it was sometime in the late 1990s. i discovered the magic of email. you could send text, photos, even small videos. it was fast. cheap. and you got replies in no time.
so i created an email id. started sharing small, inspiring incidents that were happening around amma during bharata yatra with some devotees.
devotees loved it.
they responded with so much gratitude.
that’s when i thought — why not start an email newsletter?
so i asked amma.
her answer surprised me.
she said — “that’s not enough. start a website.”
amma clearly said — it’s for her devotees.
start a website
i had no clue how to build a website. i didn’t even know the basics. but i was excited. curious. so i started exploring.
i found out we needed a domain and a server. so i wrote to swami paramatmananda at the sanramon center.
he replied, “dear dhyanamrita, how are you going to do this work from amritapuri where there is practically no connection to the internet?”
he was right.
internet in amritapuri meant dial-up. it took 6-8 minutes ringing and another 30-40 seconds to connect if you are lucky. 90% of the time, the connection will drop and will start dialing again. sending a single plain text email could take 40 minutes.
it was in that situation that i was planning to start webdevelopment in amritapuri. funny right?
still, i wrote back,
“i don’t know. but amma asked me. so i have to do it.”
and i started.
amritavani, the email newsletter
with help from a college staff, i created the first email newsletter.
since internet was better in AIMS, Kochi, i took all the content in a floppy drive along with all collected email ids, worked through out night, and sent it out on april 1st. {read the blog}
then we, myself priyan and remya packed up content, photos, and left for ettimadai. because there was better internet there, plus some computer-savvy support.
building the first version
i called a meeting with some staff. told them my vision. they were ready to help. gave them a deadline — “i want the website online by april 15.” they agreed.
every evening after college classes, they came. someone wrote html code. someone scanned photos. another did photoshop layouts. someone else typed content and proofread it. we worked late. sometimes till sunrise.
with the converted digital content, we started creating webpages. it was in pure html and css.
we had around 20 index pages to create for different sections — each with a different layout and design. so much was amma’s work. it was impossible to contain them in few pages.
some nights, the staffs were too tired due to the work of their class rooms. but they all worked enthusiastically. i got a special tea and snacks arranged for them.
one guy was very lazy. he would promise, but rarely show up — i used to go to his house, wake him up, and drag him to the computer lab. one day, i had to go to his house. knocked on the door. his wife opened the door. despited repeatedly calling him, i had to pour water on him, lifting his blanket. it was fun. then he woud work through out the night. no one had laptops back then. we had to work in the computer lab after college hours, make use of the facility and get our work done.
the date was approaching… i was pressurising them to finish the pages. web pages were not ready yet. i had another meeeting with them. reminded about the dead line. all of them were of the opininon it cant be finished before april 15th.
“no” i said, “i want this to go onlline… on april 15th.”
what to do now?
“with the available index pages we will create 20 pages and announce the website. let us keep updating the posts.” i suggested. all agreed.
by that time we got a domain registred, www.amritapuri.org. nowadays this happens in minutes. but it was not like that back then.
another problem was to get a feseable server to host. negotiation was going on. unfortunately it would not be available before april 15!
what to do? i want the site to be up.
sreevalsan came with an idea to create a folder amritpauri and temporarily host it on the university server. i agreed. we pointed the dns to this folder. on 15 april 2000, vishu day, — the site was up and live. first target achieved.
back to amritapuri — the real test
three days later, we moved to an independent server. the design and content updates continued daily. this went on for about three months.
then me, priyan and remya came back to amritapuri. and now the real work began. in ettimadai, i had support staff. in amritapuri, i had to do it all by myself. it was very tough.
i started learning everything — html, css, basic photoshop, image compression, ftp, ssh and more. over time, i learned over 20 different programs at that time.
internet was still painfully slow. i have to make sure that every image had to be less than 5kb. the upload was happening. navigating via the terminal window to upload to the correct folder was always a headache. if you uploaded to the wrong folder, the image wouldn’t show on the html pages. that too after hours of internet tapas. frustration was constant.
“thought of the moment”
i’d like to share an interesting moment from those days.
one feature i wanted on the ‘mother page’ was called “thought of the moment.” each time someone refreshed the page, a new quote from amma would appear. but there was a technical limitation — if the quote was too long, it would break the html layout. once in a while the desin would fall apart. already a few hundred quotes were in the collection. what is causing the problem? what is the character limit? i need to find out.
so i started testing. uploaded quote after quote. refreshed the page hundreds of times. we had no test server at that time. everything was live. dangerous. and the net was painfully slow.
after a full week of testing, i finally figured out the exact number of characters that would fit. i uploaded the final version. refreshed the page with satisfaction. and do you know what quote appeared?
“human calculation fails in the case of god’s grace – amma.”
my tests couldn’t have been more perfect than this.
upgrades and experiments
i started using an html editor called hotmetal pro. few weeks later i found dreamweaver — and it really helped. dreams started taking shape on those pages.
later, i switched from html to php pages. learned how to create templates. but each design change meant copy-pasting everything again. 100s of pages and they are increasing day by day!
upgrades started to happen regularly.
while creating the news for the web, i needed pics that supported the writeups. the ashram photographers weren’t providing news worthy photos. i explained what i needed — but they didn’t get it.
the digital camers had just hit the market. a devotee named lakshman gifted me a camera sony cyber-shot. i could take photos by myself. now another problem. i only knew what i wanted. i didnt know about photogrphy. so started asking pro photographers. their answers didn’t help much. all of them were analog photographers. they knew very little about digital photography.
so again — i just started figuring it out by trial and error method. youtube tutorials were not availabe at that time.
cms and wordpress
it was time for a majour upgrade. the cms, content management system was getting popular. i had to learn about databases, mysql, backups backend stuff.
that’s when wordpress came. it was a blessing. in less than five minutes, one can set up a site and it will be live!!
now i need to copy all few hundred pages into the database. we migrated all content to the new system. i had already copy pasted more than 20 times by now. so this is not a big challege, i thought.
webcast in 2003
i learned about server load balancing, streaming, backups. for amma’s 50th birthday, we streamed her darshan live for 4 full days. can you believe it? it was in 2003. we set up our own streaming server, rented a server in singapore to broadcast and we made it happen. today it’s a tap on a phone.
back then, it was a massive effort.
the rise of google and social media
then came the google explosion. google changed everything about the way we use the web — search, seo, rss, indexing, ranking. then came social media — facebook, twitter, youtube. more integration. more learning. more work of integration.
mobile first
in 2012, we launched the amma app — a mobile app to connect all amma-related activities.
in recent times as smart phones became the primary, prominent device, we moved to ‘mobile-first’ design of the web. after the basic preparations, thanks to abhilash and priyan — we switched the design overnight. {read the blog }
fonding memories and gratitude
many helped build and maintain this website over the years.
santosh joseph, priyan faud, ramya kay, gitamba oshoot, sachin dante, vinay marshall, gautam harvey, abhilash schikowski, devadath jandirk veenstra, prabha dreier, janani noia, prana carpenter, mira prakfelt, bruno gaurish, vivek schaap, viveka koichi, viswanath lausti, sri pati, mahendra bhagat, anoop vijay, sreevalsan m, vinod sheshan, sundar lal, deependra dev, sujith cs, manoj kumar g, sooriakumar k, rajesh chandran, rajesh burman, bijoy sivan, ajai narendran, sushil kumar, br. atmaprakash, br. harikesh, br. ekamrita chaitanya, br. narayanamrita, br neelakandamrita, br. sravanamrita, br. srinivasa chaitanya, br viswanathamrita, unmesh vakil, anand pillai, naveen bhatt, jayashree vinod, minu anand, aneesh ms, vijaya lakshmi, super sudhakar, sudhamayi schoenmeier, michael sofroniou, ramesh kannan, jayakumar muthuswamy, pradeep achan, ramesh raghavan, narinder anand, prabhakaran, sachin vinay, br. sai ram, sankar narayanan, nithin kk — and many more.
i don’t remember all of them, but on this occasion of amritapuri.org turning 25, i remember many.
thanks and loving gratitude to each one of you.
40+ domains, one vision
today i manage more than 40 domains and subdomains. across multiple languages in indian and foreign. registered and hosted on different servers.
and it continues…
technology changes. content grows. trends come and go. the body changes. the mind changes. but through all these changes, but one thing stays the same — amma’s presence behind it all. i try to express the unexpressable, the changeless though these changes.
thank you amma for making me your tool to express your glory for your children to be ‘online with Amma’.
-swami dhyanamrita
17 April 2025, amritapuri
The emerging illustration has had much more of an impact than I ever could have imagined. Firstly, I do remember Amma much more often, since she smiles back at me every single time I look into the mirror or down my upper-arm. But the most interesting impact the tattoo has had is on my interactions with others: There is hardly any day when I am not asked who that lady on my forearm is, which gives me plenty of opportunity to speak about Amma and recall her presence. Amma has become the connecting point between me and others, her image has helped me overcome some of my shyness and apprehension towards people that I meet for the first time. Quite literally, it is Amma’s love that connects me to people, and very often guides conversations into a spiritual direction right from the start.
