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After a mission reunion in early 1998, several former missionaries got together and thought
it would be fun to have some website where they could arrange get-togethers and keep up
with former friends from the mission. The existing mission website did not have these
features and so the site was born. The initial vision of the site was not to be the
default Brazil São Paulo South mission website, however. In addition, Sean Bryson started
using the site as a place to learn new technologies and tools.
As the website started to get more visitors, its scope continued to increase. While it did
provide basic information about all of the presidents, the site focused more on the return
missionaries from the President Hickman era. The site was completely static - there was literally
a page created for every single missionary and the each page only had the phone number and
address that was provided in the missionary phone book. Sean was working for BYU as a web developer
for the early versions of the current online courses at the time and the mission website
used the same basic template as the BYU online courses.
Within about six months, the mission site got the first major graphical change. The new site look
used easier to read fonts and added support for a Portuguese version of the website. A new start
page was developed that took the simple approach - a white page with a logo and two links - one to
the English version and the other to the Portuguese version. That page became the longest lasting
component of the website - the page remained the website staple for almost six years!
During this time, Sean became very involved with some dot-com companies and was placed in a position
in which he needed to learn more advanced web skills. As such, the mission website again became
the test bed to learn the new technologies. The new site was a major change from the old site. The
old site had used two Microsoft Access databases to track information - one for basic details such as
the address and phone number. The other database was used for a small forum that Sean had built for
the old site. There were several problems with these databases - they weren't well designed and they
didn't share information. Hence, you had to register twice on the old site - once to access addresses
and once to access the forum. Then, the old web site was a static website. The new website needed
to be a dynamic website allowing for a greater degree of growth.
The new version of the site required a complete overhaul. Sean designed a new database in SQL Server 7
that dramatically increased what the website could do and what information could be stored. Most of the
data was migrated from the old databases, but not all information. The old site included users in the
database that had not signed up for the site. They were present to provide a phone book of former
missionaries. The new site required everyone to register manually to ensure only the people that wanted
to be listed would be listed.
The new site was designed to be more usable and finally take on the role of a complete mission website
keeping track of large amounts of information and allowing people besides Sean to add information to
the mission website. The new site sported a green banner with blue and yellow that looked like the
corner of the Brazilian flag and included a temple in the banner. The remainder of the site was text
allowing the pages to load quickly and be more dynamic. The new site was a major overhaul and started to
attract much more attention and participation.
Additional features were slowly released to the new site after it was released publically in 1999 until
late 2002 and early 2003. The site worked well, but did not have enough development to become the
community site Sean had envisioned. During this time, Microsoft was releasing a new programming toolset
with the promise of more powerful sites and tools. In late 2002 Sean began designing the next generation
site. In early 2003 a prototype of the site was released that took a completely different look. The
prototype included a blue menu bar, a dusk shot of the temple, and dark green border sections. The
prototype also included a new toolbar along the sides to provide information that would be most relevant
to the person using the site.
About this time Joe Richmond offered to help with the design. Joe took the early prototype Sean developed
and gave it a major facelift to help it look more professional and easier to navigate. Sean took Joe's
design and began pulling code together to form an updated version of the site. The first version of the
next generation site became available to a limited set of individuals in March 2003. Over the next few months
several new technologies and concepts were tested and deployed. In late 2003, a solid idea was in place for
how the new site should look and feel and what features should be present.
Through the end of 2003 and early 2004, Sean was working almost 90 hours per week for several months causing
the development of the new site to come to a halt. However, in early 2004, Sean again began working on the
new site. Development progressed rapidly with a working version of the site done by April. By this time most
of the individuals involved with the new site stopped using the old site and switched completely to the beta
version of the new site.
Due to major work demands, progress on the site slowed down in May and June, picked up again briefly in July,
and then slowed again until the beginning of October 2004.
In the space of six and a half years, the website transformed from a small, static site to a site based on
a couple small Access databases, to a site that is completely dynamic. The aim of the mission website
has been to provide a community environment where the members add content and collaborate together helping
link parents of current missionaries, recently called missionaries, mission presidents, return missionaries,
and members of the Church living with the mission boundaries.
What's next? Sean has already started designing the next generation site. The next version will only be a
minor upgrade from the current site, but will lay the foundation for the next major overhaul!
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