A Trip Down Nostalgia Lane:A brief look at my old websitesI created my first personal website in March of 1997. I remember buying The Complete Idiot's Guide to HTML and writing my HTML in humble Notepad for Windows 95. Ahh, those were the good old days. In the subsequent years, I learned to use Adobe Photoshop for my graphics and Microsoft FrontPage for layouts. During Summer 2003, I learned Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Javascript, and PHP. Starting in 2005, I once again switched back to using text-based editors (e.g. Emacs) to create my pages, and added some scripts to automatically generate page templates and to manage my links. Here is a look at how I have progressed through my years as an amateur website designer: Version 1.0 (First created: 3-16-1997)
This is my first attempt at making a website. Oh my God! Look at that! It was my first shot at any kind of graphics design whatsoever! Go Microsoft Paint! I love how I exported the title graphic as a GIF file so the "glowing" effect looks like crap. Hey, I was going for the neon effect but I don't think it worked out too well. Oh well, it was my first try! I was in 8th grade! I had barely even gone through puberty, so what did you expect? Version 2.0 (4-13-1997 to 5-4-1997)
I discovered how to make beveled buttons on Photoshop. Hey, c'mon, this is a bit cooler of a title graphic, don't you think? Well, it's certainly better than a big glowing G, right? Ok, don't answer that. Anything is better than a big glowing G. Anyways, check out my second attempt at webpage design. Maybe the flashy Photoshop visuals will deter you from the fact that it still has NO REAL CONTENT in it! Version 3.0 (11-9-1997 to 12-13-1997)
Look, what do we have here ... evolution? Check out the flashy title pic! Oh yeah baby! I remember that I wanted to make this page a lot better than the previous one, so I went all out. And for the first time, I included something RADICAL ... ACTUAL CONTENT! I had some articles on this page as well as an early form of a Photoshop gallery! Too bad I had absolutely NO SENSE of color coordination! I simply tried to throw together every possible color in the graphics. Hey, this was my experimental phase. Version 4.0 (12-13-1997 to 1-21-1998)
Not too shabby for a high school freshman, eh? I had just downloaded this program called Poser, which was a primitive 3-D person rendering program. I used it to render some nifty (naked) guys which spelled out my name (PHIL) and made a glowing effect that worked a LOT better than my first attempt. By now, the Photoshop gallery was the main attraction of my site. I had just started taking pictures for my photography class at this point so there was no photo gallery yet. Version 5.0 (8-30-1998 to 11-26-1998)
Content-wise, this website marks the start of my modern website which you are looking at right now. I remember that August 30th, 1998 was almost the last day of summer before I started 10th grade. I decided to take the time to scan in lots of pictures which I took over the past year and radically re-design my webpage to become a showcase for my photographs. This is when I actually start putting lots of actual content on my website. I focused both on my photography and my attempt at digital image editing with Adobe Photoshop. Version 6.0 (12-26-1999 to 8-24-2000)
After a year of not doing updates, I finally make a massive update to my website and bring it one step closer to what it is today. By this time, I had quite a few photo galleries posted which showcased my photography as well as some short articles on my cameras and accessories. I also started posting up digital camera pictures I took in the "Digital Reality" section, which became the precursor to the candid photos I have of my MIT friends now in my Friends section. Version 7.0 (7-28-2001 to 6-9-2002)
During the summer before starting my freshman year of college, I wanted to redo the layout of my website to make it more aesthetically appealing. I decided to go for a tabs-oriented layout where the visitor could shuffle between pages by clicking on tabs, loosely simulating paper files in a file cabinet. I liked how everything fit together tightly on this version of my page. The tabs were cool to do and the color scheme kept everything light-hearted and fun. However, as you'll see if you click on these screenshots to see the full-sized versions, you'll notice that I put WAY too much content on my home page, thereby making the user scroll a TON before reaching the bottom. In all subsequent versions of my website, I made sure to keep the home page simple and concise so that the user wouldn't have to scroll at all. Version 8.0 (7-4-2002 to present)2002:
During the summer of 2002, after my first year in college, I decided that I wanted to update the look of my website to give it a more mature feel, so I made this simpler home page with a green color scheme (as evident in the border and photo colors), prominently displaying several of my favorite photos and providing links to all the sections within my site. As you can tell from the links in the bar below the title image, the primary emphasis of my website at that time was to showcase my photography hobby. 2003:
During the summer of 2003, between my sophomore and junior years at MIT, I decided that I wanted to make my page more dynamic so I learned about PHP, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets to generate a dynamic online photo gallery. I also updated the front page with fewer but more visually-striking photographs. 2004:
I switched over to a tan color scheme and expanded the scope of my website beyond simply showcasing my photography (as evident by the links in the bar below the title image). I was doing less and less photography by this time, and I had other things to showcase, such as my academic projects, photos of my friends and me, and the start of a fledgling articles section. My first posted article was Integrity in Digital Photography. 2005:
During winter of 2004/2005, I caught the client-side bug and decided to re-implement my photo gallery using XML, XSLT, and JavaScript instead of a traditional database and server-side scripts. This would soon become known as the XML Photo Gallery. I also broadened the focus of my site from photography to include computer-related articles as well. My home page remained pretty much the same, though, but I just added more content within the site. 2006:
During the summer of 2006, I put more text on the front page (mostly links) and replaced the 3 large photos with 6 small thumbnails - 3 horizontal and 3 vertical. The twist is that every time the front page reloads, 6 random thumbnails will appear in these slots, so the viewer always gets a fresh glimpse into my photo collection. I also wrote a template scripting system to manage the various hyperlinks around my website by placing navigation sidebars on every page. This helped to improve usability and made it significantly easier for me to add new content. 2007:
This is what my front page looks like on its 10th anniversary. I started my personal website in 1997 when I was a nerdy 8th grader first learning to write HTML in Notepad, and now I am a 1st-year Ph.D. student studying Computer Science at Stanford University. Wow, time sure flies :) 2008:
In the past year, I've managed to squish more content onto the front page because I realized that my site was getting large enough so that it could be difficult to find content within it. My goal for the front page is to provide readers with an overview of what my website was about (chock full of links to pages deeper inside of the site). 2009:
I tried to make it easy for readers to find my newest and most recently updated pages right upon landing on my homepage, without needing to scroll. Then if they wanted to scroll down, they could read more of the introductory text. I still continue to like the randomly-generated thumbnails showcasing my photos. Feel free to send comments, suggestions, questions, or rants to me via email: philip@pgbovine.net |
