The oldest active website about Dolly Parton reaches a milestone anniversary, as the fan-run Dollymania.net: The Online Dolly Parton Newsmagazine turns 12.
(PRWEB) October 3, 2008 -- Dollymania.net: The Online Dolly Parton Newsmagazine (www.dollymania.net), the Internet's oldest currently operating resource about Dolly Parton, this week celebrated its 12th anniversary.
The fan-operated site began in October 1996 as "Duane's Dolly Pages," a section of the personal site of webmaster T. Duane Gordon. It was re-christened "Dollymania.net" in October 1998.
"It's hard to fathom the site has been going on for that long," noted Gordon, 33, of Middletown, Ohio. "I estimate it's taken up 15,000 hours of my life during the past dozen years! I'm sure most people find that excessive, but it's my hobby, my way to wind down after a hard day at work. Some folks collect stamps, some run marathons and I run a Dolly site!"
Today, the site serves as the primary source of information about Parton for thousands of fans around the world and averages more than 250,000 monthly page views.
At a 2006 appearance at Dollywood, Parton expressed her appreciation to Gordon. "I want to thank you right in public for being so good to me," she told him in front of more than 1,000 fans at her theme park. "I'm sure anybody wants to know anything about me you can ask Duane. I have to call him to see what I'm gonna do next!"
The Web has a few dozen fan-operated sites about Parton, but Dollymania.net is the sole one updated on a regular basis, offering readers a daily update on its news page Monday though Saturday.
In addition to the daily news page, the site boasts the largest collection of Parton photographs ever published, containing more than 9,000 images in approximately 900 individual galleries, and the only published list of all of the songs she has released in her career, with the nearly 1,000 titles listed both alphabetically and chronologically. Its more than 12,000 individual images, html pages and other files total nearly 500 megabytes.
Gordon, who holds a degree in communications and journalism from Mississippi State University, created the site while a news editor at a suburban Jackson, Miss., newspaper. He continued to update it after changing jobs to work at a nearby charitable foundation, relying on the site to keep his journalistic skills up-to-date. In January, he moved to Ohio to become CEO of another charitable foundation, although he still continues his nightly ritual of maintaining the website.
For most of Dollymania.net's existence, Parton did not have her own website. Consequently, her management and record label often used Dollymania.net in lieu of an official site. During this period, it was the first to announce a several of her CDs and a couple of her tours. Parton also used it exclusively several times to release official statements to her fans. In late 2007, an official website launched for her new record label, Dolly Records, making www.dollypartonmusic.net her first "authorized music website."
Over the years, Dollymania.net has been used as source material for newspapers and magazines around the world in addition to programs on CMT, "Larry King Live," the U.S. Library of Congress and even Parton's current official tour book. For the past two years, Gordon has also written a weekly "Dolly Column" for The Smoky Mountain Herald, a daily newspaper in Parton's home county, Sevier County, Tenn., where Dollywood is located.
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