Building websites: 15 years of evolution
Building websites over the years has changed dramatically. If we go back in time, dust off our 56k modems and find those old free AOL internet CD’s that used to get pushed through our door every month, we would see a totally different internet to what we have today.
The internet was smaller and slower. Despite there being many websites, it felt like you could browse the whole web in just a few days!
The first website I built used frames, Dreamweaver and a free hosting account. It was pretty poor and the content was questionable – but at the time it was amazing, I used a load of free domain names from Freenetname and my journey of building websites began.
My first commercial website was in 2001 for a company called Spindis (click the globe when new window opens). Spindis were a record shop that opened in Mansfield as vinyl and being a bedroom DJ was still popular at this stage. They did own Spindis.com but there are no snapshots anywhere on the internet.
The first content management system I used was called Mambo. It was later renamed to Joomla, and yes, it was as buggy and unstable then as it is now. It was hugely complicated and despite WordPress being available I continued to use it right up until we started the business, and eventually we started using CMSMS!
Back in the day, before social networks and smartphones, we used to write blogs and frequent forums which still both exist today but are not used as much as before. I used to write daily blogs and have quite a few followers who would regularly come and comment. Now though, unless it’s delivered as a push notification to their phones it’s hard to get people to visit your website and contribute.
The possibilities the internet presents us with now are much greater than they were then, the world has finally caught up and is being powered by the internet, meaning there is more room for integrating your entire business with the web, making it run smoother and more efficiently.
We remember how the internet was back then. Normally the saying is “original is always best” but in the case of the web we like what it has become and what is possible today and look forward to what it may bring in the next 15 years, along with plenty more building websites.
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