Chiropractic Blogging like it’s 1999

By Michael Dorausch, D.C.

Taking a walk down history lane on what parts of the planetchiropractic.com website looked like 10 years ago. Amazing to think that we’ve been at it for more than a decade now, and today even our news archives feature a full 10 years of solid content that has been posted near daily since June of 1999.

Chances are you don’t recall how things looked on our chiropractic of planets back in the 1990s. I had an affirmation in 1999 that I’ve repeated each day. The affirmation was Fresh Content Daily. That was the simple goal set out from around the time of December 1998. The goal was to create some form of fresh html based content on a daily occurrence. If I didn’t spend 1994 through 1998 playing Doom and Duke Nukem 3-D there probably would have been even more content. I pretty much stopped playing computer games around the time I put my focus on the website. It was a worthwhile sacrifice.

That’s what a screenshot from the news archives look like in 1999. At least the ones that were posted by me (Dr. Mike). Back then, articles simply had a title, the author name, and the time of the post, as well as a date for each group of articles posted that day. I like the one that reads “Internet will change doctor-patient relationships” knowing it has become a reality in 2009.

It’s 10 years later and many healthcare professionals still believe ADHD maybe over diagnosed in children. There is also still quite a few concerns regarding ADHD medication safety. Look at the headlines from August 22 and ask yourself if drug-resistant staph bacteria is still on the rise. One only has to perform a Google News search for the term to see that 10 years later it still appears in quite a few news headlines. It is not as popular a topic right now, since so many are focused on Swine Flu a.k.a. the H1N1 virus.

10 years later do you think drug manufacturers still continue to seek pushing chemicals on the market without valid scientific evidence supporting their product? Today, both homeopathic and drug company manufactured products are under the gun when it comes to searching news related to pharmaceutical fraud.

Searching in 1999 — If you landed on our website in 1999, you had a whopping six choices for searching the Internet from our site. There is a screenshot below that shows a drop down box on our home page allowing people to search across six different engines. Those sites included Alta Vista, Excite, Goto, Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo. I think about that time in 1998-1999, Alta Vista was our number one source of search traffic. How times have changed.

Of those six engines shown above, only Yahoo remains as a popular search destination. 10 years later we have Google dominating search along with Microsoft Bing challenging the behemoth engine for a slice of the search engine pie.

The above two screenshots show white pages with black text combined with shades of blue. Around late 1999 we went all black for about a six month period. Anybody remember what the site looked like then? I had even forgotten about much of the design created in the 1990s, but just yesterday I came across an about page which says a bit about what we had set out to do.

Planet Chiropractic is a growing information network for the chiropractic professional. Chiropractors, students, and staff worldwide are logging onto Planet Chiropractic to access updated information on news and events related to the chiropractic profession. Planet Chiropractic offers a unique service by providing users with up to date information on a regular basis. The Planet Chiropractic website is dynamic as the news and event information we bring you is refreshed daily. We do all the work in gathering information so that you can focus on other things.

I really like this… “Planet Chiropractic was launched with the intent of connecting more chiropractors with their colleagues and to increase awareness and involvement in the worldwide chiropractic community.”

At the bottom of the about page I found a personal message that looked as though it was my signature on pages for people visiting the website. There’s something to learn from dedicating years of your life to service in an endeavor that you’re passionate about.

10 years later one message I have for you still rings true…

May your days be abundant and your lives filled with passion.