About

The AllAboutOmaha.net website provides an easy access to numerous Omaha Arts, Attraction, History, and Entertainment sites all in a condensed area.  We have more graphic links to Omaha's best than any other site.  The pages are bragging pages showing off Omaha's best and what we have to offer.  In lieu of the upcoming Omaha Convention Center and Arena, out-of-town folks will want to know what to do in Omaha and exactly what Omaha has to offer.  These pages fulfill that request better than any other.

AllAboutOmaha.net also shows off our neighbors.  We have wonderful communities throughout Nebraska and also our neighboring states.  The pages cover loads of great things our neighboring states have to offer that tourists would be interested in.

In addition to great local websites of interest to tourists and locals alike, the Omaha pages are filled with interesting bits of history, such as the origin of the word Omaha (how the Omaha Indians got their name), origin of the name of Council Bluffs, history and contribution of the Mormon migration, coverage of Great Plains natives, notes of Omaha's neighboring communities, such as Florence, and Bellevue.  The community coverage extends to cover all of Nebraska, and all six surrounding states.  Attractions and historical tidbits are covered to encourage anyone to make the journey to the Midwest's best, and all from the Omaha point of reference.

If you are using a slower computer, nothing is more frustrating than to read a bit, and then have to wait for the next page to load so you can continue on.  Longer pages take a bit longer to fully load initially but give you plenty of reading using only the scroll bars or by pressing the space bar.  For this reason, some pages are long on content.  The Omaha attraction pages have lots of graphics to show off other attraction websites, and therefore load slower than other pages on the website.

Not

The AllAboutOmaha.net website does not maintain nor provide current schedules and times for area attractions except for special cases.  We do have some operating hours and admission costs, and some special event information (including dates, times, and additional information).  For current schedules of show times, performances, etc., click the link to the website.

It is most important to understand that the AllAboutOmaha.net website is not a news website.  Our emphasis is to show off Omaha by showing off our many attractions and events, and many other things that make Omaha great.  Many other websites show the local news and national news, including other Omaha websites.  It is too difficult to draw the line between local, national, and international news, so understandably any website that shows local news would also show the others as well.  If we offered news, you would get the same news that you can get from any other website.

We do not provide links to all websites that has anything to do with Omaha.  We show off the more important websites.

Nutin' Fancy

The AllAboutOmaha.net pages are written with their own style, nothing fancy, no literary achievements were made here.  Where it is deemed necessary, tips are used to explain a term or link.  Since school children are expected to peruse the pages to learn some tidbits about Omaha, gargantuan and abstruse words that are not part of quoted text have been eliminated so that almost anyone can understand the content, so bring your tabularasa mind and prepare to learn something new.

You will not be irritated by "Bad English."  We know the difference between a subordinate clause and a restrictive sentence.  You will not find double negatives, unless it was clearly done tongue-in-cheek.  We have made spelling choices on some words that you may choose to differ with.  For example, we choose to use "website" over "web site" although there may be exceptions.  We cannot claim perfection however.  We do a pretty good job of proofreading, and not forgetting to run spell check after making minor changes, however, slip-ups do occur.  Understand that unlike many websites, we take the strong stand that it is not your responsibility to be our (unpaid) proofreader.  I hate that stance that websites often take that you the reader should tell them about their mistakes.  It sounds like they are saying that they are not willing to do sufficient proofreading on their own, and that if you expect the quality to be better than what they offer, then you need to be willing to be their unpaid proofreader and link checker.  We make a great attempt at checking our own pages thoroughly and often.  External links do change or disappear, and it is difficult to keep up with.  At any one time, we are aware of several links that have not been corrected yet or the corrections have not been published yet.  We use several link checkers, spell checkers, and various tools to maintain our website.  Even our tools are not perfect.  If you do encounter something irritating, misspelled, or just needs spell check run to eliminate the fat-finger work, and if you wish to tell us about it, you can always send us feedback but you will not see us begging you to do so.  If you do, much thanks to you for helping out.

Most of all, we hope you learn something new when perusing the history, and we hope you will have easy access to the best Omaha and the surrounding area has to offer.

History

The AllAboutOmaha.net pages is the oldest website about Omaha, having its start back in 1996, and before that as part of a consulting website for the author as an explanation where the consulting business was based, even though the author worked in California at the time where websites were popping up all around. Very techie people and techie businesses had websites but elsewhere in the country, there were hardly any. As other consultants asked, "What is so special about Omaha?" The author, feeling a little defensive, would explain many things that the rest of the world didn't seem to know anything about. At the end of the day, the author would go back to the consulting website and add everything that had just been used to explain the many good things about Omaha. As more and more text was added, the Omaha page grew, then needed to be broken into multiple pages, and then different topics needed their own pages, until it was clear that it needed to be a website on its own.

It started on its own as a subdomain of a free hosting service, which didn't do much for its visibility, plus a large banner ad was displayed above every page, which shifted the intended page down. The banner was intrusive, but understandable for free hosting. Still, the free hosting allowed the author to do more writing, until it outgrew the amount of free space allocated. During this time, a lot of pages were added having to do with our history, such as the extensive section on Florence and its early history during the Mormon transition.

Finally, the website had its own domain name, and was off to an impressive start, however, it still was alone as far as Omaha websites was concerned. It was not until late 1999 or even the year 2000 that there were any other Omaha websites that this website could have a link to. At almost the same time it seems that the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo and Nebraska Furniture Mart, both developed websites. Those were the first two links from this website to others. When the author approached the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo to ask for a graphic to display, no one even seemed to understand. They hadn't thought of any other website having a link to theirs. The author finally explained that one would be created from their existing website. That was the start of how each graphic you see on this website is unique, usually with a 3D type of effect added for emphasis.

It didn't take long for other Omaha attractions to get on the bandwagon, and get their websites started. Most of them started taking off during 2000. Soon nearly every major attraction in Omaha had a website. It was a busy year to get a graphic link up for all those websites.

Soon the website was getting great search engine rankings and a lot of traffic. Visitors were using the website to learn all about Omaha, as well as see what was going on in the way of events. An early surprise was learning that AllAboutOmaha.net was getting over 18,000 hits a day (back in 2000). Another surprise not long after the new website was launched as its own domain name, was when the author noted someone had posted a question on a website while doing research on where their ancestors had lived, and asked for help in determining where Florence, Nebraska was located since they could not find it on any map listing city names. Knowing that Florence had been annexed by Omaha back in 1917, the author replied to the post, suggesting they check out the AllAboutOmaha.net website, which covered a lot of Florence history. The reply was the surprising part, which said briefly, "Oh, I really love your website because it has so much information about Florence, but someone else had already told me about it." Wow, what a pleasant surprise, others were already talking about it.

Omaha's history is significant in many ways, and it is covered in great detail to satisfy the curious, and still learn some of the unusual aspects of our past, from how the state got its name, to how the city got its name. The Lewis and Clark Expedition happened before European settlers so you will find their expedition covered in the Native American Period. Due to migrations over time, an attempt was made to cover every Great Plains Nation that ever existed, including every Great Plains language and what it derived from. Also, covered is not only how Omaha got its name, but how the Omaha natives arrived here, including a special version told to the author by the late Howard Wolf.

It seemed logical that a lot of people would visit the AllAboutOmaha.net website to see when major events are happening, and as an easy way to access those websites. Major event advertising graphics were made to start showing about 45 days before the event. Most of the time, the advertising link is showing before the actual event has their website updated from the year before. Since we also show text links to major events and attractions throughout the year, we suggest that annual event websites be ready for next year's event the day after this year's event, because we are sending traffic to their website, year-round. Otherwise, about 9 months out of the 12, their website is outdated. As long as we can get the information for next year, it is programmed in to start showing automatically on time.

Part of the idea was to sell Omaha to visitors, but what about the people already living in Omaha. They might like to know about things happening elsewhere throughout the entire state. Omaha is the doorway to the west, and many other cities in the state of Nebraska. Therefore, we wanted to cover many other attractions in Nebraska cities. The cities are covered on a page listing cities alphabetically, and another version listing cities in distance from Omaha (plan based on how far you want to travel). In addition to details, many other websites are linked to in order to give more access to those events and attractions. Also, we have many links to government websites for those cities, e.g., Nebraska Chamber of Commerce Links.

In covering Omaha's history, it has to cover the build-up of people waiting in Council Bluffs back in 1854 to cross over the Missouri River when the new territory became available. Also significant was the Mormon transition back in 1846 on. As a result of covering Iowa's connection, it was unfair to not cover all states that border Nebraska. Therefore, we have information on the six states that border Nebraska: Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

There are many things you can learn from the website that you probably never knew. Did you know that if all the water under the state was on top of the state, it would be 34 feet deep, statewide? Another great tidbit is, "Who was born a King but ended up being a President?" There is much more to discover.

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