My idea of a personal website has evolved a bit over the past several years.

Here’s a brief history »

Back when Flash was known as FutureSplash, I created my first portfolio site, made up of a bunch of static HTML pages and FutureSplash for a “more sophisticated” animated navigation bar.

The year was 1997 and I had no idea what I was doing. It barely works now but I keep it around just for archival purposes.

In 2001 I built a new version of the site, using a MySQL database and made it dynamic with PHP. It was still a basic portfolio but this time around I created a simple custom CMS to manage and add a lot more pieces without having to write code to do it.

During that period, my interest in databases and PHP grew, so I even built an entire records archive for my Fantasy Football League from scratch and a fully database-driven site to catalog and share my growing Toy Collection. Technology has evolved since then, and I grew tired of the endless updates required so those are pretty much dead sites now.

I had been inspired by Dave Shea’s CSS Zen Garden so I decided to create an experimental “site” in 2007 to demonstrate the power ofCSS. In reality, it was only a single page that applied different CSS files to completely modify the design depending on which link you clicked on.

The nerds in the audience should get a kick reading about how it works.

Once Social Media started taking off, I decided to take my first attempt at a lifestream in 2008. I figured it was a better way to keep a personal site current without needing to update it by aggregating feeds from the various Social Networks I already used on a regular basis.

In 2012, I simplified and updated the lifestream to be Responsive and optimized the site for touch through the use of HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 and Media Queries.

I have since replaced that with this site, powered by Squarespace since I have much less time to code everything from scratch. Perhaps one day I’ll grow tired of the limited control I have using a framework, but for now, it works for me.

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