Happy Birthday, IUMIEN.COM

Wow, where have the time gone? I can't believe it's been ten years. The domain name IUMIEN.COM was registered on June 24, 2008. The website went live on Independence Day with a simple photo of fireworks. Then a month later, the it was updated with links to other sites on the web with content by and about Iu Mien. The oldest version of the site available on the Wayback Machine is January 24, 2001. This was mostly a static HTML site.

Sometime in 2002, an interactive version of the site sent live. This interactive version first hit the Wayback Machine on March 30, 2002. This version of the site existed for a little more than four years. During that time, membership went up to more than 9,000 members. The site was hacked more than five times. Due to security problems with that version of the site, it was finally laid to rest late 2006. In it's place was a static page listing upcoming events in the community as seen in this version of the site available on the Wayback Machine.

The current version of the site, with the tagline, "Let's Click Together," was launched in January of 2006. Someone asked me once if the pun in the tagline was intentionally. The answer is yes. It is meant to mean "Let's click together," as in Let's click on this website together with our mouse. It is also meant to mean "Let's click together," in the metaphorical sense in that I would like to see the Iu Mien come together to share their knowledge and experience and unite for our common good.

The current site is built on much more secure software and scalable software. Along with its robust feature set, the site software also has a steep learning curve. After one and a half year after launch of the site with the new software, we are still learning how to build a great site with it. There are many features that we are still working on implementing, so this is really a work-in-progress. You can expect to see more features in the coming months and years.

After one and a half year in operation, membership is up to about 900 members now. On this anniversary, we would like to thank all those members that stuck with us through our growing pains. We appreciate your continued support of the site with your membership, donations (and offers of donations) and frequent visits. Most of all, we appreciate the sense of community you have created by sharing your time, experience, knowledge and interaction with rest of the members.

Happy birthday, and thank you!