Home > Miscellaneous Resources > Site History
Site History
A comprehensive history for this site has never been written. Luckily, being electronic pack rats, we have retained the source files for most of the previous versions. These files are a glimpse down memory lane - as well as a taste of the history of the World Wide Web.
The original site was simply entitled "Sloth". It was constructed late in 1995 or early 1996, and was intended to be a resource for all things "sloth". Topics included the mammal, the capitol sin, and the student who wrote the site, who at that time was masquerading as a professional student at Grand Valley State University. The site was originally hosted by GVSU's server, and eventually expanded to include tongue-in-cheek research on the so-called "Sloth Field".
A move to GeoCities resulted in a facelift. The various portions of the sloth site were split into individual webpages, and each section expanded. The mammalian section was renamed "The Official Sloth Website", although there was no substance to the claim that it was the official website of anything or anyone (besides that of the author). Between 1997 and 2001, information on tropical rainforests and many other mammals was added to the site. An attempt at starting a sloth webring was made, although this was met with an utter lack of interest (or lack of motivation?) by other web authors. The webring concept was eventually abandoned.
In 2002, SlothWerks.Com was purchased. Initially, the site was a slightly prettier version of the one hosted by GeoCities. But the author of the site was now employed by a software development company, and was slowly being introduced to design software such as Adobe Photoshop and web design concepts such as Cascading Style Sheets. By early 2003, the website was overhauled to include the now-familiar purple-blue color motif and present-day SlothWerks logo.
In preparation for the move to (faulty) CSS design, Xenarthra.Org was purchased. Dialogue was opened between the authors of SlothWerks.Com, Armadillo Online!, and The Online Anteater. The original proposal was to create a single website which included a universal design and the content of the three sites relating to the Xenarthrans. However, this proposal was quickly scrapped and replaced with the concept of a jump station for the three sites. While the discussions wore on, the text for SlothWerks.Com's sloth website was temporarily moved to a badly-coded Xenarthra.Org, which at that time used a double set of frames and HTML v3.x tags.
Since the intention of the author was to create a truly professional website, he knew that he needed professional help to code the site. This help came in the form of a web designer in Germany. For a brief while, discussions relating to the site layout continued, and several test styles were considered. In mid- to late 2003, SlothWerks transferred the rights to the site to the German designer and abandoned the project altogether, waiting to see what would eventually become of it.
However, the World Wide Web did not abandon Xenarthra.Org. Although the site was never submitted to search engines, and even with its poor temporary design, the pages were crawled by Google and many other search sites. Over the next few years, SlothWerks received email after email asking for information for sloths. During this time, the authors of SlothWerks.Com converted to legitimate web standard coding and began experimenting with full content and design separation. Through all of this, Xenarthra.Org remained a frames-based site, frozen in time and fated for obscurity.
In late 2005, the authors of this site re-visited the concept of a comprehensive project dedicated to sloths and the Xenarthrans. The World Wide Web was maturing, but precious few of the sloth-related sites on the internet were maturing with it; even Wikipedia's entries for sloths and Xenarthrans were better than most other resources available on the internet. Frustrated by this informational void, we began work on the site anew. Instead of attempting to cover all aspects of "sloth" (as in the original site 10 years prior), we wrote a site outline to tackle the subject of the mammal, the Xenarthrans in general, and tropical rainforests. Rather than attempting to re-invent the wheel, links to The Online Anteater and Armadillo Online! were provided for those interested in studying those specific species.
We spent several weeks doing research and writing the site outline. After re-acquiring the rights to Xenarthra.Org, we were stunned to see that it received thousands of visitors a month during the school year from students all over the world. This only solidified our desire to create the best sloth information website available anywhere.
After uploading the initial version of the website, we received many corrections, suggestions, and updates from experts in several fields of scientific research. This prompted us to re-visit many sections of the site, especially those relating to the development of xenarthrans. In an effort to add more visual elements to the site, we also purchased Sloth.Biz and added some new graphs and tables to the site.