History

Beyond The Horizons started out as a group on MSN called Beyond The Horizon on 28th March 2002. The purpose of the group was initially a place where the manager could play around and create pages. But as more pages were created, more showed an interest in learning how to make pages too. Soon a background codes section was added with 5-10 codes, that anyone could use to create pages if they wanted to. People started applying and some page competitions were added to have something the members could play with.

As more started to ask how different parts of web sets were made and wondered how to improve their pages, a help program was thought out. The first webworks challenge was posted on the very first Sunday in January 2003. At a maximum, 20 challenges should be enough to occupy the members and help them learn a little more than just the basics, but as the word spread on the challenges many joined to participate and it ended up being posted one challenge each Sunday for a whole year. Not wanting to ruin the program, no more challenges were posted, but anyone could still participate. When the MSN Group was replaced by this site, the sign up thread had over 770 replies, where almost all are posts by different members. Before closing, the group had 2220 existing members. It is unknown how many others have previously been members but cancelled their membership for various reasons.

Sadly, some people were taking advantage of not only what was offered in the group, but also what wasn't offered. More and more sites were found to be distributing the background codes, when it was explicitly written that this wasn't allowed, and some sites even had the nerve to not only use but also offer the exclusive sets made for the site. After working so hard to make a site to actually help anyone make their own sets and write their own codes, seeing others passing around whatever they could find on the site was very discouraging and quite annoying. Instead of spending the time to help other members, add more to the site and have fun making pages, the management had to continuously remind everyone that stealing isn't allowed, and reporting theft. After having put up with this for over a year, the manager came to the conclusion that either the site would be deleted, or it would be moved to the WWW with a restricted area where access would be given only after membership had been purchased. Luckily the WWW site had been started on before finding much more theft and more often than before, because if this site hadn't already been in the making, the group would have been closed and what was offered there and now offered here wouldn't have been available anymore.

There are several reasons why it was chosen to start a WWW site instead of simply deleting the group and get it over with. Firstly, it was obvious that quite a lot of members were not only enjoying the help offered, the codes and different challenges, but also it's clear that many have benefited from being able to use codes to make pages and learning how to make their own. It's so much fun watching how someone that started out making their first web pages with the webworks program now makes some of the most beautiful pages you can find anywhere. It gives such an inspiration to continue helping others learn. By having a membership where one needs to pay to be able to participate, it should keep those with other intentions away and hopefully those that join this site will have a genuine interest in learning as well as helping others. Secondly, having membership that needs to be purchased is that we hope the site hosting and bandwidth etc will now pay for itself and that the site administration need not pay for others to benefit from this site and learn. It is understandable that not everyone can afford a membership, and that is why existing members of the MSN Group can get a discount, as they had already joined and wanting to learn before the site was moved. It is also a way of saying thank you for your loyalty and we hope you'll want to continue learning. This site opened on 3rd April 2005 (at 1.02am). 01:02 03.04.05 is a date to remember...