Chapter 22 Going Live

About Price's List, Dean prepared on and off for almost half a month. It wasn't that the website was difficult, but simply because he didn't have the time.

In the process of dealing with phone cards and running around for his dad's case, he spent most of his time on these matters.

It was only last night that he finally focused and finished the last bit of code.

Oh right, because he moved back home this week, Dean found himself a second-hand Commodore computer at a flea market.

This Commodore 64 series computer cost him 80 US dollars. It's an antique from 1982, originally priced at 595 US dollars.

Though it was a product from a few years ago, it was still selling up to this day, with sales reaching around twenty million units.

In geek circles, the Commodore 64 computer is hailed as the "Volkswagen of computers."

And even though it had five or six years of history, it was still far better in performance than Jerry's TRS-80, which was also known as Trash-80.

Turning on the computer on his desk, an excited Dean converted the web content of Price's List into an email using PERL language.

As one of the website's first batch of users, Dean pushed these to his friends in his email list.

Jerry, Debbie, Roger, Susie from the landlord training course, and those landlords who had registered rental information, and of course his friends from geek circles.

All in all, about twenty people—the first recipients of Price's List promotional service, also marking the first time Dean actively advertised his own website.

...

Debbie, who was browsing a BBS at a friend's house during the holidays, noticed the notification for a new email in her inbox at first glance.

When she realized it was from Dean, an excited Debbie immediately called her friends to share the email.

"There's an interesting new website, do you guys want to check it out together?"

"What?", "What kind of website is it?" the girls gathered around, curious.

"Look," Debbie clicked on the email, and the content that unfolded was very simple.

[Youngstown State University will hold a campus rock star contest in January]

[East Dumpling, a new Chinese restaurant in the south of town, cheap and delicious!]

[Democratic legislators claim they are applying for more public housing projects for Youngstown]

[A vicious shooting incident occurred on East Heil Street, with at least one African American youth reported dead, according to witnesses]

...

A series of brief messages were listed in the email in a very concise, text-only format.

"Cool, is this a BBS that specializes in news?" one of her friends naturally assumed it was a news forum.

"No, it's different from the usual BBS, it's more organized, with additional services," Debbie said as she clicked the website link at the bottom of the email.

Pricelist.org—this was the homepage of Price's List, and what had just been pushed in the email was only excerpts from the news section of the website.

With the web page transition, a brand-new page presented itself to everyone.

The entire webpage was roughly divided into three sections from left to right, with a pure white background and blue text for the content.

The leftmost section had a large blue Pricelist title at the top, followed by small functional modules like account login, site search, and an event calendar.

The central section took up the main webpage real estate, with the city name Youngstown at the top, followed by community, housing, services, jobs, discussion forums, marketplace, and other secondary directories.

Beneath them were various subcategories, such as local news, lost and found, community organizations under community, and apartment rentals, looking for rentals, garages/storage, and other related entries under housing.

Clicking into these, you could see various thematic links posted by others, like apartment rentals, which also happens to be the most posted theme on Price's List.

Knowing that the housing section was the most information-rich part of Dean's website, Debbie intuitively showed her friends the apartment rental category.

When the page switched, and a slew of rental information for Youngstown appeared, all her friends were astonished.

"Oh my God, this is amazing. Is there really a specialized website to find suitable apartments in Youngstown?"

"Look at this, Debbie! That rental listing even has pictures," one of the friends exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the computer screen.

Although the internet speed of American Online was touching, compressing the images allowed the website to load them in about ten seconds and display them to the viewer.

Of course, since there weren't many people using Price's List yet, the speed for Debbie and her friends was slightly faster, around eight seconds.

The apartment's picture was blurry, showing just a general outline of the exterior, but this still thrilled everyone immensely.

The uniform text code on BBS had long diminished everyone's expectations of the internet.

Seeing a colorful image now was as exciting as being served steak after a month of eating nothing but black bread.

However, listings with pictures were rare, as Dean tried to keep the pages text-based as much as possible.

Even the homepage of Price's List had no logo, presenting all information in text form.

This was mainly done to load web pages as quickly as possible. In the dial-up era, one couldn't expect too much from internet speed.

Secondly, Price's List currently didn't have a network server, so Dean's Commodore 64 was temporarily taking on that role.

For such an antique, it obviously couldn't withstand too many simultaneous visitors.

So, simplicity, achieving utmost simplicity, was the first issue Dean considered when he designed the homepage for Price's List.

Although the webpage was simple and presented in plaintext, all the information was organized neatly. Anyone who entered the page for the first time would quickly understand how to use it.

You just had to find the category you were interested in, refine your search with more precise sub-categories, and then click to enter.

Once you clicked through, you'd discover a whole new world where various kinds of interactions could take place.

"Debbie, this website is really great, it even has a lost and found! Last week I lost a bean doll, it was my birthday gift when I was eight and has been with me for many years.

Can I now post a lost advertisement for it on this site?" Debbie's best friend asked immediately after seeing the community services section.

"Sure, look," Debbie demonstrated, hands-on, "If we want to post our own ad, it's best to register an account. That way, if someone finds your bean doll, they can leave a message under the ad you posted to contact you."

Debbie opened the account registration tab, entered a username and password, and clicked send. Two blocks away in Dean's room, his computer's email inbox indicated a new account sign-up.

"Hey, good job, guys, someone's registered so quickly." Casually clicking on the email, Dean activated the account, completing the final step of the registration.

That's right, everything was still in its initial stage. Even account registration was manually vetted by Dean at the back end.

Dean planned to keep it this way until Price's List reached a certain number of users. It saved operation costs, and it also made it easier for him to get firsthand data.

"Bennie, look, it's all set." Debbie, after receiving the successful registration email notification, immediately logged into her account.

"Now you can post your own ad under the corresponding category. And all of this is free~"

"Oh~shit! Debbie, did you say it's free? If I find my bean doll through the lost and found, is that free too?"

"Of course!"

"Quick, Debbie, I want to try it now. I can't wait!" Bennie was eager to see if her lost advertisement would be noticed and get responses.

Seeing her friend's impatience, Debbie's face showed a hint of smug pride as she gracefully stepped aside.

Showcasing intriguing things to her girlfriends, watching them shout and scream about the novel features, greatly satisfied her vanity.

"Debbie, this site called Price's List is really awesome. I'll definitely recommend it to my other friends."

"Good! We should let more people know about this kind of free service website." A halo shone behind Debbie's head as if she were the Virgin Mary herself.

...

"Oh~shit, this guy actually made a website." Roger exclaimed as he looked at the email Dean had sent while sitting in his bedroom.

After browsing the site for a while through the link, he found that the website was indeed interesting, but a bit too formal.

Roger saw a lot of life-related services on it, such as car repairs, moving, and so forth, and there was even a section dedicated to dealing with household items that were no longer needed.

But it completely lacked services for finding a significant other, yes, that kind of dating module for heterosexuals.

With that thought, Roger opened his email and typed out a line: Dean, does this page really not f*cking provide services for finding girls?!

Ding! In less than a minute, Dean's reply came through.

Roger opened it and read: F*ck You, Roger!

...

Giving the middle finger to the sex-crazed dude, Dean cheerfully continued to process the account application emails in his inbox.

In one afternoon, he had received 10 registration emails. Although many were just his friends padding the numbers, it was at least a good start.

But speaking of which, Roger's suggestion for a dating service section might be worth a try.

Dean was very aware that cater to primal desires have always been a primary driving force for humans.

The pages of Price's List still had too few viewable messages, and a service-oriented classified site like this would only see healthy growth in page views if users participated in the interactions.

Dating within the same city would undoubtedly be a hot topic, but uncontrollable factors were also more prevalent, such as some people masquerading dating intent to solicit prostitution...

With the website just launched, reputation was very important. Dean decided to at least wait until he attracted some users in Youngstown before trying Roger's suggestion.

If there were critical voices, they could just shut it down.

Dean briefly screened his thoughts, then buried his head again in the numerous BBS boards to select local information to be featured on Price's List.

That's right, the various services and local news on Price's List were all from manual selection.

This part of the work was mainly completed by Debbie, Jerry, and Roger; they would gather what happened recently in Youngstown and report it to Dean.

The source of the information could be local gossip or from online forums; Price's List did not produce news, it was only a carrier of nature.

At most, Dean would do some manual editing while filtering through the news.

Of course, this was just a temporary solution. Dean was working on another software that would automatically grab the hottest posts from the American Association of Internet Users and feed them back to the backend.

These posts, once captured, would be reviewed by Debbie and the others. Dean would only add the information to Price's List if they found it interesting or reliable.

Everything was just beginning, without servers, operating staff, and most of the work was done manually.

But by the end of 1988, Price's List was still a pioneering invention on the internet.