It was Aug. 13, 1998.



I had finally signed on to the Internet after buying my first personal computer, and I wanted to be like my good friend Matt Bianco. He had built a Web site dedicated to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and I was simply amazed how he could publish on a medium instantaneously where anyone who knew the address could find it.



I wanted to do the same.



After a few days of trying to learn HTML, I found some Web space in GeoCities Area51 section, and opened for the very first time Syfyman's World. The name was a tough one to come by. I originally had it as Scifiman's World, but the spelling just didn't work right, and I wanted to do something unique, so I played with different variations of the word.



Finally, I decided to take a bit of an inspiration from Lynyrd Skynyrd, and "SyFy" was created for the first time.



With it being so late in 1998, I basically wanted a medium to which I could express my excitement for the upcoming movie, "Star Trek: Insurrection." Sure, that excitement was misplaced, but I was a very young 22 then.



A total of 12 hits were made to the site that day, five of them coming from me alone. To this day, I couldn't even tell you what the stories were about. But I do remember a few days later figuring it was taking up too much space to spell out "Syfyman's World" in the banner, so I shortened it to read "SyFy World," and began a path down SyFy history.



The site barely grew over time as I tried to improve my HTML writing skills. I would look at how other sites were doing things, and then try to implement my own version on SyFy World. In the early days, we had a pop-up poll, a trivia game, a page remembering past science fiction people who had died, and of course, news.



We originally were going to be strictly Star Trek, but I decided to expand upon it a little. And ironically, it was our coverage of "Earth: Final Conflict" later that year that really started to put SyFy on the map.



I had found several sources inside the show, and before I knew it, I was getting episode spoilers well in advance. At first, we drew attention to our spoilers, but few believed what we had was true. But when the third season started, and our accuracy was in the high 90 percentile, people began to really take notice, and our hits jumped.



By late 1999, SyFy World had established itself, and it was beginning to outgrow the non-dependable GeoCities server. That was when TrekNation -- which is associated with TrekToday -- stepped in and offered to host SyFy World.



The new "partnership" was beneficial to both TrekNation and SyFy World. TrekToday was starting to grow, and with it came SyFy World. But despite the success of the site, the workload was beginning to wear on me, and the hours I had to spend each day to make an update when I was receiving no compensation whatsoever was starting to not make sense. I continued, only because every time I said I wanted to give it up, visitors to the site would start writing me en masse begging me to stay.



All of that came to a head in Spring 2001 when I felt the site needed a major redesign, and I just no longer had the know-how to update the site to where other sites had advanced to. I was about to throw my hat in the ring, when I had learned that Greg Boubel -- one of the more innovative designers on the Internet -- had been considering dropping news coverage from his site, Star Trek Portal.



I didn't want to do Web design anymore, he didn't want to write news anymore. I wanted to write more news, and he wanted to do more Web design. It seemed like a perfect fit, so I contacted him.



We began discussing ideas immediately, and before long, an agreement had been made to merge the two sites as Airlock Alpha. Both Star Trek Portal and SyFy World almost immediately shut down, and SyFy actually did most of its news coverage through its YahooGroup while Greg busily worked on the new design of the site.



With plenty of fanfare, Airlock Alpha opened in late May 2001, with more than 8,000 people stopping by on its first day. Since then, some 4 million people have visited the site, keeping SyFy one of the more popular stops on the Web for those looking for non-repeating, relevant science fiction entertainment news from a variety of programs and movies.



This past summer, Greg Boubel decided to pursue other interests off the Internet, leaving Airlock Alpha solely in my possession. I didn't know what to do with this, since I was just the news guy and promotional guy. I had no idea how to run the special features Greg had developed, or to complete the redesign I wanted done so badly. I actually considered shutting down Airlock Alpha and was preparing the announcement when some friends who frequented the site decided to step in.



The new informal management group that was formed -- SyUniverse -- consists of myself, Don Smith, Shane Churchman, Bryant Griffin and Brian Meskimen. All of us have been working day and night finding a new server to host the site, developing a new logo, redesigning everything, finding new entities to do joint projects with (like the one recently established with Radio Sci-Fi), and even develop a newsletter for the site called the SyFy Galactic Newsletter.



All of these new features and designs will be launched later this summer, and we are excited for all of you to be a part of our future.



We here at SyFy want to thank all of you for making this site possible over the last four years. No one involved with the site has ever made any money doing this, but it's definitely our loyal and new visitors who keep us doing this day in and day out.



SyFy is here to stay.



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Michael Hinman is news editor and owner of Airlock Alpha. He is based in Tampa, Fla., and can be reached at michael@airlockalpha.com.