Humble Beginnings
I found fragments from my early years of web page building in my digital archives. It's true when people say: "you have to start somewhere!" This space serves as a tribute to those humble beginnings. All images are screenshots of my pages unless otherwise noted.
2004 - 2006
'The Geocities / FrontPage era'
Unfortunately, I no longer have evidence of my first page, but I remember my home page had a cloud background (much like the one you see here), and Geocities' Pagebuilder client helped me with my launch. Although Pagebuilder was slow to load with my home's dial-up internet, it was such a fun tool. Opportunities to access PageBuilder on high speed internet in public school were minimal, and I ended up replicating my pages using Microsoft FrontPage, an offline software that combined drag-and-drop design with HTML editing. Another Microsoft platform, called Picture It!, provided a decent introduction to photo editing. Eventually, I outgrew Geocities and sought free web hosting services to expand my horizons.
2007 - 2009
'The Dreamweaver / HTML era'
College introduced me to platforms from the prestigious Adobe Creative Suite, such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I made a conscious effort to learn coding syntax rather than rely solely on no-code solutions. I began to incorporate tables, frames, and image maps in my designs while also using my budding interest in digital photography to build my editing skills. Additionally, I dabbled in WordPress, both in the free and self-hosted versions, to acquire a deeper understanding of CMS and maintain a writing portfolio.
My very last project before I took a hiatus from site-building was a fansite dedicated to Japanese composer Susumu Yokota, largely constructed using Dreamweaver. I present it here in its complete and original form to offer a glimpse at some outdated web practices from 2009. The fansite is not mobile friendly!
Browser frames provided by BetaWiki.net (CC BY-SA 4.0) and SuperGrub2Disk.org.
Tileable background found at Betty's Graphics
.