EAS Site History
199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024
Since I launched the site in January 1998, Ex Astris Scientia has not only grown to twenty thousand times its original size, but has also undergone a number of technical and stylistic changes. Here is a brief history of the site's design and other important milestones. For a much more detailed story, please refer to the inversely chronological update list.
1998
January 1998
EAS goes online on the university server on January 21st. Unlike it was with many other renowned websites, I didn't prepare EAS for many months prior to taking it online - I never had much patience and I need to see results soon whenever I'm working something out. So instead of trying to develop the perfect look, I more or less spontaneously take what I already have and upload it. And what I have isn't really much. The first version of EAS consists of pictures of six of my starship designs, a review of the Enterprise-E model (which I have just finished building), an outline of my later time travel analysis, a short list of inconsistencies (not yet including the Klingon foreheads) and a few jokes.
At that time I don't even bother finding a unique title for the site, but I just grab some illustration graphics from the web (actually from the official Star Trek site). Thus the initial heading simply reads "Star Trek" with a sub-heading "by Bernd Schneider". See the reconstruction of the ancient site.
July 1998
In July 1998 I christen my site "Ex Astris Scientia" (EAS), a purposely intricate and "intellectual" name in contrast to the many "starbases" and "starships" in the internet. There are also some slight changes to the color scheme, since I find that the previous style with mainly black, gray and white looks boring.
In the same month I take the first step to creating one of the site's main features, the Starship Database, beginning with a list of all Starfleet ship classes. The layout is essentially the same that the database still has today. Later that month, I post a first version of my time travel theories.
October 1998
Knowing better how to work with tables and graphics, I make some improvements to the layout, especially of the homepage, in October 1998. Still, the graphics look rather pale and little professional.
November 1998
I compile the Treknology Encyclopedia, a fairly complete database of the most important technologies seen in Star Trek.
December 1998
We visit the Star Trek World Tour in Düsseldorf and post a humorous report on this exhibition.
1999
January 1999
When I compile the first site map, EAS consists of 70 HTML pages (2012: about 1100).
March 1999
With help from the people at the later Flare Forums, I reconstruct the look of the Cheyenne class, the start of a big series of similar starship-related articles. I also begin to scan and post pictures of starships from the Official Star Trek Fact Files, a publication available only outside North America that depicts many canon designs for the first time. This lays the foundation for the Starship Gallery (and it explains why the file and directory is still named "scans" today).
June 1999
The color scheme is modified once again in June 1999, when I replace the obtrusive plain yellow (RGB 255,255,0) with dark yellow (RGB 255,208,0) and switch the tables to two shades of pale turquoise, the same colors they still have today. The most obvious modification is the introduction of the EAS arrowhead/star logo.
My first Federation fleet chart is well received in the online community. The first Ex Astris Excellentia Award goes to Medical Log: Supplemental.
July 1999
The TOS episode guide goes online. Also in this very busy month, I open the first EAS spin-off site, the Advanced Starship Design Bureau (ASDB), a group project committed to creating designs for the unseen canon vessels of Starfleet.
October 1999
The Starfleet Museum is launched as another sister site for the pre-TOS starship designs of Masao Okazaki.
November 1999
Since the copyright owner doesn't approve of web use of their images, I remove the little character icons on my homepage in November 1999 although I like them a lot. I replace them with the section graphics, similar to those which are on the site today. I include these graphics to the headers of the sub-sections too.
2000
January 2000
After working on it literally day and night for a couple of weeks, my extensive Voyager episode guide and review is completed up to season 5.
February 2000
After several weeks of trying and testing, a new homepage layout is uploaded in February 2000, again with the links broken down in eight sections. Whilst the graphics will be frequently improved in the following, the layout remains exactly the same for no less than six years, and is similar still today.
Also in February 2000, EAS presents the first results of our famous Wolf 359 Project, identifying and reconstructing the destroyed ships that were visible in TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds".
March 2000
I post the first draft of The Physics and Technology of Warp Propulsion, the article series that is still not finished today.
April 2000
April Fool's Day! Although my prank is rather crude, I receive several mails from fans who believe that the Defiant was present at Wolf 359. Also in April 2000: launch of the predecessor of the Subspace Comms Network, then still hosted with a free provider.
July 2000
A big day for my websites: On July 11th they move from the university server to my own domains ex-astris-scientia.org, trekships.org and starfleet-museum.org. I already reserve a fourth international domain, treknology.org that I will later use for the JoAT (in May 2002).
2001
April 2001
Opening of the new EAS Galleries with 550 images at the time, including the immensely popular bridge diagrams.
June 2001
First posting of my Timeline of the Star Trek Universe, a fairly complete list of all events from the Big Bang to the 31st century.
July 2001
The Enterprise is the Akira! In the wake of this so far biggest shock in my Trek life, I compile a malicious comment (that I tone down later) in which I coin the derogatory word "Akiraprise" for the design.
September 2001
Distressed about the events of 9/11, I write down a few thoughts. My complaint about the new Enterprise ("Akiraprise") as being too modern is printed in the Entertainment Weekly magazine.
October 2001
I begin posting Enterprise reviews, each typically one or two weeks after the episode has aired.
2002
March 2002
Launch of the EAS Fan Fiction section with stories submitted by visitors. The first special feature is the Star Trek Renegade series by J. Grey. EAS celebrates 1,000,000 visitors.
April 2002
EAS is going down because my webspace provider Strato terminates the contract with fabricated assertions against me. The website traffic at this time (the actual reason for Strato to get rid of me) is 50 megabytes per month. I find a temporary new home for the site thanks to generous help from Jak Crow of Werewolves.org who allows me to use his server.
May 2002
The Journal of Applied Treknology (JoAT), a new EAS spin-off, presents innovative ship design by fans.
July 2002
The Journal of Applied Treknology gains widespread recognition when it is featured as Pick of the Day at Yahoo and as Hot Site at USA Today.
September 2002
In September 2002 EAS moves to the server maintained by Tony Taylor who hosts the site -meanwhile with significant technical enhancements- still today. The first script I install on the server is the Add-Your-Link feature, followed by the search engine.
December 2002
I install a Poll and a feedback script on the EAS server.
2003
March 2003
My announcement to suspend site updates because of the Iraq War entails a fierce debate in the EAS Guestbook.
June 2003
As my off-site guestbook has become a chatroom, I create a new one on the EAS server solely for site feedback.
2004
July 2004
The article about Kazon Ship Sizes is the first one in a long line that can be enhanced thanks to Jörg Hillebrand's screen caps and observations. The Starship Articles and the Investigations section benefit greatly from his work.
October 2004
I post a Con report of this year's Galileo 7 convention with Patrick Stewart.
November 2004
The text color at EAS is switched from white to light gray, and the episode reviews are in normal text now, to improve legibility.
2005
March 2005
As several gigabytes of the EAS transfer volume are wasted due to illicit hotlinks (image posts that are not recognizable as coming from the EAS server), I enforce a global hotlink protection through Apache .htaccess. Only the SCN and Flare Forums are entitled to hotlink to images at EAS.
Later this month, the new submission form for the JoAT is operative. It was a colossal programming effort (especially since I had no idea of PHP before taking on the task), but it will save a lot of dull archiving and editing work in the future.
July 2005
When I notice that the spam rate is in excess of 90%, with drug and sex crap posted several times a day despite all my efforts of censoring, I protect the hopelessly spam-infested EAS Guestbook with a password.
October 2005
EAS features a Con report of this year's Galileo 7 convention with Jonathan Frakes.
November 2005
Canon Fodder is a new site in the EAS family, a place for theories that fix continuity issues or tie up loose ends in canon Star Trek.
2006
March 2006
All good things must come to an end. The old site design has become a bit boring, the navigation from sub-pages has been reported to me as being too complicated, and the concept of navigation headers and footers in each HTML page's code obstructs future updates and enhancements. This is why I create version 2.0, taking advantage of SSI (server side includes) to have standardized headers that can be easily changed and of CSS (cascaded style sheets) for a limited but probably growing range of functions. The main objective is to create a modern layout with more navigation aids, but without inflating the code and without changing the traditional site structure too much. Also, the code for the actual content of each page (everything between the new header and footer) is to remain the same for the time being.
The site redesign may not look like a lot of work, but it required several time-consuming steps, beginning with many files that were moved to gather them in directories with the same theme (preferably belonging to the same of the eight sections). The next step was creating a parametrizable header and a footer for all pages, for which nearly 500 HTML documents and six scripts were hand-edited to insert the SSI code. The whole site was then re-uploaded step by step, in an order that would cause the fewest dead links at a time. Finally, it took me weeks of tweaking because not everywhere the layout looked quite as expected (it is possible for me to see the SSI headers as late as the page is already online). And there were annoying problems with the new CSS formats, because previously consistently bold links were sometimes bold and sometimes not (depending on where the classic HTML <b> tag was located relative to the <a> link). This is a consequence of the not yet complete transition to CSS which will have to wait until I have a software with thorough CSS support.
Considering the trends in web design as of 2006 (tiny font sizes, fixed screen size layout, narrow columns), the redesign of EAS still seems to be somewhat old-fashioned. And concerning the legibility of the text at still larger screen resolutions to come, it may not be kept as it is for a long time (although many other, more "modern" sites will hit the wall sooner). However, I have no intention to revise the basic layout again any time soon. Well, unless I find a method to automate the conversion to a more flexible page format, maybe even with two columns.
August 2006
The Fan Fiction gets a complete overhaul and most importantly a distinctive look (using CSS and SSI).
December 2006
I decide to include references from The Animated Series (TAS) to a limited extent, starting with the TAS Federation and alien starships.
2007
February 2007
The EAS site statistics register the visitor No. 10,000,000.
June 2007
I have been unnecessarily reluctant so far, but due to popular request I set up an RSS-based feed.
November 2007
The previously somewhat cluttered Treknology Encyclopedia receives a major overhaul and is extended to over 600 entries.
2008
January 2008
EAS celebrates its 10th anniversary. Also, I finally begin to review DS9 episodes.
February 2008
TOS-R: "The Ultimate Computer" shows a starbase that was originally designed by Masao Okazaki for the Starfleet Museum and later adopted for David Mack's Vanguard series.
November 2008
The first image of the redesigned Enterprise and the theatrical trailer are released, followed by a series of comments and other necessary updates at EAS.
2009
February 2009
My article Star Trek (2009): Reboot or Multiverse? stirs up a controversy in the fan community about how to assess the events in the upcoming movie.
April 2009
Shatner to Play Captain April in Upcoming Movie! I hardly ever had so much fun with my work than while preparing this April Fool's prank.
May 2009
The new movie "Star Trek (2009)" hits the theaters, and this leads to an all-time high in the visitor numbers of EAS, the top day being May 11th with 14067 visits! This is almost three times as many as on normal days over the past four years with generally decreasing figures.
In the wake of the new movie, I post a critical review, a list of inconsistencies and a comment on the alleged 725m long Enterprise behemoth among the first updates. But I underestimate the fervor of certain fans who promptly accuse me of picking a great movie apart and of ignoring their allegedly perfect conjectural explanations. These people do not (want to) acknowledge that my treatment of "Star Trek (2009)" facts is in no way different than of previous Trek installments.
June 2009
After ten years of uninterrupted succession, the EAE Award is not given out on a monthly basis any longer. The reason is that too few Trek sites are left that would truly deserve this award with its long list of distinguished winners.
2010
March 2010
March 15, 2010 is the second worst day in the history of EAS as the site is attacked and infected with malware. The attacker is located at IP 195.78.108.70 and has obviously cracked my FTP account. I find and eliminate the evil code very fast and change all passwords, but EAS remains blacklisted as an "attack site" for some time. Most likely it is just a random attack with automated tools from a hijacked server, rather than a deliberate attempt to harm EAS. Still I need to work hard to restore the reputation of my site. Unfortunately the scumbag who hacked my site will remain unscathed, just as 99.99% of all internet criminals. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which big companies call the public prosecutor to hunt down teens who share a few songs, while next to nothing happens against real criminals who cause damage and grief on a large scale.
July 2010
EAS is on Twitter and Facebook now. Also in this month, EAS and the affiliate sites celebrate 10 years with their own domains.
September 2010
The TOS episode reviews have been greatly extended and supplemented with new information about TOS-R.
2011
July 2011
The DS9 reviews are finished, and I start with my TNG reviews.
September 2011
EAS has to move to a new server. The transfer of the files and the domain transfer to the new IP works flawlessly, and there is no downtime. However, this is just the beginning of endless problems with scripts. It seems that for each resolved bug there are two new ones.
November 2011
EAS is on Google+ Pages now.
2012
February 2012
Together with Jörg Hillebrand I compile an article about Observations in TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint", including a comparison of the old TV version and the new HD version on Blu-ray. This is just the beginning of a huge article series on all TNG episodes, with HD screen caps provided by our friends at TrekCore.
July 2012
Opening of the Observations section for our visual comparison series (TNG vs. TNG-R), and for information on the TNG Blu-ray release.
2013
January 2013
EAS celebrates its 15th birthday on January 21st.
February 2013
EAS has to move to a new server again. While I can quickly make sure that everything on the server itself works again, I don't notice that any forms that are sent out from the server get rejected by my e-mail provider GMX, without any notice, although the server is not blacklisted, and even with all spam filters disabled! So I have to apologize to all the people who used the contact form and whose messages I never received due to the inexcusable overzealous conduct of my e-mail provider.
July 2013
Since it would take many hundred hours of slave labor to convert the whole site to HTML 5 and CSS (for which there is no automated tool), I can only take very small steps to make the site design ready for the future and create version 3.0. One of the more urgent issues is that monitor resolutions keep growing, and lead to extremely long lines of text. I could do the same as many other websites and limit the width to some 800 or 1000 pixels. But I don't want to waste so much of the screen, and so I come up with a solution to make the body width change with the screen resolution. This doesn't work with Internet Explorer 8 though, just like some other things that I didn't even try to implement. Unfortunately I am forced to render my site in "quirks mode" (because it relies on alleged "display errors", meaning standards that existed in the late 1990s), and there is currently no way for me to flip the switch to HTML 5 that would allow more layout changes, and changes that work with IE too.
Anyway, while I am at it, I also redesign the main index page. I include a PHP script that generates a link to a random article, and illustrates it with a thumbnail from that article. Also, the main index now has an adaptable width as all other layouts on EAS too, defying the trend of putting everything in boxes with fixed sizes as pure-style CSS requires them. Even though it may not look equally pretty with all screen resolutions and in all browsers, the new main index layout remains true to the concept of EAS to put content and usability above design and effects.
December 2013
EAS presents the most accurate and most comprehensive compilation of Classical Music in Star Trek, with public domain or Creative Commons licensed recordings of most of the pieces.
2014
July 2014
I add several navigations aids, such as dynamically generated lists of recently changed pages and lists of related pages, which appear in a sidebar in every article at EAS.
Furthermore, BobyE begins to reconstruct several starship interiors that were missing in the Fact Files.
September 2014
After working on them for over three years, I conclude my TNG reviews and start over again with Voyager.
November 2014
New at EAS: Star Trek video game reviews.
2015
February 2015
I complete the conversion of all episode reviews to a new CSS-based layout with HTML 4 compliance. My fingers were aching after the first few pages, for which I used the normal search&replace function of the text editor, and which allowed to convert just some of the innumerable tags with their various permutations (such as <b><p> and <p><b>). So I came up with increasingly complex regular expressions for a partial automation of the work. The debugging of the expressions took hundreds of passes to account for all eventualities in the messy Frontpage HTML source code, but eventually saved a lot of typing. Instead of several months, I could complete the work in a couple of weeks and perhaps 50 hours altogether. Unfortunately most of the rest of the site doesn't have such a systematic layout, and even with excessive regex automation I reckon that it will take more than 200 hours just to convert it to CSS, plus the time to further develop the CSS in the first place.
April 2015
Version 3.0 finished. All EAS pages sport a new header (and footer). While the header doesn't include new functions for now (I'm thinking of adding extendable menus), it should look more attractive and should work better on small displays. I still need to address some browser compatibility issues. I will decide about a viewport size later, so the pages (except those with table-based layouts, which are a hopeless case) will be rendered bigger on mobile devices.
May 2015
Following a test phase, I enable Disqus comments on all pages. I will keep them active as long as the moderation can be handled and as long as it remains ad-free.
September 2015
The EAS index page is redesigned, getting rid of the nested tables in favor of mobile-friendly divs. Also, after some complaints that the design was too busy, I move the direct links to sub-index pages to sub-menus that appear when hovering above the section symbols to the right. I am aware that this is a step away from my concept to show as much as possible at a glance, but it really helps to keep the design clean.
November 2015
CBS announces the production of a new Star Trek TV series. EAS follows the production news in a blog.
2016
January 2016
The conversion of all pages to basic CSS/HTML4 is finished, although a lot of work is still necessary to optimize the CSS for all devices and browsers. The last converted batch consists of the Observations articles, for which I find a solution to render them on a 640 pixels wide screen without horizontal scrolling (and hopefully without squinting as well).
September 2016
50 years ago, on September 8, 1966, the very first episode of Star Trek, "The Man Trap", aired on NBC. On the occasion of the anniversary I look back at the Political Messages in Star Trek over the years, and ahead at what I expect from it in the future.
2017
September 2017
EAS begins with the timely reviews of Star Trek Discovery. For practical reasons, the inclusion of facts from the series is postponed to the time after the end of the first season.
I don't make it a secret that I disapprove of the look and feel of the new series, and that I downright hate the decision to redesign everything Klingon from scratch, in defiance of canon. Yet, I think that the article on Discovery Klingons that I publish on this occasion is comparably level-headed.
2018
January 2018
Ex Astris Scientia celebrates 20 years online. The site was first uploaded on January 21, 1998. See the reconstruction of the site as it looked 20 years ago. Since then, EAS has been continually updated and further developed.
November 2018
Jörg and I begin to extend our investigation of logos and signage in Star Trek. Starting with an article on the Klingon emblem, this becomes another major series at EAS. Brad Wilder of the Star Trek Design Project reconstructs dozens of logos for our articles.
2019
July 2019
The Picard trailer is arguably the best announcement of new Star Trek in more than 20 years. I hope that the producers will get this show right. They just have to, in order to save what is left of the good old Star Trek.
October 2019
Tadeo D'Oria comes up with the idea for the article about Commercially Available Chairs in Star Trek. The list will steadily grow to more than 150 entries, also thanks to the contributions of Eno Farley.
2020
January 2020
Following the launch of Star Trek Picard on January 27, EAS brings reviews of each PIC episode immediately after the release, as well as detailed articles with Observations, which are, as usual, prepared by Jörg. Also in the following, almost all sections of the site are updated with new facts from the series.
May 2020
After more than 20 years, dozens of old articles and all episode reviews get updated with larger screen caps (HD where available).
July 2020
The site moves to a new and more reliable server.
2021
January 2021
With considerable delay, Star Trek: Lower Decks is available for worldwide streaming, and I post the reviews of the first season. Who would have anticipated that an animated comedy series becomes the most popular new Trek show?
February 2021
I have to cut back my work on the site for half a year, following a serious accident.
September 2021
After 23 years, I finally switch the background color of EAS from black to dark gray. The lower contrast reduces the strain on the eyes, and the new shaded page border (visible on desktop devices) serves as an additional guide. Thanks to a CSS filter trick that I developed all by myself I can avert the creation of half a thousand new thumbnails for the starship database (which keep the black background but are displayed at the exact percentage brighter to blend in with the new background color of dark gray.
October 2021
The large EAS header image is switched frequently from now. But don't try to reload pages repeatedly to force a change - the script runs as a cron job and not on page load.
December 2021
I am able to watch and review Star Trek: Prodigy now, and it looks good.
2022
January 2022
After a thread was hijacked by trolls, I decide that Disqus comments on the site by new users or by guests require moderator approval.
March 2022
Beginning with PIC season 2, I update various articles such as on emblems immediately after a new episode has aired because otherwise I would need to maintain an additional ever-growing backlog. The year is very stressful as the site management is concerned because there is almost no week without a new episode. This leaves almost no time for new projects although there are many ideas.
May 2022
I am officially unable to watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Still, I begin to include facts from the new series to many articles (with the caveat that it is all part of the Discoverse).
2023
January 2023
EAS celebrates its 25th anniversary online on 21 January 2023.
April 2023
Time to say goodbye to Star Trek Picard. The series still keeps us busy for some time though, as there are many details to discover.
July 2023
The Starship Database now features the best available screen caps of every single design and many new side views.
August 2023
I start a massive overhaul of the Starship Gallery, creating larger and color-corrected images from my old Star Trek Fact Files scans and including new stuff from the Official Starships Collection.
2024
April 2024
The replacement of screen caps from TOS, TNG and ENT with HD versions in all articles is finished (unless, of course, the SD cap needs to be preserved because there are changes from DVD to Blu-ray).
May 2024
Our away team visits the 1701 Museum in Eberswalde on May 19, 2024, and takes many pictures.
See Also
Introduction to EAS - site info in a nutshell, my motivation and viewing requirements
Site Projects - information about planned or ongoing projects (new content or technical improvements)
25th Anniversary of EAS - remembering the 1990's and a message to the visitors
Reconstruction of the Original Site - as of January 1998
