Thirty years is a long time in technology.

In 1996, WRIS wasn't even called WRIS Web Services yet. We were Western Reserve Internet Services, a part-time side project Charlie Meyers started to resell dial-up internet access, back when AOL ruled the online world.

What convinced him the internet was worth betting on? He watched people swap ideas in AOL chat rooms, send email across the world in an instant, and visit early websites that felt, in his words, "like a two-way TV." Around the same time, he was researching how his employer could use the internet. "Realizing it made sense to me and that I could implement it was a huge motivator," he says.

In 1997, with a small loan and a leap of faith, Charlie went full time. He ran the business from a log home he rented from his parents in Newbury, Ohio, with his bedroom doubling as the office. Our first real customer was Karman Rubber in Akron. Thirty years later, they're still a WRIS client.

So for our 30th anniversary, here are 10 things that are part of everyday life now but didn't exist when WRIS opened its doors.

1. Google

In 1996, nobody "Googled" anything. "There were other search engines," Charlie says. People used AltaVista, Yahoo! and whatever search engine came built into their Microsoft browser. Google wasn't incorporated until 1998.

Then everything changed. "There was a time when SEO suddenly became a thing, which was soon after Google appeared," Charlie says. By the early 2000s, search engine optimization was on the WRIS services list. Today it's an industry of its own, covering SEO, paid search, local listings and now AI-powered results.

2. Wi-Fi

Our first business was dial-up. Customers paid $19.95 a month, and the connections started at 14.4K and eventually reached 128K. At our peak, we had close to 50 dial-up customers.

Competing with AOL wasn't easy. "AOL sent a sign-up disk to everyone with a mailbox about once a month," Charlie says. Our pitch was freedom: your own domain, your own email address, and, frankly, it was cooler than AOL.

The first 802.11 wireless standard was approved in 1997, and the name "Wi-Fi" arrived in 1999. In the early days, finding a connection could be an adventure. Charlie remembers "war driving," which meant cruising around with a laptop, sometimes with an antenna on the car roof, looking for open networks. Cyber cafes also popped up where you could get online with your coffee.

Today we get impatient when Wi-Fi takes more than five seconds to connect. Charlie doesn't miss the old way: "It's nice that dial-up is gone; it was so painfully slow."

3. Wikipedia

In 1996, settling a trivia argument meant pulling an encyclopedia off the shelf. If you were high-tech, you popped Microsoft Encarta into the CD-ROM drive instead. Wikipedia launched in January 2001 and changed how fast information could be written, updated and found. For anyone who remembers waiting on that CD to spin up, it still feels a little miraculous.

4. WordPress

How did WRIS build websites in 1996? "I first started with Notepad and straight HTML," Charlie says. "We wrote the code."

When clients wanted changes, they called, emailed or brought it up in a meeting. Often they handed over a printed copy of their website, marked up by hand.

WordPress launched in 2003 and made it possible for businesses to update their own sites without touching code. In 2017 we launched the WRIS Small Business Unit, using WordPress to give smaller businesses websites they can manage themselves. We've come a long way from <table> layouts and red pens.

5. Facebook and Social Media

No Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok or X. LinkedIn arrived in 2003 and Facebook in 2004. In 1996, the social web lived in chat rooms, forums, bulletin boards and AOL.

Without social media, getting attention online worked differently. Charlie remembers one client, Ladies Who Launch, being featured on national morning TV: "Watching the website traffic skyrocket when they announced the URL on TV was pretty cool."

6. YouTube

In 2000, the U.S. Figure Skating Nationals came to Cleveland, and WRIS built the website to promote the event. We also updated it with results during the competition, which Charlie calls "a little tricky." Event staff had to send us the results before we could post them.

Live streams, instant highlights and replay clips weren't an option. YouTube didn't launch until 2005, and over dial-up, even downloading one photo could test your patience. Today you can watch the whole event in 4K on your phone.

7. Cloud Computing

Remember the joke about the underappreciated server closet? At WRIS, it was real.

Around 2000, in our Beachwood office, we ran our own servers for the first time: two DNS servers, a web server, an email server and a database server, all in a closet on a T1 line.

Server emergencies? "So many, and I don't like to think about them," Charlie says. During the 2003 Northeast blackout, we ran everything on generators for two days. Then the batteries in the phone company's line repeaters died, the T1 went down, and we were completely offline for about a day.

Amazon Web Services launched S3 in 2006 and EC2 later that year, and on-demand infrastructure changed how technology could scale. Many of our hosting offerings now run in the cloud. We don't miss that closet.

8. The iPhone

The first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007. Until then, websites were designed almost entirely for desktop screens. According to Charlie, clients started asking how their sites looked on phones soon after it came out.

Today, responsive design isn't optional, and many of the older applications we help modernize were built before anyone expected to use them on a phone. Phones have become cameras, maps, wallets, TVs and shopping malls. Occasionally, they're even telephones.

9. Zoom, Slack and the Remote Office

WRIS started as a work-from-home business. "You could roll out of bed and sit down at your computer," Charlie says, "just like I am doing now."

In between, there were plenty of offices: Mayfield Village, Solon, Beachwood, Warrensville Heights and back to Solon. Charlie's favorite was Warrensville Heights, where we spent 10 years. It had a great build-out, we shared the space with OLI, and a lot of new team members got their start there. "It was just a really fun time for WRIS," he says.

Zoom launched in 2013 and Slack in 2014. When 2020 shut the world down, Charlie expected things to return to normal quickly. When they didn't, he sold the building, and remote work turned out to suit us. "Most of our folks were already remote, so why not?"

Thirty years later, WRIS is right back where it started: working from home.

10. Generative AI

Charlie says what he misses most about 1996 is "the wild wild west aspect of the early days. Everything was new and cool, things were changing so fast."

If anything today feels like that, it's AI. Generative tools can now help write software, summarize documents, analyze data and automate tasks that would have sounded impossible not long ago. Where it goes over the next 30 years is anyone's guess, and that's part of the fun.

One Thing That Did Exist: ColdFusion

Allaire released ColdFusion in 1995, a year before WRIS got started. By our Mayfield Village days, it was running on the servers that hosted our sites. "We started using it and never stopped," Charlie says. "It was easy and intuitive to use, allowing us to do things we had never done before." Some of our early ColdFusion sites were Family Buzz and ProsPlay.

ColdFusion has been at the heart of WRIS ever since. It has powered custom applications, ecommerce, legacy support, and now The ATOM, our modern ColdFusion-based platform.

Did Charlie expect to still be working with it 30 years later? "Probably not, but I'm glad we are."

Here's to the Next 30

The tools have changed. The browsers have changed. The devices have definitely changed. Through all of it, WRIS has kept adapting and helping businesses build, maintain and modernize what they rely on.

We asked Charlie what he'd tell himself in 1996 if he could:

"Stay relaxed like you are now, because it's going to last for a long time, and it's never going to be as bad as you think it is in those hard moments."

Here's to whatever comes next.