Chapter 4 · 1995–1996

orion.org

A new name, arrow keys instead of numbers, a federal grant that didn't go to plan, and the servers come home to Springfield.

• Jul 17–21, 1995Offline for the move to the Web
• $129,547Federal grant, October 1995
• 12,635Active users, June 1996
• Oct 23, 1996Servers moved to Springfield

Columbia changes course

In March 1995 MOREnet told the community networks it ran that it was leaving FreePort behind for a web-based system.¹ ORION would have to move whether it was ready or not. The same spring it incorporated as ORION, Inc., with its own bylaws, and used a federal library grant to buy a second server meant to run the new web side. It was needed: the disk holding users' home directories was 87 percent full.²

A week offline

ORION went dark on Monday, July 17, 1995, and came back on Friday the 21st with a new name on the network. The InterNIC had approved orion.org, so ozarks.sgcl.lib.mo.us gave way to www.orion.org, telnet.orion.org and mail.orion.org, and everyone's e-mail address changed.^3, 4

The bigger change was on screen. The numbered menus were gone. In their place was Lynx, the text web browser from the University of Kansas: you moved between highlighted links with the arrow keys and pressed Enter to follow one. Pictures were only for people who could connect by SLIP through some other network. Everyone else, which was nearly everyone, got the text. About 2,000 accounts that hadn't been used in nine months were switched off in the move.⁴

How it worked

ORION's menus were now ordinary web pages, but a few links did more than open a page. Behind the scenes they ran programs on the server: Pine for mail, TIN for newsgroups, a file manager for your personal directory, and a "who's on" list. You could skip the menus by pressing J and typing a jump word such as mail, news or files. There was no Unix shell, and no personal home pages; later help files pointed people to GeoCities, Angelfire and Tripod for those.⁵

Not an Internet provider

Commercial dial-up providers were opening in Springfield by 1995, and ORION was careful to stay out of their way. It took no advertising. When the board looked at ISDN that fall, it was only for schools, government and nonprofits.⁶

"We're not here to compete with the commercial sector."

In 1996 ORION even passed its local newsgroups along to the commercial providers so their customers could read them too.⁹

NeighborNet

In October 1995 ORION won a federal grant from the Commerce Department's TIIAP program: $129,547 toward a $273,025 project called NeighborNet.⁷ The plan was to help nearby towns set up their own neighborhood networks linked to ORION. Bolivar, Joplin, Monett and Branson had all been in talks.⁸ Part of the money bought an Ascend MAX 4000 for ISDN connections, which arrived in March 1996, and part paid for a trainer, Anthony Young, who would teach hundreds of people to use ORION.⁹

Then the towns left. One by one, as a commercial provider set up shop in each community, it dropped out. The name had to change as well, over a trademark problem.

                                               The ORION Neighborhoods Project

  The ORION Neighborhoods Project

   The ORION Neighborhoods Project, is the child of the ORION
   NeighborNet Project which was awarded a grant by the Department of
   Commerce, NTIA, TIIAP in October, 1995. Information about that
   original proposal is now considered history, since we have revised
   the scope of the project.

   ...

   Suggestions mail to ktharp@mail.orion.org [ORION Homepage][To top of
   page]


-- press space for next page --
  Arrow keys: Up and Down to move.  Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
 H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

Rather than give the money back, ORION rewrote the project. On May 31, 1996, the Commerce Department approved a new scope built around partners at home: the library, the City, Springfield Public Schools, Caring Communities, the Boys and Girls Club, and the town of Vandalia.⁸

Growing up

In June 1996 the IRS granted ORION charitable status, backdated to its incorporation in January 1995, so donations became tax-deductible.⁹ In July the board approved its first paid service, SLIP and PPP connections that gave graphics to anyone willing to pay, at a proposed $150 for six months or $240 a year.¹⁰ The helpdesk moved to the Ozark Empire Fair for the run of the fair, updating the fair's web pages every day as part of the attraction.⁹ St. John's put its health information on ORION that August.¹¹

Coming home

By the fall of 1996 almost everything ORION maintained had been converted from gopher to HTML, and the board's September minutes said it plainly: "We are preparing to eliminate everything in gopher space."¹⁰ New server hardware went in on October 13, and on October 23, 1996, ORION's systems were moved from Columbia to Springfield.¹⁰

The traffic kept climbing. In January 1996 ORION's web server answered about 9,000 requests a day. By November it was nearly 17,000.¹² Active users went from 10,215 in January to 12,635 in June. And the board had approved one more thing for the new servers: a chat system. It would go live just before Christmas.¹⁰