Last updated on February 7th, 2022
2020
This year we are celebrating 20 years of Chrysis.net online (2000 – 2020)
Unfortunately this year is saddened by the global tragedy caused by the Covid-19 virus: we are in solidarity with all those who have lost their loved ones and who in some cases have not even been able to assist them, or give them a last goodbye.
However, 2020 is also a fundamental anniversary for us at Chrysis.net: we celebrate 20 years of presence on the web. 20 years is a long time in a rapidly changing world, particularly in the world of the Internet. And we are celebrating this milestone by offering you an entirely new site.
We are a specialized site that has been of inspiration for many other sites and communities, and who has had an informative purposes for an audience that has gone beyond the simple numbers of our reference niche.
Despite the costs and the effort required, we are motivated to continue our mission with renewed enthusiasm.
With dedication,
Gian Luca Agnoli
2013
08 January 2013 – Chrysis.net website has migrated from a physical server to a cloud of shared resources
Recent and significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing have allowed cloud computing to become a more commonly offered service and type of hosting.
Cloud computing uses a network which is based on large groups of servers. These groups are setup with specialized connections which allow data-processing chores to be spread across those servers. Cloud computing allows for these newer types of virtualization techniques to be used in order to maximize the power of cloud computing and provide an almost no fail redundancy.
We are sure that, after an obvious adjustment phase, this kind of solution will improve the site’s performance.
Gian Luca Agnoli
2010
The 10th birthday is generally an important event, but it becomes even more significant when it applies to a website, an immaterial entity belonging to a highly selective, digital world.
In order to keep that role of public service that Chrysis.net website has gained in the WWW panorama, we have finally filled a crucial lack affecting it: an environment where users may interact and upload textual and multimedia contents. In one word, a FORUM. We are therefore pleased to announce the release of Chrysis.net FORUM, at the address: https://forum.chrysis.net.
To celebrate our 10th birthday in the best possible way, we are pleased to announce the partnership established with two reference subjects:
- the SOCIETÀ ENTOMOLOGICA ITALIANA (Italian Entomological Society), a scientific institution founded in Florence on October 31st, 1869 – one of the oldest and most prestigious societies in the world.
- the FORUM ENTOMOLOGI ITALIANI (FORUM OF THE ITALIAN ENTOMOLOGISTS), a meeting place for all those interested in entomology throughout the Italian territory (and beyond), born thanks to the initiative of Marcello Romano.
Such partnerships fill us with pride for the path taken and give us new energy for the way forward.
Gian Luca Agnoli
The latest site’s additions:
- The published papers on the Italian Chrysidids.
- Macrophoto-monographs: Wasps from Sicily by Gian Luca Agnoli.
- Photo Monographs: Parco del Delta del Po – Austria, 2010 – Turkey, 2009 – Sicily, 2009.
2009
March 2009. The third restyling of Chrysis.net web site goes online.
The site’s version 2009 is a graphical and structural restyling, comprising the following innovations:
- the reorganization of the pages according to more logical categories;
- the introduction of synoptic pages with contextual menus;
- the adoption of a layout based on CSS style sheets;
- the upgrade to the rigorous XHTML 1.0 Strict markup code.
The migration from the previous layout to the new one has been a sophisticated and complex procedure. In fact, the previous site – apparently similar the new one – was characterized by invisible nested tables used for the pagination, and by local formatting for the presentation of the contents – i.e. font type, color, dimensions, alignment, etc. All solutions allowed by the obsolete HTML 4.01 Transitional code. Such solutions have become deprecated according to the guidelines of the modern XHTML 1.0 Strict code, and also according to the norms for web accessibility, directed to guarantee the fruition of web sites to all user categories, even to those people affected by visual or motion deficits. The conformity of Chrysis.net web site to the whole accessibility guidelines is still fragmentary, but the evolution in this direction is a goal for the future and a lot of pages are already valid.
The graphical and structural reorganization has produced a partial reconsideration of the logical hierarchy of the pages of the site, in order to improve its overall usability. Logically correlated texts have been grouped in local index pages, those you reach by clicking the main links placed at the top of each page – Chrysididae, Methocha, Resources, Photography – together with the contextual menus placed at the left column.
The Database of the Italian Chrysididae has deeply changed: the species reports now show the placeholders for the pictures of the habitus of the species and its chorology. With time we look forward to fill such placeholders with photos and distribution maps.
A page on the evolution and the future plans of the site has been added, the so-called roadmap. Here you’ll find some notes on the features and functionalities that are under development, i.e. a Guestbook, a Macrophoto Contest and the RSS Feed for the site’s news. Unfortunately, the dates planned for the release of such features are always affected by ordinary troubles and unpredictable events. An example of an unpredictable, serious and also long lasting event is the recent migration of the site from one hosting server to a new one, because the old server is going to be switched off. This fact is what we are managing for some months.
A useful search function has been added to the site. Such function is placed at the top right of each page and it is embedded in a specific search page. This service, supplied by Google, lists the site’s pages with a relevancy ranking based on your search criteria.
A new and modern way to display multimedia contents (images, videos) has been adopted, together with another one able to add some functions to the web site.
Finally, Chrysis.net logo has been modernized, thanks to the choice of a more rounded font and a colorful Chrysidid modified from a drawing made by W. Linsenmaier.
All this work has inevitably resulted in the fact that we have not had enough time to update the site’s contents or to handle the many e-mail contacts. Together with the implementation of the solutions mentioned in the roadmap, we will take care of the new contents, including macrophotos, abstracts, bibliographic entries, new photographs, etc.
It’s our hope that you will appreciate the efforts that we have made – from the reorganization of the texts to the graphical restyling – and that therefore you keep on considering Chrysis.net one of your favorite places of interest on the Internet.
Gian Luca Agnoli
External links: Accessibility, Usability, HTML, XHTML, CSS.
2003
Starting from the few pages of the new born site in the year 2000, the website has grown much richer, both for its functionalities and for its content, thanks to internal and external contributions. At the moment the site consists of over 1,800 documents (pages and iconographic documents) and it has an optimized occupation of over 100 MB on the server located in the U.S.
About 2/3ds of the web site visitors come from the United States and about one third of them from Europe. Visitors from other parts of the world are not as frequent, probably due to the lower diffusion of Internet Access points in several areas of the planet. The server monthly registers about 5,000 accesses, with a peak of over 8,000 visitors (April 2003). These are extremely interesting values, because they show how the site has grown out of its confined dimensions and how it is now a point of reference for a selected community of enthusiasts, thus accomplishing the original goal of the creator of the site. The adoption of bilingualism for almost every page has definitely played a relevant role for its world wide distribution.
Important implementations have recently been added, among which the migration of some HTML static pages into PHP dynamic pages, supported by the usage of a MySQL Database. These new technologies are now also being used for the Bibliographic database, for the Chrysidid photo galleries and for the non-specific photo galleries. The aim of this migration is the reduction of the number of static pages in favour of dynamic pages that retrieve information from the database (news, photos, bibliographic entries) and return real time assembled pages. The programming for the implementation of the Italian Chrysidids database is still under construction.
The cooperation with Paolo Rosa, naturalist and Chrysidid scholar, has become solid and official and from now on he will appear as co-Author of the contents of the website. It is to his credit the compilation of the bibliographic database with over 1,800 entries and the systematic collection of faunal data that will represent the initial basis and the fundamental part of the Database of the Italian Chrysidids. Thanks to the reciprocally critical encounter it has been decided to reorganize some sections of the site, starting from the homepage, to correct some texts and to create new pages ex-novo. For instance, personal pages have been relocated to personal areas accessible from the “About us” page; the Researches section has been reorganized into published papers and in in progress researches in order to allow others to insert their study programs; an Acknowledgments page has been added. More pages will be added on the Genera of Italian Chrysidids and more photographic images will be added both in the specialist gallery and in the generic ones (that now also host a monographs section).
In conclusion, we would like to express again our invitation to contribute to the website by sharing entomological and macro photographic experiences that could be useful to our visitors.
Gian Luca Agnoli
2002
The current restyling offers a lot of implementations.
First of all, the Database of the Chrysidid Bibliography, which was filled thanks to the valid work by Dr. Paolo Rosa and engineered to PHP/MySQL technology by Alberto Berarducci. I wish to express my friendly thanks to them. The Database consists of more than 1,800 entries. The access to the DB is free as usual, but reserved to registered users. We decided a such procedure to keep a log of the visitors accessing the DB. The registration process is made in order to obtain a password to enter also the Database of the Italian Chrysididae, which will be available for the next year.
A global restyling of the site was decided to increase the usability of the site, by using the white backgroung for the text. Now the home page contains links to all the topics treated inside the site, which are distributed inside many hundreds of different pages. In fact, the site has increased, reaching about 100 MBytes of web space and a new web hosting in the USA is used. Some pages are offered in two languages, English and Italian: when this feature is available, you can change page language by clicking the flag at the right side of the top menu.
Thanks to the pleasance of Mr. Roeland Langendam Chrysis.net can offer you some wonderful videos of Chrysidids from Holland, Europe. They are a very important and incredible documentation, in the name of which we are pleased to thank our collaborator. You can download them to your hard disk, but please remember the rules about Copyright of the Author (Roeland Langendam) and of the distributor (Chrysis.net). If you need to use them you must contact the Author.
More additions in the other pages, new photos, the correction of the English translation, made by the kind collaboration of Dr. Eugenia Rinaldi, in conjunction with the splitting of the English from the Italian texts, made with patience by Luca Grilli, have been made. Three search forms querying Google, Open Directory and Scirus were embedded, to offer you the power of those tools.
We close this note renewing the invitation to you to collaborate to the site’s growth, through your entomological and macrophotographic experiences useful to our visitors.
Gian Luca Agnoli
2001
November 2001 – So the first year has gone by. The first year of official life of Chrysis.net, during which many things have happened. Chrysis.net has been woven from nothing like all the other sites, without great pretension, but with the idea of being able to reach great projects. Chrysis.net has had to face several difficulties, mainly in recent times, but it will always try to offer its resources to the several hundreds (and now also thousands) of visitors that manifest their interest.
The future plans of the site are unfortunately difficult to foresee. However, sooner or later the following implementations will be developed:
- graphic restyling of the site;
- separation of the Italian and English texts onto different pages (with flags to switch);
- revision of the English texts, under the guide of Eugenia Rinaldi;
- setup of the Database of the Italian Chrysidids, made in collaboration with Paolo Rosa, who becomes co-Author of the site;
- addition of features (mailing list, guestbook, Literature database);
- creation of a subsite dedicated to the species Methocha ichneumonides Latr.;
- enrichment of the photo gallery section.
All these modules will be implemented using PHP language in connection to a MySQL db, but the current site instability on temporary servers makes it hard to establish setup times.
The decision of the graphical restyling of the site is dictated by the need of a better usability of its pages. The term usability refers to the ensemble of rules that makes a site easily surfable and possibly re-surfable by an ordinary visitor. These rules, focused on simplifying the reading, will involve the contrast between text and background, the width of the pages according to the various video resolutions, the optimization of the images in weight and dimensions, text titles instead of graphical ones, overall sober graphics. This will entail an only apparent graphical impoverishment because a greater clarity – both in reading and in content delivery – will be achieved. Just to mention an example, the light blue background will be abandoned in favor of a more traditional white one and the text size – where possible – increased. An anonymous feedback form will be available for visitors, in order to supply Chrysis.net with statistics on monitor dimensions, video resolutions, difficulties encountered in navigation, etc. Therefore the future restyling will be more and more directed to an optimal usability of the site.
Another important operation in waiting list is the promotion of the site to the main search engines and directories. Given the current engine policies, we have decided to promote the site through a “manual submission”, thus avoiding the use of the programs apparently dedicated to this job. At present, the site has been spotted and deeply scanned by Google‘s robots and consequently notified to Yahoo and to Virgilio. The other engines that will be informed are Altavista, MetaCrawler, Lycos, Northern Light, and Arianna. This will bring a greater visibility of the site.
Chrysis.net has the pleasure to acknowledge the precious collaboration of many appreciated visitors, who have supplied resources and have inspired our electronic work. Among these Chrysis.net wishes to openly thank [in alphabetical order]:
Christoph Bleidorn, Paul Butler, Sytske Dijksen, Luciano Filippi, Hans Henderickx, Robert Ganz, Daan Kalmeijer, Lynn Siri Kimsey, Peter Kubal, Roeland Langendam, Stephen Lenberger, Oliver Niehuis, Maurizio Pavesi, Hamish Robertson, Paolo Rosa, Christian Schmid-Egger, Rolf Witt, and many others.
It is our wish that the site will keep on growing, for you and because of you.
With our best wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,
Gian Luca Agnoli
Copyright, Authorship, and Ownership statements
All text and images of this page are copyright ©️ Chrysis.net unless otherwise stated - please see individual cases for authorship and copyright details. The specimens pictured are from the authors' or other collaborators' personal collections and from the collections of various museums. Unless otherwise specified, the whole content of this web site is for personal, non-commercial, scientific, and educational purposes given proper accreditation to the page from which they were derived are provided, and under Chrysis.net Terms and Conditions.
For citation purposes
Agnoli G.L. & Rosa P. (2025) Chrysis.net history, in: Chrysis.net website. Interim version 06 January 2025, URL: https://www.chrysis.net/about/history/.