This page was started in 1997 because I realised that there were absolutely no Larry-Boy pages on the Net. That's why I decided to get an account at Fortune City so that I could make a really good Larry-Boy page. When I signed up, I made the original opening pages with a "Coming Soon" message with AOL Press. Unfortunately, they continued to stay in this phase for a few months. At a date that I don't remember when I downloaded the Frontpage Express HTML editor, I decided to give it a try and create the first pages. These early pages stayed in that form for a long time, but they had one thing that the last version of the page didn't have: graphical links. I had made a few graphical links to the three or four main sections that was contained within these pages, but then a major event came that prevented me from continuing these graphical links: my computer got sick. When I finally got my computer back, I no longer had the program that I was making these graphics with (which was Corel Draw 5). Since I couldn't get a replacement CD and didn't feel like spending $400 for the newest version, I decided to do away with the graphics for a while, but the design also got a bit sloppier, especially when I added the club page, poll, and other stuff at the top. The club page came as a result of 63% of the votes, which were from an accumalation of many votes from a couple months of voting. I still haven't got the web page of the month that came with the club vote, but I did get the club started, where many of the pages were moved. This club page really couldn't have become fully possible without the help of a beta version of EZpad 3.0. I really didn't fully understand frames because I didn't really want to look farther than Frontpage Express to learn about them. Ezpad's frame wizard really helped make those frames, but the page still wasn't getting noticed. The boom in membership came on the day that Veggieopoly was released. I was satisfied with the design of the page, but not the graphics. I really wanted the graphics that I used to have, but all I could use was Microsoft Paint, a cheap paint program that comes with Windows computers. Then the biggest change in graphics came when I bought Jasc's Paint Shop Pro v5. But even with these great graphical capabilities, I was still unsatisfied with the design. The page looked far from professional, but because of my college schedule, I had no time to do anything about it. Then came spring break. This is where the current version of the page comes in.

This page currently uses EZpad 3.0 (final) to edit the pages and Internet Explorer 5 to make sure everything works. Graphics are made with Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 5 and its accompanying Animation Shop. All of these programs are suggested for webmasters that want help in HTML and graphics. For some suggestions on what I think new and old VeggieTales web masters should and should not do, see below.

I am planning things for this page all the time. "What?" you may ask. I'll tell you if you'd like. Some of these plans may never see the light of day, but I can at least dream. One thing that I'd like to do is create an Adventure game that will be challenging for adults and children, but only have one skill level. This will help the child in problem solving and bring him/her into good quality time with their parents. Currently, I'm looking to make this game with traditional hand drawn animation (which will be scanned into a computer and edited in any way necessary) with hand drawn backgrounds. There will be no voice, but spoken text instead. It will be very much like all the classic LucasArts adventure games. I will either make it in either the Maker 2 or SCRAMM game engine and will run on Windows. I know that this will be a success if I do make it for there is a great demand for both VeggieTales computer games and VeggieTales games that appeal to teens and adults rather than small children. I am not sure if the final game will be able to reside on Fortune City since they have a 1 MB limit on their files.

If I ever change the location of this page, it will not be until I get a domain name and a larger server. I am not sure when this will be able to happen, but if I can get a sponsor it can happen right away, so if there are any online bookstores out there looking for some VeggieTales websites to sponsor, this would be a great place to start! :-)

The more I surf through VeggieTales web sites, the more I see pages that look extremely professional. The downside is that I see a lot that are not up to current web standards. As a web master that has had experiences in making bad web pages and then making a really great page such as this, I provide these suggestions.

First, I will go into things that I want to expect in a VeggieTales web page. Just like many of us, I feel that the Ultimate VeggieTales Web Site was the inspiration to make my own VeggieTales web site. Also, like many of us, I would like to gain the status among VeggieTales fans that veggietales.net has gained. Even before veggietales.net had a domain, it had this status because of its great design and great source of information and multimedia. But even though it's the best site of information and multimedia, it shouldn't be your site. Be as original as you can be and borrow from that site as little as possible. Same thing goes with using pictures from other VeggieTales sites. Instead of using pictures from other sites, try using pictures from magazines and products instead. Scan them in, edit them some in a photo editor, and use them on your site. With good editing, a common picture can look very original. Take the Storyboard sketches, for example. Those sketches appeared seperately in a crossword puzzle in an issue of "What's the Big Idea?" I did a lot of editing, but in the end it looked like they belong together. Try to use humor in your pictures, too. For example, look at this picture that I made recently. This was made by combining two pictures together in Paint Shop Pro and later doing some retouching to make Dorothy look like she was always there.

If you do want to use something from other pages, the best thing to do is to redirect the person to the other site instead. This is mainly to keep your page as original as possible. There are way too many pages that use nothing but images and sounds from veggietales.net. Most people that are familiar with VeggieTales on the web have visited VeggieTales.net, therefore they do not need to have VeggieTales.net regurgitated at a different location. Unless used creatively, seeing the same pictures on every website and having the same downloads on every website can get pretty boring. I have a pack of cursors and icons that were from veggietales.net, but I soon removed them to have original downloads that people would want to come to my page for because they were available nowhere else. If you are for some reason unable to make original downloads, team up with somebody that can! Same thing for graphics. Sometimes a web page can't go on without some kind of help. Big Idea has a whole team of people working for their page and they've created one of the best sites ever!

The next thing people will want to look for is content. Avoid having a link to a tribute page that has nothing but one picture of a character. This will bring false hopes. Avoid creating a page with nothing but a set of pictures and sounds from veggietales.net. This will not get people back to the page. You not only want one time hits to your page, but also repeat hits. Success in web pages aren't counted by how many people come to your page, but by how many times they will come back. Another important reason for content is that many of these free space providers will give around 12 MB to 25 MB of free space, but a lot of that free space is being put to no use because of single page sites. Try to take advantage of as much of that space as possible. And if you use dithered .gif files rather than .jpgs, you will also be able to put a lot of pages in the space that you saved by using smaller images!

Although I've said most of what to avoid already, I will now mainly go over again what to avoid:
Avoid regurgitating content.
Avoid wasting space because of little content.
Avoid being lazy. Take your time and try some of those tools that HTML editors provide!
Avoid disorganization. One complaint about the old page from others as well as myself was the disorganization.
Avoid boredom. Put fun into your sentences! Fun doesn't mean exclamation points at the end of every sentence. Just make them fun in any way possible! VeggieTales is full of fun sentences. Watch that to get an idea of what I mean, especially Larry's lines.
Avoid cheesy graphics. VeggieTales is a computer generated cartoon with fun, yet very real, graphics. They are far from cheesy. If you're serious about your site, you should invest the $70 for Paint Shop Pro. Microsoft Paint will not do for good web graphics.

The bottom line is to be original and try the best that you can. Do not try to be the next Ultimate VeggieTales Web Site, but rather be the next [Insert your page's name here].

I am a 19 year-old PK living in OH and going to CSCC, where I'm in the MMPT program. I first heard of VeggieTales as I going through a local Christian bookstore soon after the videos came out. However, like others, I figured that this was yet another cheap attempt at teaching kids Christian values. I later saw "The Grapes of Wrath" on the 700 Club. Every now and then, the 700 Club will have a week for children and they featured this (from the Grapes of Wrath song to the end of the short), but it didn't impress me because Grapes of Wrath isn't really a good example of the good humour that the show can bring. Then, in 1996, a new 24-Hour Christian Rock station came to town. During their morning show, they would play the Hairbrush Song and the Water Buffalo Song. I didn't know it was VeggieTales yet, though, because at the time they used a character named Junior for their contest announcements and station identifications and they would replace Jr's part in the song with Junior saying, "Hey, mister! You ain't got no hair!" My sister later found out that it was VeggieTales and she bought the VeggieTunes tape, which we played constantly. Later, the sister of my mother, who is my aunt, bought one of the videos for her daughters, which would be my cousins. As soon as she got it, we fast forwarded it to the Hairbrush Song. Later, a friend bought some of the videos and we watched those occasionally, but I still had none. When "A Very Silly Sing Along" was released, I bought the video because I really liked the songs, but that was all I had for awhile. Later, I went to an Amish bookstore in Sugarcreek ion the hottest day of the year (which was in the middles of July) and bought as many videos as they had, including The Toy that Saved Christmas. This was shortly after the release of Larry-Boy's first movie. Then my interest in VeggieTales and Larry-Boy exploded into what it is today!

List of videos and merchandise that I have is coming here soon!