The Executive Pages

This really dates me. The Executive Pages was the first web site I ever created. At the time, MS Internet Explorer was in its 2.X stage (that was such a sad attempt), dynamic web pages were few and far between, Cold Fusion had just gone to 2.0, and my development environment was MS Notepad.

The Executive Pages backend consisted of Allaire (now owned by Adobe) Cold Fusion and a MS Access database. I was one of the first 100,000 Cold Fusion developers worldwide.

The Executive Pages was a database driven, dynamic business web site that was owned by Dyancom Systems, Inc (also a part of history). The gist was that people would come, sign up, and build a one-page web site without knowing any programming. The visionaries at Dynacom decided they would try to capitalize on the growing interest regarding the Internet using this tool.

They decided that they would give away a free account and then have three different versions that of course cost money. The system worked brilliantly and many people did pay for their listings. Unfortunately, not enough did. Why?

Most likely because massive migration of the general public (critical mass) hadn’t yet occurred, the owners of Dyancom wanted to retain too much control, and any number of other reasons. Suffice it to say that I believe its failure was due to a lack of planning, lack of growth, and lack of interest when it didn’t “take off” over-night.