The very first website banner which was made by Dr. Charlie Atienza, in 1999 features the original UPCD building in Padre Faura St. Manila, the UPCD seal designed by Dr. Aaron Punzalan , the UP Oblation and a UPCD Clinician performing a dental procedure on a patient.
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THE UPCD WEBSITE (2007-2018)
In 1997-1999, back when the internet was still on its very early stages, the UPCD website development project began thru the efforts of Dr. Charlie N. Atienza. As required back then by the central administration of UP Manila, one representative from each college or unit was asked to attend several comprehensive training workshops on web development and network administration. The initiative was intended for these point persons to start a project in creating the websites for each of their respective colleges.
The first website was created was very basic, mostly text and very little graphics. Only a few were able to access this site since the internet was not as popular yet back then. The available information in that particular web site only included, the college address, admin contact information and course offerings. This website was built thru actual HTML coding since stand alone website builders were still not popular that time.
The second website platform that was developed was influenced by the sudden boom of the internet particularly because of the very popular search engine yahoo.com. Yahoo during these years was already considered as the top website and search engine and probably has already conquered most of the internet
Yahoo! grew rapidly throughout the 1990s and diversified into a web portal, followed by numerous high-profile acquisitions. The company's stock price skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble and closed at an all-time high of US$118.75 in 2000;[1] however, after the dot-com bubble burst, it reached an all-time low of US$8.11 in 2001.[2]
One of yahoo"s acquisitions back then included the popular geocities.com.
By June 1997, GeoCities was the fifth most popular web site on the Web. In 1999 GeoCities was bought by Yahoo, for $3.57 million. At this time, the current user base count stood at 1.8 million users with over 200,000 being between the ages of 3 and 15. By the end of 1999, GeoCities was the third most visited site behind AOL and Yahoo. [3]
Due to lack of funding, Dr. Atienza's website development project, looked into the possibility using this platform instead. Yahoo geocities, offered much simpler processses including an online HTML editor which made it very convenient to build and update static webpages and create new dynamic web pages. This was also the time when digital scanners were slowly becoming popular which enabled converting developed picture prints to digital image. This even became more convenient when digital cameras were introduced. The website became more appealing because of the digital images being incorporated and featured in the site.
The website, with URL http://geocities.com/updentistry, ran for 7 years from 1999 to 2006, again without any form of funding from the UPCD and UP administration. Informaion available in the site included details about the hiatory, organization, course offerings, Orthodontics post graduate program info, Alumni activities and ao much more. Many from outside the country are able to reach the college thru the available contact information in this website. The site has helped establish ties between UPCD and other insttutions and alumni abroad. Foreign applicants were able to obtain information about our Graduate Program in Orthodontics, and they are able to communicate and send applications thru the information provided in the site. The website was a window that provided people online to have a peek about our institution.
In 2007, a new platform was being considered, due to some issues in the convenience in the creation of dynamic webpages. The website development initiative looked into the possibility of using Content Management Systems (CMS) which can be potentially hosted in the recently improved UP MANILA Intranet. The CMS platform that was chosen was joomla which was one of the most popular that time. It was hosted in the UP Manila Network with a URL http://cd.upm.edu.ph. With this platform, the website was being updated regularly. Any news, announcements and information that needed to be online was posted with ease. The JOOMLA platform UPCD Website was online from 2007 to 2018, and was able to register more than 30 million visits again without any funding from the college. Unfortunately, due to the lack of funding and also because of the demands in the work reponsibilities of a website content managent system administrator, which Dr. Atienza voluntarily took the role of, the CMS site needed to go offline for a much needed upgrade. The website development is now on its 4th cycle in a span of more than 2 decades.
Again thru the sole efforts of Dr. Atienza and without any funding, a new website was developed and is currently being hosted in the very popular blogger.com host which is owned and operated by perhaps one of the largest web portals online: google.com. This format was chosen beacuse of the popularity of the blog formats which has become more appealing to online users due to the ease of navigation and responsiveness with hand held devices. It definitely is considered as a stable platform due to the fact that: no other than "google", owns, maintains and protects the entire domain. The site is accessed thru "https" and therefore is cetainly secure. The site so far, has been visited more than 150,000 times to this date. It can be accessed thru http://upcd.ph.
(Mobile Version: Responsive)
www.upcd.website
(desktop version)
(desktop version)
References
1. ^ Simon Holland (July 2012). "Yahoo: An 18-year timeline of events". PerformanceIN. PerformanceIN. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
2. ^ Linder, Karen (2012). The Women of Berkshire Hathaway. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 199. ISBN 9781118182628. Retrieved May 27,2013. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, on September 26, 2001, Yahoo!'s stock hit its all-time low of $8.11.
3. http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Geocities
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