Many years ago, back in the ‘90s I started a website.

Actually, it started as a Netscape Bookmark File which had little or no formatting.

The original concept of the site was to provide myself, and anyone else with an interest, with a list of researched links.

At the time, I had no idea where it was leading, and if I had been granted foresight, I might have abandoned it there and then.

My bookmark file grew and grew, and soon it became apparent that it needed a multi-page setup.  Not only that, but it needed a name (and domain name).  And so Irish Lynx was born.

Irish Lynx went through quite a few redesigns as the site became larger and larger.  You must appreciate that at this time, there were very few directories on the Web, and soon Irish Lynx became one of the foremost directory sites out there.

At its peak, it was receiving substantial traffic, mostly from America.  It contained somewhere in the region of 30,000 links.  Updating became a nightmare.

This was in the days prior to server side technology, so I developed an Excel Database with a background macro.  Any time a link was added to the database, the macro would regenerate all the relevant pages with interconnecting links, and the new files would then be uploaded to the server.  It was tedious, but it worked.

Irish Lynx was eventually sold, and was taken off the Internet.  However, I retained the links and the data was eventually put back up but this time in proper MySQL format.

Sadly, I never had the time or resources to keep the directory updated and it lapsed into its own little time warp.

Out of a sense of sentiment and loyalty, I left it there.  It still got regular hits but of course the traffic died off with the advent of Google and the like.

Today I took the site down.

I am sad to see it go.  It was my first web site, and the steep learning curve eventually led me to running a successful web design business.

I owe that site a lot.

May it rest in peace.