Wow.. I have recently realised that today marks the 5th year of ownership and posting of my website/blog (https://www.mikesel.info) The site was originally formed five years ago, when my boss back then Daniel Britton introduced me to Free Virtual Servers. I remember the day quite well, as all of the ‘Field Engineers’ at the time decided we would all set one up. Myself and one of the other engineers decided to try out Joomla.
Back then non of us new much about Joomla as a content management system, or ownership of our own domains! Now, I took to it like a duck to water! Prior to my own domain, I had be faffing around with my own hosted phpNuke system, using a DynDNS address. Not only was I hosting content but I had an IRCd and FTP server on the go too.
Which is a good example of exactly what I am about, I have an eagerness to learn and excel at things, and with the internet revolution in full swing I felt I needed a piece of the pie!
As no doubt my now ex’s will tell you, the internet has swallowed up days/weeks/months of my personal life. Rapidly picking up and running with various content management systems, and web development languages. Everything from ASP to JavaScript was tried out, some of which hung around for a while. Most of which frustrated to the point of hatred.
I think it’s fair to say my website and my personal life has developed somewhat since the 19th of July 2006, undergoing countless iterations of designs and management systems. I never really thought I would still be at it 6 years later, however I am really pleased I am, because despite the fact I have very few comments on my posts and my visitors time of site is often quite short, I am pretty confident/hopefully I have helped at least a hand full of people with my content.
Unfortunately I have never really kept track of all my website releases, however – thanks to the ‘Internet Archive – Way back when machine‘ I have managed to collate some screen shots of how things used to me! Obviously the site snapshots below may not be a true representation, as images that I used to link to will no longer exist, but I am sure you will get the idea. (Click on the thumbnails to expand the images)
09th May 2007
07th February 2008
29th October 2008
10th January 2009
It’s a shame that the time machine only captured a few snapshots, and that the designlayout has suffered with them being dynamic, however still an interesting insight it to what it was I was up to all those years ago.
The latest iteration of the site is running on the WordPress framework, although I am and always will be a big fan of the Joomla foundation and their work – it was a little too powerful for my blogging needs, and many years of tweaking and hacking apart caused havoc with my hosts CPU cycles.
Despite the many variations on language and layout, there has always been one thing that has remained the same. The web host for the site is still (and probably always will be) Free Virtual Servers, obviously the hosting package has been upgraded a few times.
However, I feel it’s now time for a bit of a change.. My blog posts have always been quick and simple, I am now looking at a uniform layout and content for the posts.. In the ever increasing challenge of boosting my sites stats, not hit counts anymore.. As there importance died out several Joomla templates ago, I am now more interested in the visitors stay, and there willingness to return. So if this is your first visit to my site (which is highly lightly) then I hope to see you again sometime.. And if you have been a dedicated ready for all these years, then welcome back! Let’s hope I keep feeding your want for information for many years to come!
So hears to the last 5 years, and to hopefully countless years more!
Thanks for reading.
Mike