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As my infobox states at the beginning of this article, I am a pharmacist. So how did I get involved in making a TI-99/4A website? I've always been a huge fan of technology. I've built multiple computers for myself and others, installed and used multiple operating systems just to say I did, ran my own web server for several years (until I moved and my new ISP doesn't allow for a static IP address), and am the go-to tech guy for friends, family, and coworkers.
About the year 2005, I created my very first TI-99/4A website. It was a very simple html HTML only site with no videos or images or anything. I then started to dabble in Content Management Systems (CSMs) such as Wordpress WordPress and Joomla. I then created a much more multimedia-rich site using Joomla. I found I didn't have enough time then to actually add to or update that site as I was married with four children, and a full-time job and house and yard to keep up.
Then, I started to dabble with Mediawiki just for fun. I realized that would be the perfect format for an informative website like I'd hoped to create. I hoped to get multiple users and contributors to help grow the site as quickly as possible. Things started slowly as I started buying and photographing new cartridges, scanning and OCRing manuals, and web crawling to pull information from wherever I could.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, my hours at work were cut in half. I started really adding a lot to the website. I monitor the number of hits pretty much daily, and at about the same time, the number of people looking at the site skyrockettedskyrocketed. I've added probably 40 new articles during just the weeks of the cornavirus coronavirus issues. I hope to continue adding a couple of new articles each and every week, adding new items to download, and expanding the site. I hope to get a lot of new contributors as well. For any questions or comments, please [mailto:clayton@4apedia.com contact me here!]
