Weaving the Web | Web Special

A Website is much like music- creative content that has become a universal language with no racial, national or philosophical boundaries. Like a Led Zeppelin song that has influenced generations of rock, artists such as Andy Warhol and Tibor Kalman to the retro ambience of the 70s and the many faceless spray artists of the 80s from New York to the old Chinese propaganda materials of Chairman Mao have all influenced graphic designers the world over. When Internet became a global phenomenon in the early 90s, Nepal was still only hearing, watching and reading about it. But in 1994 Internet service started in Nepal, and soon enough it helped start a whole new dimension of art and communication in the country.

It didn't take long for Nepal to catch up with the world. Within 10 years of Internet access, Nepali designers are today as technically competent and creatively driven as any good website designer across the virtual world. Although the last three years in particularly has seen a creative burst amongst Nepali designers to push the level or their work, those three years didn't just happen out of the blue. The years before that saw pioneers and scientists that built a foundation on which generations of designers in Nepal may build on. In this article, we browse through the history of Nepali master weavers of the web.

Nepal's first ISP was Mercantile, and so it is natural that they also owned the first Nepali website- south-asia.com. It was a web portal and also served as the official homepage for Mercantile long before there was mos.com.np. Back in those days, owning your own domain was a far off idea, since the whole "website" concept was very new. Also, it was quite expensive to register a domain and then find a hosting server. And so South-asia.com soon became more than Mercantile's official website. It started hosting other official websites, such as those for HITS FM but not as a xofficialsite.com. What they did was added a page on the website mkaing a particular official website south-asia.com/xofficialwesite. The designs were fairly basic, as the whole thing was only for a web presence more than anything else. The website still exists, but unlike its earlier days when it hosted official sites, it now offers links to independent official sites those organizations have gone on to develop, such as www.hitsfm.com.np. Another major group website that offered similar services at the time was Amaa Networks.

The Internet speed was slow back then, but that could be overlooked since there was no other option. The speed factor, therefore, didn't really play much of a role in the website development in Nepal. The process of registering a domain name, however, did. Mercantile is the only authorized organization in Nepal to register any '.np.' Initially, in order to register a '.np,' one would have to find a web-develop based company to endorse the domain name which would then forward the request to Mercantile, who inturn forwarded it to Telstra, in Sydney, Australia, the organization that actually registered '.np.' Telstra would eventually register the '.np' domain, which would then be redirect to the required server. Registering a '.com' wasn't very difficult, but quite expensive at the rate of about $80 per domain, to be paid for online, using a credit or debit card, both of which at the time were not available in Nepal. Then came the part where one would have to find a hosting server, which used to cost about 20,000 for 5MBs.

Today, the process of registering a '.np,' for a personal domain requires a Nepali citizenship or birth certificate and takes about 2-3 days. Registering none-personal names remains difficult though, as they ask you to present company registration papers, amongst other documents. A '.np' is also registered locally by Mercantile Communications. Registering a ".com" costs around Rs.1,000 [$14 approx.] and almost all hosting companies perform the service locally, so no hassles of credit cards and foreign currencies. Hosting server space comes for as much as Rs. 2,500/ year for 10 MBs.

In 1996 Yomari.com became one of the first major web-designing service providers in Nepal, but they focused largely on corporate clients and organizations like the World Bank. By 1998/99 webmasters and web surfers had become comfortable citizens of the virtual world. And so during these years emerged Nepali web scientists who experimented with designs, techniques and concepts. Chautari.com, Explorenepal.com and Nepalnews.com had capitalized on the chat culture and offered things like e-cards. Then came the site Econepal.com by Sakar Bhushal, which later became Hamro.com and Kurakani.com. These were web portals with elements of e-commerce and e-zine, which became popular because of its chat applet CH@TMANDU. Hamro.com had also organized a concert called HoHalla! In 2000. Another web designer who emerged during the late 90s was Sarahana Shrestha. "With websites like Kathmandubuzz.com and Ruzbury.com, Sarahana brought to fore the use of php in Nepal," Arbinde Rajkarnicar, Business Director, WorldLink Technology says. Html and Asp coding being the more popular web designing methods. Sarahana was one of the few female webmasters in Nepal in 1998. Her sites emphasized on design and concept. Kathmandubuzz.com was an online event directory in which people could fill up a form and upload details about their upcoming events. Ruzbury.com was an E-zine that not only had the basic wallpapers, photos and articles about singers and events in Nepal but also streamed videos of concerts and interviews. Her third site Scournepal.com [2001], an e-commerce site focusing on Nepali products, managed to sell a few items in the US before being discontinued [kathmandubuzz.com is now registered and operated by a different group of people]. But by 2001 there were several other bigger players in the Nepali e-commerce world, such as Munchahouse.com, Pasal.com and Nepalshop.com. Soon after that Thamel.com took orders from foreign countries to deliver goats for the client's family during Dasain and Tihar.

By 2000, most web and graphics designing companies had youngsters who either already had some idea about their work or were learning and sharing their resources on the job. Sakar and Sarahana were among the few young independent designers in Nepal who had managed to establish themselves in the local web arena. Sakar's forte remained popular portals with light content whereas Sarahana's was still design and concept. These designers and their work also vastly reflected the kinds of web designers growing during the era. While Sakar was still busy with kurakani.com, Sarahana had undertaken the project to build the rock band Flower Generation's official website www.flowergeneration.com [2000], probably one of the first official websites of a Nepali band.

2000 and 2001 saw a sudden rise in the number of webmasters who were serious about their craft, most of whom have ended up dedicating themselves to it fulltime. Rabin Bajracharya started Dhukuti.com, although he and his friends were based in Minneapolis, MN, USA at the time. "I researched a lot of Nepali sites and found that there are tons of Nepali sites that sell Nepali products on the Internet," Rabin had told WAVE in 2000 about the inception of Dhukuti.com, indicating that even Nepalis residing in foreign countries were conscious of the Nepali web presence. 2000 was also the year Abhinav and Dipankar Kasaju started Cybernepal.com.np, whose concept was more or less the same as Ruzbury.com. The Kasaju brothers also designed the website for the Danish INGO MS Nepal, one of their earliest and biggest clients. Another website that emerged during those days was Spinybabbler.org, designed by Bhushan Shilpakar. It was the official website for the art and literature based organization Spiny Babbler and till date works well as a prototype for how a website can be simple yet offer high content and it's management.

This rise can be credited to several factors. The internet had become very accessible with its subscription rates having gone down significantly within the last two years. Registering domains had become much easier and a vast majority of teenagers who grew up watching satellite television and exploring the virtual world had come of age and felt a need to be part of this growing phenomenon. The whole IT craze had also picked up during these years and generally, more resources were at hand, be it softwares or tutorials.

Professional web-service based companies were also growing ever bigger in Kathmandu. Viewnepal.com [1999] had begun hosting and designing many Nepali websites, such as the official website for KATH 97.9 FM [now Image FM] as Viewnepal.com/kath. WorldLink became more active with their web presence, developing sites such as Schoolmates.com.np [2000]. It was also the first in Nepal to do a live web-cast at Nepal.co.jp, where cameras filmed and broadcasted the life in Jawalakhel chowk. The site was very popular amongst Nepalis living in Japan. It was also in 2000 that WorldLink started Nepal's first web based email service on their homepage Wlink.com.np. In late 2000/ early 2001, they also pioneered in hosting Nepali MP3s with permissions from the respective artists and music companies. Nepalisongs.com [2001] was another website that offered Nepali music online and served as one of the earliest Nepali music portals and online resource.

By the turn of the millennium, Nepali web users in mass had begun to recognize the need for a web presence, be it highly edgy or relatively dull and for personal portfolios/ profiles or for business. Tourism based companies were some of the first to jump on this bandwagon. The Pashmina boom in the global market in 2000/2001 created an immediate urge for Nepali suppliers to reach out to international consumers and retailers through websites. And then 1 June' 01 happened.

Nepalnews.com had been online since soon after Mercantile became an ISP in 1994. It offered news from most of the news publications and also news in Nepali fonts. Some years later Kantipur Publications went online with Kantipuronline.com, which offered news from all of their publications. There were several other Nepali news portals that offered news from Nepal, but the mentioned two were by far the most comprehensive. A turning point for Nepali news portals came on the night of 1 June 2001, when the infamous Royal Massacre took place. Everyone from regular news portals to a few ISPs were busy updating the world on the happenings and developments regarding the massacre. Never before had Nepalis abroad seen such importance for a Nepali news portal and likewise, Nepali news portals had never had a more urgent or explosive news to update their visitors with. This was a key point in the history of Nepalnews.com, since which time it has become a daily requirement for most Nepalis. Then it was the several violent display of rage on the streets, the Maoist insurgency, regular bomb incidents in Kathmandu and a stable instability of Nepali politics that has helped Nepali news portals earn a regular flow of visitors. WAVE magazine itself went online in late 2000/ early 2001. In those days, it pioneered the magazine based websites with www.wavemag.com.np, which produced and updated content regularly and archived it's older content.

By 2002 Nepali web designers had proved that they could be as good as any. The use of flash had reached its peak in terms of the number of people using it and a few had become technically competent at it while still exploring it creatively.

This was also the year when WAVE organized WAVE Web Winner [WWW], the first website designing contest in Nepal [read 3rd Annual WWW Awards for this year's contest details, pg. 40-41]. WWW 2002, 2003 and 2004 have shown a steady growth of web designers in Nepal. But the gap between the good and bad designers, however, remains similar. Back then there were designers who barely exhibited creativity, content production and technical abilities and designers who were accelerating on all those three fronts. 8 years after web designing has taken off in Nepal, this gap remains the same, while the quantity of such designers has increased on both sides of the divide. Another distinct change is the fact that the quality of the poorer websites has remained the same in the several virtual generations of amateur Nepali web designer, while the quality of good Nepali web designers have distinctly sharpened. Chiyapasal.com is probably one of the most unique sites made by a Nepali, although it's "sauji" may not be living in Nepal. On the home front, Cell-a.com by Shivendra Patrabansh exhibits good designs backed by superb creative and technical control over the site. Most of the winners from the last three WWW contests are without doubt some of the finest in the country Virtual companies like bn.com.np [2004] quietly design for big corporate clients to non-profit organizations as the number of web designing companies in Nepal has increased overwhelmingly.

Yomari remains a leading web-service based company in Nepal while Mercantile now works out of their website Mos.com.np and Nepalnews.com, also part of Mercantile, remains the most visited Nepali website today. Many of the sites that were online then have now been discontinued though, except for a few serious ones with their own domains. Sakar continues to make Ecommerce sites in America where he is studying. Sarahana works as a professional Creative Designer in New York after interning at Universal Records where she designed for artists and labels such as John Mayer, Godsmack and Bad Boy Records. The Kasaju brothers have achieved immense success with the revamped Cybernepal.com.np and their company Dreams & Ideas is a leading web-designing company here. Cybernepal has also inspired many clones, although many of these are based outside of Kathmandu. The growth in the number of regional websites across Nepal has also been a positive, with designers in Pokhara and Nepalgunj representing their home town on the web. Newcomers like Partynepal.com have achieved popularity, displaying a strong combination of an event management company and it's virtual presence.

There is no doubt that Nepal is now a permanent and visible member of the virtual world. There are rooms for improvements though, a tighter combination of content, design and user friendliness for one. But based on the last eight years, it can safely be said theses new age Nepali artists are daring to weave the web like none have before.