HareKrsna.com Celebrates 10th Anniversary
BY: Sun Editors
Jul 12, USA (SUN) — July 30, 2005 marks the tenth anniversary of the online presence of HareKrsna.com. On July 30, 1995, Rocana dasa and wife Jahnava first launched the site under the name "The Hare Krsnas". At that time, even the concept of 'owning' a domain was unfamiliar territory. The site began, as so many did, using a web address appended to the ISP's address: http://www.islandnet.com/~harekrsna.com.
Over the course of that year, as the site editors slowly learned the ropes, rudimentary content was developed and posted to the Internet. Readership was small, with the regular audience being comprised of friends and well-known associates.
By July of 1996, a variety of content related to sadhana and philosophy was online, and the first public launch of the site took place. Announcements were distributed to all the devotees online, and invitations were handed out at various west coast Ratha Yatras. Over the course of that year site content continued to grow, the majority of which was focused on philosophical debates around ISKCON management and the initiation issue. The Vada section of the site served as the primary magnet for a growing readership.
On July 29, 1997, announcements were widely distributed for a re-launch of the site, which was moved to its permanent domain, http://www.harekrsna.com. Three interactive venues were added to the site: the Garuda Express listserv, the Dharma Mela threaded forum, and the Sadhu-Sanga chat room. All three quickly became popular venues, and helped to establish HareKrsna.com as an important presence in the Vaisnava community.
Over the next six years, HareKrsna.com saw relatively little increase in content on the sadhana side, but a growing collection of philosophical articles was archived, with Rocana dasa contributing numerous papers to the Vada section. Throughout this period, the site's heartbeat continued to be its interactive forums, and the Dharma Mela was consistently populated with vibrant dialogue.
In late 2002, the editors began a massive overhaul of the website, developing an extensive collection of content related to the philosophy, sadhana and Krsna Conscious culture. On Vyasa Puja 2003, the revamped site was launched, with invitations distributed to devotees worldwide. Site traffic immediately spiked, as search engines like Google crawled and indexed what had become one of the world's largest repositories of Krsna Conscious content on the Web.
Over the ten year span of HareKrsna.com's life on the Net, site traffic has grown from hundreds of visitors a month to approximately 800,000 a month. Today, the Sampradaya Sun is launched in honor of HareKrsna.com's 10th year anniversary. Several new technologies have been incorporated, and the RSS feeds and Podcasts are expected to exponentially vault site traffic well over the million hits per month mark.
The new Sun Blogs will give readers an unprecedented opportunity to interact immediately and personally with the authors of Vaisnava news and editorial articles in a traditional news venue format. Readers are invited to test drive this new feature.
In the mood of pleasing our Spiritual Master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, the Sun editors extend heartfelt thanks and best wishes to all who have supported HareKrsna.com over the years. How quickly the time has gone by!
"Time is called kala--past, present and future. What is now present, tomorrow will be past, and what is now future, tomorrow will be present.” [Easy Journey, 2]
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