treasures with gopher and veronica? Web pages accessed with Mosaic and Lynx (on a DOS machine)? Calling up your friendly local BBS, using Telix?

Anyway, in 1994 commercial ISPs started up here in Finland. So I got my own internet account, and as I had been growing tired of seeing the same questions asked every week (it seemed) on news:alt.folklore.herbs, I decided to make a FAQ for that newsgroup. (FAQ is short for Frequently Asked Questions, and usually includes answers). The first version of that was out in March 1995.

After the Medicinal HerbFAQ got a good start Larry London (who had a collection on ibiblio) asked if I would do a FAQ for edible herbs as well. So in July 1995 I posted the first version of the Culinary HerbFAQ.

Next, ibiblio (through Larry) asked if I wanted to host a non-commercial herbal collection; contents would be up to me, ibiblio would just provide WWW and FTP space (very generously - thank you!). I couldn't have started a web page without that: private ISPs were prohibitely expensive about their web space, back then. Sites like geocities and similar only started to pop up years later ... Anyway, Henriette's Herbal Homepage was first published (on ibiblio) in August 1995; it's one of the oldest herbal sites online.

Old versions of my homepage: Mar97 - Mar99 or so - Jul00 - Sep00 - Mar03