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I was sitting at my PC one Sunday evening after our weekly day at the beach with my bro and our tribe. I mentioned that I had the task of learning how to script ASP so I could be the tech support guy for websites on Windows servers using this language. The rest of my group at work had sites with banner ads, click through links, and other get rich quick gimmicks. I did not want anything like that, my site had to be free, no adds
or other junk, just a site people could enjoy. Bro said, since most of your tribe is just now learning to surf why don't you build a site about surfing so they can
find information about surfing and learn how to get better. Not a bad idea, we could spend more time on our boards and less time pushing people into waves and coaching. So that night RippinH2O was born and my Bro became the co-founder of the site. I bought the name and built a page with links to surf sites, then started on the database with more surf links. As time went on we would talk with other surfers about the site and
almost all of them said "why don't you do this or add this", which gave me the idea of making the site interactive with live content. This is when I coined the phrase "For Surfers By Surfers", it must of been a good one since I see it on many sites and even some surf shops use it or the reverse, By Surfers For Surfers, for which I take no credit for other than someone reversed my phrase to make it their own, can also be found on many surf sites. I have no problem with anyone using "For Surfers By Surfers" since one of the main concepts of this site is to be free, just as surfing is and should be.
Our Surf Lingo page came from watching Surf Ninjas with the kids one rainy day, they all started calling each other "Wax Boy". I asked how many words or terms have we heard over the years, were they all real or made up for a movie like Cowabunga or Wax Boy. Either way even the made up ones became a part of the surfing culture. I built a page with a dozen or so terms we came up with, added a form so other surfers could add theirs, and it has become our most popular page with over 700 terms as of the writing of this short history of RippinH2O. The surf links database grew to almost 2000
links over the years as surfers, shop owners, shapers, and others added links to it. My last chore of revising the site was to check the links to ensure they were all still good and surf related, which resulted in about 800 good links, and yes I looked at every one of them myself. Each good link I went to lead to more surf sites growing the database to more than 1000 surf related links. The search function was changed to
be based on catagories of type and location, narrowing the returns to be more specific to what the visitor is looking for eg: if someone is going to a state or country and wants to find local surf shops the return would be only surf shops for that area with links to the website, detailed information, including listings of those without websites.
Over the years this site has become a labor of love both for the sport of surfing and building websites. It is still free from any advertisements or other money making schemes, I never have nor do I intend to make so much as a penny from it. I sincerly wish you enjoy the site, add surf links, stories, surfer profiles, surf lingo, and feel free to use the form above to send my your comments or suggestions. Thanks for Droppin' In (another phrase I coined).
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