Sometime in the Fall of 1996, someone that I had just met at college said, "Shane, why don't you start your own web page?"

"I don't have time. I'm working, I'm studying, I'm doing all kinds of things that hinder me from keeping up a web page."

"It doesn't take much time just to have something on the web. Here, let me show you."

So I let him show me and the rest is history. That same person stepped me through basic HTML which made Country Music World one of the first pages on the web featuring Faith Hill and Shania Twain--even before the fan clubs and record labels got involved! People, such as yourself, continued visiting to see what was new and the latest information about their favorite country stars. After this small success, I expanded into a few other artists including Kenny Chesney, Alabama, and Clay Walker.

Sponsors and Programming
Well, people kept coming and not long after, I had sponsors. I got involved into affiliate programs which keeps me doing it today. It's not a lot of money but it pays the internet bill, sometimes. Most of all, I learned a fun hobby but wanted to do something more. That's when Morgan came into play again. Morgan, being the gracious guy he is, helped me develop CGI scripts with PERL programming. This enabled me to put some spiffy things on the web.

Birth of Country Senses
After gaining a lot of people subscribing to a email newsletter ("Faithfully Faith Hill Newsletter"), another friend wanted to start a country music song survey. So we did. I recruited him to help me with it. We came up with a method of determining the songs to include each week and count the votes at the end of the week. The first few weeks, the "Country Music Survey" had about 30 subscribers. About 3 or 4 weeks later, counting the votes took 8 hours because of the number of subscribers! I was extremely satisfied to see this happen but I was spending too much time counting votes. That's when Morgan came in again. He helped me write a PERL program that handles most of the labor involved with creating the survey each week. 8 hours of work got cut down to 2 hours which today, takes about 1 hour to create a new survey known as "Country Senses."

"Country Senses" now has more than 800 subscribers who receive the survey via email every week. These people get to pick the songs they like and compare it to everyone else around the world no matter what the radio stations play. This is one of the most prized parts of In Pictures today.

Pictures and More Pictures
During the last few years, I accumulated many concert pictures that I'm anxious to share with people. For the past year, I have worked extremely hard to do exactly that. That's why you can find concert pictures of many country music artists on In Pictures. If you don't see them, ask! I probably have some that I'll be more than happy to share with you. I also am selling pictures of artists/places/and just about anything whether it be print form or electronic form. Please see information on the web about purchasing a print or a CD.

I hope that you enjoy your visit at In Pictures. It's a lot of work and often thankless but if you can sit back and smile, rest assure that I'm just as happy as you are that I've done this.

Please come back soon and let me know what you think at shanek@hiwaay.net.