The taoslink.com Web site began as personal bookmarks of J. R. Ransom. Very early on, J. R. had an interest in how many Web sites were actually being posted by friends, neighbors, organizations and businesses from Taos. These bookmarks were later added as a section of taosplaza.com in 1998, which was then in 'static' format. That means that all the links and descriptions were pasted into each page manually.
Later, the pages from the taosplaza.com section were posted on a new site named taoslink.com. The link pages of taoslink.com began driving a lot of traffic to genuine Taos Web sites almost immediately whether those sites had 'registered with search engines' or not. At the time there were about 700 Web sites from, by, for, or about genuine Taos. The site was still 'static' at the time and took many hours to post the data when new sites were added.
So, in 2004, J. R. upgraded the site to a 'dynamic' site. Then in 2008, J. R. again upgraded the site to a newer dynamic technology, and finally, in 2009, further improved the site by migrating the content data to Joomla.
Taos really has a lot of Web sites for such a small town
Taos was the first community in USA to ''get'' the Web back in 1994 when LaPlaza Telecommunity was formed allowing free Internet access to all Taos residents. That was when the online world of Taos began to grow. Now there may be hundreds of thousands of creative Web pages generated by the artists, craftspeople, art galleries, shops, restaurants, B&Bs, hotels, motels, media companies, organizations, real estate agents, healers, psychics, retreat centers, skiing and activities businesses of the resort town of Taos.
History of taoslink.com, the ultimate links directory portal to Taos
What was to become taoslink.com started in 1999 as a section of taosplaza.com called "Bookmark Favorites". The section had several dozen key taos-based Web sites. As the number of viable Taos sites online grew, it seemed like a good idea to use that information to start a whole new site called taoslink.com.
New taoslink.com URL
When the ''stand alone'' taoslink.com site was launched in 2000, there were about 600 site links in the listings. That represented about 98% of all the sites from, by, to, or about Taos. The site was originally started as a site with ''static'' Web pages.
When a site is ''static'' that simply means that each page is constructed and linked to the other pages by hand. The bookmarking of the original 600 or so sites on taoslink.com was done using a program called URL Manager Pro for Apple Mac where it was easily possible to bookmark, annotate, categorize, and sort all the links. From there the links were exported as raw html web pages. Then all those pages were imported to Adobe''s GoLive software (which at the time it was cutting edge). In GoLive the pages were formatted and styled and graphics were added, before posting to the Web.
2004 - Updated from ''Static'' to ''Dynamic''
By 2004, there were around 1500 genuine Taos Web sites linked by taoslink.com. That was a bit much to be done by the old manual methods. It became necessary to use new ''dynamic'' methods to operate the site, so on November 18, 2004, after about a month of programming and customization work done by J. R. Ransom in Taos and Algis Alekna in Russia, designer of LinkDepartment Pro software, the new dynamic taoslink.com site was launched.
When a site is ''dynamic'', it means that all of the content of the site is stored in a database and then displayed on ''template'' pages (which are similar to the old ''static'' Web pages). The technology used by taoslink.com uses a scripting language called ''php'' and a database called ''mySQL''. Besides the increased speed and usability of the dynamic site for the site visitors and the administrator, the new taoslink.com technology allowed site viewers to easily submit their own genuine Taos site links directly.
2008 - The Next Technology of taoslink.com
The taoslink.com version 4 site was launched on August 8, 2008 with over 2000 Web sites. J. R. again upgraded the site to a technology called "eSyndicat" and worked with developers in Kyrgystan, to transfer all content data. The new taoslink.com technology brings Web 2.0 technologies such as site thumbnail snapshots of the linked sites, excellent speed, excellent viewer usability, sponsored listings, featured listings, partner listings, and many more of the latest benefits of current technologies. During the rest of 2008, a lot of parts of taoslink.com were ''tweaked'' to the new technology.
2009 - Our taoslink.com Database is Incorporated into the Joomla! Framework
That brings us to taoslink.com 5, which was opened in September 2009 within a Joomla framework. Taos MultiMedia Studio works extensively with Joomla Web site software. While at the JoomlaDays 2009 convention in Bangkok, Thailand, J. R. Ransom realized that it was now possible to offer a superior directory experience using Mosets Tree component for Joomla. Connecting with the developer of Mosets Tree, in Malaysia, a transmigration script was created that allowed seamless integration of all the taoslink.com content data into the powerful Joomla format.
The taoslink.com Web site portal is owned and operated by Taos Music and Art, Inc.
Thanks for your interest in what Taos has online and in taoslink.com.
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