About the Guild

The HTML Writers Guild was founded in 1994 and incorporated in 1996 as a 501(c)3 educational organization. It grew to more than 147,000 members in over 150 nations, and described itself as the largest international organization of Web authors.

In its own words, the Guild existed “to assist our members in developing and enhancing their capabilities as web authors, to compile and publicize information about standards, practices, techniques, competency, and ethics as applied to web authoring” — quoted from the Guild’s FedWeb pages.

A voice in Web standards

On 13 January 1998 the Guild joined the World Wide Web Consortium — the first organization of Web designers to do so.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity for web designers to have a voice in developing the standards that fuel the World Wide Web. As an association of web designers on the ‘front lines’ of the World Wide Web revolution we have a unique perspective we can share with the industry leaders in the W3C — we are the ones who actually use the new technologies and standards they create.” Press release, 23 February 1998. See the Guild’s W3C information page.

The Guild took part in the W3C’s HTML Working Group, and from June 2000 in the Web Accessibility Initiative’s Education and Outreach Working Group.

Accessibility, and where the work went

The Guild launched the AWARE Center in April 1999 — Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education — “to serve as a central resource for web authors for learning about web accessibility”. That was early: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines had been a W3C Recommendation for less than a year.

The work did not stop with the Guild. It continues today through IWA Italy, part of the association the Guild merged into, which publishes accessibility guidance for the European Accessibility Act, maintains webaccessibile.org, and comments on EN 301 549, the European accessibility standard for ICT products and services. A line runs from the AWARE Center in 1999 to European accessibility standards work today, through the same association.

A short chronology

• 1994 — the Guild is founded.
• 1996 — incorporated as a 501(c)3 educational organization.
• January 1998 — joins the W3C, the first Web designers’ organization to do so.
• 1998 — the Guild’s online classes programme begins; it becomes eClasses in 2002 and teaches more than 200,000 students in all.
• April 1999 — the AWARE Center opens.
• June 2000 — joins the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative’s Education and Outreach Working Group.
• August 2001 — merges into the International Webmasters Association.
• February 2005 — the last messages are posted to the Guild’s mailing lists.

After the merger

Under the terms of the merger IWA assumed responsibility for all HWG operations, while preserving the Guild’s identity and programmes through a transition period under the direction of the HWG Board of Directors. The association was then the International Webmasters Association, the name used throughout the pages on this site; it has since become the International Web Association, which continues today.

The community outlasted the transition. The mailing lists carried on for another three and a half years, with the last messages posted in February 2005. The classes outlasted it by far longer: the programme the Guild began in 1998 became eClasses in 2002, went on to run branded course platforms for IWA-HWG, WITI and other member organizations, and taught more than 200,000 students before it closed. The merger announcement is preserved in full: press release, 30 August 2001.

What is preserved here

• Mailing list archives — 82,731 messages across 20 lists, 1997 to 2005. The working conversation of the early Web: markup, accessibility, browser incompatibility, standards, and the business of building sites.
• The AWARE Center — the Guild’s Web accessibility programme, opened April 1999.
• W3C participation — how the Guild explained its consortium membership, and which groups it sat on.
• Project Gutenberg — the Guild’s collaboration on marking up public-domain texts.
• Operations Center — press releases, board elections, events and governance records.
• Classes — the Guild’s online course programme, run from 1998 before the courses moved to eClasses.
• Resources and bookstore — reference material collected for members.
• Membership pages — how the Guild described itself to prospective members.

The site over time

Only the last version of the Guild’s front page survives in this archive. The earlier ones are held by the Internet Archive, whose record of hwg.org begins in 1996:

• November 1996 — the earliest capture that exists. The Guild is two years old and has just incorporated.
• February 1998 — four weeks after joining the W3C.
• September 2001 — twenty-six days after the merger.
• 2012 — the last version, preserved here in full. By then the site was given over largely to the course programme. It is kept as part of the record, though it says little about what the Guild itself was.

There is no capture from 1994 or 1995: the Internet Archive did not begin collecting until 1996, two years after the Guild was founded.

Related archives

• eclasses.org — the online course platform, also preserved and no longer running.
• iwanet.org — the International Web Association, formerly the International Webmasters Association, which the Guild merged into and which continues today.