Lissa Explains it All
LissaExplains.com is a Web site created by Alyssa Daniels (aka. Lissa) (born 1986), a girl from Miami, Florida, to teach people, especially children, how to make their own Web sites. She was 11 years old when she set up the first site in 1997, and is currently a university junior in Florida. Her site has taught many people how to create a Web site by writing their own HTML without the use of Web page creators. The web site includes easy-to-follow tutorials, free e-mail service, and an internet forum.
History
Lissa had trouble remembering all of the HTML codes that she needed to create her site, so she created a page which noted down HTML codes. Eventually more people noticed this page and as she got more requests for the URL, she decided she would make the site public, first publishing it at GeoCities. When she was 12 years old, she decided to purchase a domain name for her site in 1998, and renamed the site to Lissa Explains it All.
Lissa was approached in August of 1999 by Ronald L. Wagner, columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He had seen her site online and wanted to feature Lissa and her site in his weekly column, Family PC Fun[1]. The article was published on September 26, 1999. At the time, her site was using large amounts of bandwidth and the monthly hosting cost for her site was beginning to be too expensive for her to keep it online. She discussed this with Ronald, who suggested that she contact a few internet advertising agencies to see if they would like to advertise on her site. To her surprise, she was accepted by one agency, and soon started earning enough money through advertising to keep Lissa Explains it All online.
By summer 2000, Lissa's site was receiving over 500,000 hits a month. In June of 2000, CNN Headline News aired a story about Lissa and lissaexplains.com.[2] The CNN show, Science and Technology, also aired a story about Lissa and her site in July of 2000.[3]
Lissa later added a forum to her site because of the large volume of email she received. The forum allowed her visitors to get answers to the many questions they had. Lissa's HTML help forum currently has over 75,000 members. Her current host is DreamHost.
Current
Articles have been published recently about Lissa and her site in The Washington Post[4], The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [5], and others.
References
- ^ Wagner, Ronald L.,, Dallas Morning News, September 26, 1999.
- ^ "HTML for Dummies: 13-Year-Old Girl Creates Web Site to Explain Language of the Internet" CNN Headline News, June 30, 2000.
- ^ "Whiz kid Web Designer" CNN, July 14, 2000.
- ^ Edwards, Ellen, "Generation WWW: Kids Create Web Sites", Washington Post, p. C01, March 24, 2004.
- ^ Edwards, Ellen, "Putting Pen to Paper", The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 29, 2004