Websites – only one way to find what’s inside!
Personal websites can have a place.
Over the last 25+ years I have written a few websites. I have dragged a few out of retirement and link below. Before getting to these lets consider personal websites and how things have changed.
I built my first site in 2000 just for fun. On it went many of the same things this site has, basically hobbies and stuff that interested me. At the time it was one of the few ways of putting stuff online. Others included email lists and forums like the Yahoo groups. It would be another 5-7 years before social media became a thing and started the make the process of exchanging ideas online much easier.
Fast forward to today and I feel the internet has lost so much that made it good at the beginning. The big social media platforms are owned by rich individuals or companies who are incentivised by getting their users angry and divided. Indeed us users are not their customers, their income comes from advertisers. And as we engage more with divisive content that’s what we are shown. Then was the last time you scrolled through facebook or X and just enjoyed catching up with friends?
So I am wondering if there could be a renaissance for the humble personal website. If someone stumbles on this site it could give a few minutes rest from being sold to in one form or another.
Websites from my past
So back to the future and my website history.
The first site from 2000. URL was home.clara.net/smunch
This from an astronomy project I put together 2002 and was online until 2013. Its back on the web Here and could be worth a read.
Around 2004 the old claranet site was migrated to microsoft frontpage and given its own domain. Its now at archive.pmdo.com
Finally we have ArtemisCCD .co.uk 2005-2008 and the predecessor to Atik Cameras