VirtualFly.net
My first website, started in 1999 after playing Jane’s IAF and an F-15 flight sim. Built with MS FrontPage, later rebuilt with Dreamweaver and Fireworks for graphics. It grew into what my portfolio calls “a Flight simulation portal and community in China,” with news, a large file library, and forums.
“My first website – ‘FlightSim Net’ in 1999, and later it became a Flight simulation portal and community in China. It provides Flight Simulation’s premier resource for news and resources throughout the hobby. Extremely large file library with thousands of files updated daily. Multiple forums covering all aspects of flight simulation and support forums for many of the well known providers of add-ons” — my Behance intro for the project
V1 — static HTML on 163.com
The first free domain, 591fly.yeah.net, redirected to go2.163.com/~werther/,
where the V1 site lived as static HTML. The Wayback Machine holds 76 captures
of 62 pages from April to July 2001.
The homepage (captured 2001-06-07) was organized into GAME LOOK (game reviews and previews), FLYING SCHOOL (keyboard charts, guides, flight manuals), DOWNLOAD (patches and plugins), FLY STORY, and COOL PLANE (aircraft profiles and photos). It had a login form with free registration, a friend-links row, and a “Powered by Bentium” credit. The update notes were written in first person — in February 2001 I was pleading for forum visitors:
“论坛怎么没人来呀，这个论坛功能挺强的，一定来看看。” (“Why is nobody coming to the forum? This forum is quite powerful, do come take a look.” — homepage update notes, captured 2001-06-07)
Typical content: an X-Plane trial download (70 MB), an F-15 Strike Eagle guide, MiG-29 briefings, IAF mission briefings, a KA-52 walkthrough. The footer read “Copyright © 591fly.yeah.net” with contact “my oicq:4167360”.
V2 — PHPNuke portal on 591fly.cpgl.net
V2 moved to PHPNuke on free PHP + MySQL hosting from cpgl.net. The domain root
served a redirect stub titled “Flight Simulation Net” (captured 2002-05-30);
the portal itself survives in a 2003-02-01 snapshot of
591fly.cpgl.net:8080/index.php, titled 飞行游戏网. By then it had 1,500
registered users, with articles posted by “werther” between August and
November 2002 — “F4 Picth 简体中文版”, “Falcon4中文手册”, “《轰炸中队》(Dam
Busters)发布” — plus sections for articles, downloads, weblinks, a screenshot
gallery, and the 飞网论坛 forums, a Top-10 weblinks chart, and a “飞龄” (years
flying) poll.
One October 2002 article points readers to “CN101中队的网站” at
http://f16-falcon.myrice.com — see the note in the archive README about
what that host actually shows.
Screenshots
The V2 portal on 591fly.cpgl.net — screenshot from my Behance portfolio.
What didn’t survive
The virtualfly.net domain itself is long lost and was not checked. Forum
threads, guestbook entries, and the actual download files were never captured —
only index and section pages. Captures of /newss/ and /service/ on this
host from December 2004 are CPGL’s own portal content (the free host’s CMS),
not VirtualFly’s.