The idea for the Dive-Oz
website started back in November 1998. As a regular visitor to many
websites that are updated daily on many different subjects, I started
looking around at Australian Scuba related websites for a site just like
what Dive-Oz is now, but could not find any. I found plenty of sites
with dive sites and some images, but nothing that was up-to-date at all.
Since I was a programmer and designer of websites, I set out to create a
new site that would be of interest to as many divers, Australian and
foreign as possible. From that initial idea, the Dive-Oz domain name was
registered and Dive-Oz Mk I was created.
Dive-Oz MK I took a few weeks to put together, and now, I don't really
remember what it even looked like. It had a number of the same info
directories as we do now and it even started to attract visitors.
Dive-Oz MK I lasted I think about 6 months, before I sat down and laid
out a number of changes and expansions until Dive-Oz MK II appeared.
Dive-Oz MK II had a new menu system, was better looking, and had a lot
more info and took a couple of months to make all the changes. By this
time, the site was getting quite popular, not only with Australian
Divers, but with divers from Overseas as well. It was starting to become
a well used resource for news and info on Australian scuba diving.
Dive-Oz MK II lasted maybe a year, and in that time, more new areas were
added. We also had the merger into our site, one of Australia's best
resources on Nudibranchs that is run by Wayne Glaskin. But, it wasn't
long before the bug hit me again, and armed with suggestions from the
regular users of the site, plus my own ideas, Dive-Oz MK III was
unleashed.
Dive-Oz MK III was almost a complete re-design, one of the biggest
changes being the scrapping of the menu system on the lhs of the screen
and moving to a slimline Javascript driven drop down menu system at the
top of the screen. More features and areas where added and our first
Discussion Forums were opened up for the first time not long after MK
III went live. The discussion forums attracted a new group of regular
visitors to the site, and it was not long before the forums were racking
up large numbers of posts on many different subjects. Again, during the
life of this version of the site, many changes were made to many areas
of the site. A search engine was created for many of the areas,
including; discussion forums, nudibranch gallery, all info directories
and the news areas. I also expanded the news areas into a number of new
sections and started checking around 70-80 websites every day looking
for news items that scuba divers would find interesting. As with all
good things, it was time to move on and start looking at MK IV of the
site. By the time I had started to think about MK IV of the site, it was
nearly 3 years since it all started and I had spent around 2,500 hours,
of my time, designing, programming, chasing news and generally looking
after the site. it was time for a MAJOR change!
Dive-Oz MK IV of the website saw a TOTAL re-design of every area of the
site, including a total re-write of the underlying code bases in each
page. The whole look and feel of the site was changed dramatically, a
new menu system was implemented, a whole new discussion forum was
integrated and a whole slew of site updates, additions and features were
made to produce the site you see now. The whole look and feel of the
site was finally standardised with a new colour scheme and theme. The
total time to put this new site together was around 200+ hours, and even
now, I still continue to tweak and change things all the time. As I
write this, it's almost the sites 3rd birthday, and in those 3 years, I
have seen the number of visitors just keep getting higher and higher and
have made many great friends along the way. I think this version of the
site will be around for a while yet, but after that, who knows what
Dive-Oz MK V could be!
Dive-Oz is a labour of love, for both a sport I enjoy when I can and for
a love of programming and attempting to create the biggest and most
up-to-date scuba resource about Australian Scuba Diving available on the
web today. I hope that I
have achieved what I set out accomplish with this site, in my mind,
there is always room for improvement, but that's another story. This
site is not run by a team of people, it's done by a single person, with
the help of some amazing friends. Dive-Oz is here because of the support
of it's advertisers, sponsors and most importantly, you the visitor, for
without you, there is no point.
