About The Hardy Boys Encyclopedia

What is the Hardy Boys Encyclopedia?

The Hardy Boys Encyclopedia is a collection of information on the Hardy Boys various series of books. Its focus is not so much on the history of the Hardy Boys in general, but rather the stories that represent the Hardy Boys. It is the purpose of this site to document the characters, places, and events that are within each book so that we can all see how they relate from one story to another.

Why create The Hardy Boys Encyclopedia?

Let me introduce myself. I am SkyWarp, and this is my web site. It was during the summer of 1998, that I first wanted to test my skills at creating a full fledged web site. I knew I wanted to create a site based upon something I was familiar with and for which I had a passion. My first idea was GI Joe. But I also wanted to do something which few other people had done. I quickly realized that there were more GI Joe web sites than I could count, and with the resurgent popularity of GI Joe, I knew that there would be even more sites in the near future.

So I decided that GI Joe was out of the question. But in the process of looking at all the GI Joe related web sites, I came across a couple sites that caught my attention. The first was YoJoe.com. The second was JMM's GI Joe Comics Home Page.

Meanwhile, I was still attempting to read the last few Hardy Boys Casefiles that I had never read when they were first published. Everything just seemed to click. I thought to myself, "Perhaps I could attempt a Hardy Boys version of what JMM and YoJoe have done with GI Joe. But again I did not want to do something other sites had already accomplished. So I started to surf the Internet again. There seemed to be a handful of Hardy Boys sites, but in 1998 there were nearly zero sites dedicated to the Casefiles.

So late in the summer of 1998, I began to design the Unnofficial Hardy Boys Casefiles Web Site. I had originally hosted the site on my old dialup service provider's free web space. The web site went through many idea changes and content changes during my initial creation process. But one thing was for sure, I was going to make a very comprehensive web site.

I started with getting all the cover artwork scanned and back cover promotional paragraphs posted. Eventually I decided I would include a very detailed encyclopedia as well. But after just a couple months of brainstorming and very little work, I let the web site go dormant. It wasn't until nearly November of 1998 that the site was awakened from its sleep.

It was at that time I got an e-mail from someone that had visited the site. Tthis was a wake up call, as it basically told me that the site was actually getting visitors and people were interested in its content.

I immediately started working on the web site again. I gave the site a simple redesign using the same old green and orange colors and finished the cover/summary section of the web site. All of this came around the middle of 2001 when I also switched from my old dial-up service to high speed cable service. With this move came a change of web page addresses. Thus most of the search engines had to re-index my site.

It was also at this time I had a big desire to get my own domain name for the site, instead of using the free web space provided by my ISP. Getting my own domain name was part of my original goal of teaching myself how to create a web site.

But getting my own domain name was still a little ways away.

In 2002, I started working for a Promotional and Advertising company that also created web sites. It was at this time that I and one other person at the company decided to get our own domains for a couple web sites we wanted to create. The other person designed our sites and I did the markup and implementation.

Late 2002, a new design and the domain name were unveiled. Once again the new web site had to be indexed by the search engines, but by now I had learned a great deal about web sites and the site quickly floated to the first page of Google and other such search engines.

In early 2007, the 5th Anniversary of the site, I completely re-designed and re-coded the site to take advantage of both PHP and MySQL. This created a new challenge and perhaps a test to see how well search engines index completely dynamic web sites based on one page.

On Sunday, June 3, 2007, I finally finished reading all 127 casefiles. Had I not started this web site I would have probably finished reading these about the time they came out. But the process of documenting everything I read delayed this achievement drastically.

By 2008 and 2009, I had added the Undercover Brothers series, computer games, and graphic novels to the web site. It was becoming pretty obvious the site was experiencing some significant growing pains to its design and underlying structure. So in December 2009, I unveiled a completely new web site. This new site was a drastic departure in both design and structure from the previous site, but was built upon the idea of continued growth.

I finally got around to introducing a new responsive website in January of 2016. With this new design came many upgrades both with the code and content. This is the site you see now.

As time permits, I update the web site. Some day I hope to have the site finished.

Who is SkyWarp?

I was born in 1975 at the edge of the Appalachian region in the small city of Zanesville, Ohio. I went to both a Private K-12 School and a Private College.

I graduated with a degree in Communications of which I had a concentration in Broadcasting and a Minor in History.

I have jumped around to different places over the years. From medium sized cities like Zanesville, to larger cities like Tampa, and extra small towns such as my current residence in Iowa.

I enjoy various hobbies, such as collecting GI Joe comic books and 3.75" figures. I love to play and umpire softball as well.

You may contact me here if need be.

Now that is enough reading about me and this site, let's get back to that for which you came to this site. THE HARDY BOYS ENCYCLOPEDIA.