Website front page on Mar. 20, 2011.
The Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters in America website has been updated. I cannot say when was the website had changed; however, I noticed the change after the announcement that donations to the Tenrikyo Church Headquarters’ efforts to help those who suffered from the earthquake in Japan were being accepted. I got curious and researched the history of this website.
New and Improved
The website is definitely improved from its previous installment which was left unchanged for about 5 years. It currently has a lot of pages, mostly filled. Though, a few remain with the text, “Under Construction.” I like the new look and drop-menus, but I’m very concerned because the site was built using, probably, Dreamweaver. If the website intends to make frequent and consistent updates, I highly suggest using a CMS like WordPress.
Thinking back on what 5 years meant, I really got interested on what this website looked like and how it changed. So I went to the WayBackMachine. While it couldn’t store images very well, it still has all the text in place.
Website’s Timeline
The second update on the website in Apr. 24, 2003.
I instantly found that the first sighting of the website was on November 28, 1999. Please note that these dates are approximate. I don’t know the pattern in which the “WayBackMachine” collected information on websites, but it is as accurate as I can get.
- 1999, Nov. 28 – First sighting.
- 2000, May 19 – First update.
- 2001, Apr. 1 – Under construction notice up.
- – Second update. Construction notice that was up for 2 years was taken down. The front page looked nice but there were only a few pages. Cool animated gif image!
- 2003, Dec. 25 – More pages. Hamilton Niwa was chair of YMA and I can see that an “Internet Committee” was established. Cool… it’s 2011 and Hawaii still doesn’t have one of those.
- 2005, Feb. 10 – Third update. It just remained this way for quite some time. I was surprised to see it unchanged, even after the Tenri Forum 2006.
- 2011, Mar. 20 – Now. Congrats! On time to update on accepting donations for disaster efforts.
Well, there you have it. The history of the Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters in America website.
