The Jim Carroll Website is the result of the efforts of Cassie Carter, who designed it, developed its content, and continues to maintain it.
History
- I hand coded the site in HTML in 1995.
- The site first launched at Bowling Green State University on January 15, 1996. In August of 1996 it won a “Best of Campus” award:
- The site then moved to a server at Michigan State University in August 1996.
- A review of the MSU version of the site appeared in the 1st Anniversary Issue ot The Web Magazine (featuring Gillian Anderson on the cover):
The Jim Carroll Home Page
pilot.msu.edu/user/carterca/carroll/carroll.htmDespite his reputation as one of the punk era’s great basket cases, Jim Carroll has produced an impressive body of work, including seven full-length books of poems and memoirs (cornerstoned by 1978’s heroin-soaked tale of youth gone wrong, The Basketball Diaries) and five albums (one of which spawned 1980’s punk anthem “People Who Died.” His wild life as a rock star, poet, and spoken-word performer receives due credit at this massive source of Carroll facts, excerpts, photos, and articles. Truly an amazing effort.
Dean Andrews, “Book/Mags Sites.” The Web Magazine, Oct. 1997, p. 47.
Content 5 Design 4 Links 5
- On August 15, 1997, the site moved to Forbin.com, thanks to LaVerne Kreklau, who also provided generous technical support and contributed a great deal of content regarding live recordings and rarities (which he continues to do).
- I converted the entire site from HTML to Active Server Pages in 1998-1999, which made the site slightly more manageable — because I was able to “include” standard headers and footers dynamically instead of coding them manually on each page.
- The domain name CatholicBoy.com, selected by Jim Carroll (from a list of many options), was registered and implemented in April 1999.
- When the Forbin server died in October 2002 (RIP), Aaron Burnett provided hosting for the site until June 2003.
- After June 2003, the site moved to commercial hosting. I first chose Westhost because it was one of the very few hosting providers that supported Active Server Pages (ASP) at a reasonable cost. In 2007, Westhost stopped supporting ASP, with no advance notice, which left the site inoperable.
- I moved the site to Dreamhost and began recoding the entire site – hundreds of pages — in PHP in November 2007. Because the entire ASP site was hand-coded, this process could not be automated. At some point the image gallery database crashed and burned with no recovery possible; this resulted in the loss of much of the content describing images on the site.
- When Jim Carroll died in 2009, I focused on collecting and representing all of the new content around his death.
- At various times after Carroll’s death, I tried moving the site to various content management systems, including Joomla and Concrete5, but these were insufficient to handle the size of the the site and variety of content types.
- In 2018 I began migrating the site into WordPress, which seems to be able to handle the content — although the process of converting the site over has crashed my server several times. [Name of helper] helpfully wrote a script to automatically suck the old pages into the WordPress, so the main challenge has been organizing all the files.
I hope you will check out my Xrationale for developing this site.
Content
The content of the site comes from the research of Cassie Carter. Cassie has been researching Carroll and studying his work since the late 1980s. Her work began with an article published in Bulletin of Bibliography, expanded to her master’s thesis and then this website, which took on a life of its own. A great deal of content has also been submitted by fans — if you have something to share, please reach out!
Design
The information architecture of the site and the visual/graphical elements you see appearing on
every page were designed by Cassie Carter. The Xcaricature of Jim Carroll was created by Cassie Carter. The most recent overall redesign of the site was in November 2007 (for old time’s sake, here’s an archive of various designs). Every time I go in to update one page I end up spending two days “fixing stuff” all over the site (like right now), so revision dates of individual pages on this website vary.
Is CatholicBoy.com the “Official Jim Carroll Website”?
Sort of? Without ever officially “endorsing” the site, Jim Carroll knew what was here and appreciated it; he chose the domain name and sometimes even contributed material. Over time CatholicBoy.com became the go-to site for all things Jim Carroll. Gradually, official marketing materials started listing CatholicBoy.com as “The Jim Carroll Website,” and soon enough actual publications and releases did the same. The Estate of Jim Carroll considers CatholicBoy.com to be something like the official Jim Carroll website.
Who Runs the Show?
Cassie Carter. I am a Jim Carroll scholar and archivist, and I maintain 100% editorial control over the site’s content and design.
This does not mean, however, that Jim Carroll had no say in it. Jim chose the name for the site, contributed various items (notably book translations, rare items — such as photos of his t-shirt collection — and other goodies), and offered corrections.
My goal, as a biographer, documentarian, archivist, and scholar, is to make the information available to others. I hope others will get a glimpse of the brilliant artist I know as “Carroll” and the kind-hearted person I knew as my friend “Jim.” I want you to have a sense of the whole person–the author, the character “in” and behind the work, the person who created the work.
Linking & Permissions
If you wish to use any material contained on this website, please feel free to link to it and email me to let me know so that I may add a reciprocal link, if appropriate. Please don’t steal stuff. No part of this site may be reproduced in any form except with written permission from me, and in many cases from other copyright holders.
Cassie Carter, PhD