History of montediprocida.com

In the beginning of 1997 the montesi, that were connected to the Internet were very few, a few of the people that did have an internet connection were…This does not represent the official history of the Internet at Monte di Procida, it is only a summary of the more important events of the actual site of montediprocida.com

In the beginning of 1997 the montesi, that were connected to the Internet were very few, a few of the people that did have an internet connection were Pasquale Barone, Romualdo
Scotto di Carlo, Tony Cacciola e a few others from Monte di Procida; Pasquale Mancino from Rome, Luigi Coppola, Ciro D’Agostino, Salvatore Coppola and a few others from U.S.A. e Antonio Mancino from Holland

The first contacts were obviously through email, the above mentioned men, were in many cases, friends that grew up together and this transfer of information through this new and enthusiastic mode of communication was very exciting and it was above all useful. The most evident difficulty was finding out who was connected to the internet and to find out their email address. This is when Pasquale Mancino came up with the idea of creating a common meeting place for all the montesi around the world that were connected to the internet, a little haven in the big sea of the Internet.

He gathered all the material that he had put together throughout the years: newspaper articles about the history, traditions, culture and above all old pictures and some new ones which were taken by him.

And finally on March 22, 1997 the new site was downloaded on a provider from Torino, and that was the first version of the site of montediprocida.com

The web address to the site was:

http://www.ipsnet.it/netpages/room852

Ipsnet was the only Italian provider that during that time only offered 5MB of free web space.

The site was widely accepted with great enthusiasm and day after day more and more montesi were discovered online, especially from the Untied States. The site was almost updated daily and the most visited pages were that of the pictures, the one on the nicknames and a section where people could leave messages which was called “ditelo a muro”.

After a month, there was a technical problem with the Ipsnet provider, so the site was moved onto Geocities which offered 2MB of free web space, but it was much more trustworthy.

The web address to that web site was:

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/hills/7700

From that moment on the site began to grow day after day, the number of montesi online increased month after month and the number of hits on counter jumped higher and higher.

In the beginning of 1998, with the return of Pasquale Mancino to Monte di Procida, the site was enriched with numerous new resources and services and the address to the site was once again changed. A hosting contract was created with a provider from Brescia, and for the first time the name of the town was finally in the web address:

http://montediprocida.webinit.com

The montesi that were online continually increased, so there was a need for a place to be created where people could communicate in real time. With that in September of 1998 the first montesi chat room was born. It was a java chat from Xoom, it was a greenish color, which in the beginning took a long time to download.

The first exchange of bit in the chat happened on September 18, 1998 at 11:07 pm between Pasquale Mancino (whose nick name was P@ko) and Antonio Verace (whose nick name was bit).

The chat allowed everyone, especially those who where away from the town, to communicate, and this brought great joy to them, especially during the day time and around 11:00pm (Italian time); the chat would be filled with people. It was a meeting ground for old friends that immigrated to the Untied States in which many had lost contact with each other.

The chat was really the first meeting place in real time; it was “virtual piazza XXVII gennaio”. It had an immense success.

For the first time in almost real time many pictures of religious gatherings and civil gatherings that were very important for the montesi were brought online. Some of these pictures included the procession of the Madonna Assunta on August 15th and also those pictures of the historic procession on August 16, 1998 of the Assunta going to Procida. Other important gatherings that were brought online were the montesi Christmas Party, the annual party that is organized by the montesi community in America.

During the end of 1998 the Xoom chat was replaced by another java chat: the German chat Spin, which was much more trustworthy and also much faster. 1998 was a good year for the growth of the site and also the increased number of montesi online.

On January 27, 1998, the 92nd anniversary of the community of Monte di Procida, a new site was introduced with a registered domain, and that is how http://www.montediprocida.com was born.

And in 1999, it was a year of records for the growing of this website and of the montesi online.
The population of the montesi online now was growing more and more, and more people from the outside came and visit even just for the curiosity that they had.., from its service interactive and above all enticed from the idea of to be able
to communicate with the friends and distant relatives in easy manner and economical, so more and more people went and gain a computer.

The website got even bigger, because of the new Italian servers that offered free connections (Libero, Tin, Tiscali ecc.), because on that time even those providers were growing bigger and bigger.

In the 2000 it was the year of growing for Mdp.com, because we had the most growth, and were beat all of the record of growth of the previous years. At the same time on the site, they were added very new services like the forums montesi that allow a most efficient discussion, a new chat, that even if it was slower than the java chat, it allowed to chat even people with WebTv, PlayWeb, ecc. that in the years of 1999 and 2000 were bought from many montesi and most of them from USA.

Before the summer 2000, thankful to Hearme, it was added to the site a new vocal chat, that made the conversation more emotional and interesting. Months later, to provide more a private conversation Mdp.com added some new vocal private chats.

Today, we have the new version of the site that was entirely revisited and it was finished and in some points it was rewrite completely. It will offer to all user more velocity and will offer a greater involvement to all of the users.

The future?

We are writing it now…with you!

Thanks to everyone!

Pasquale Mancino

Translated by Angel & Montesissima