Today, I decided to take a look back at my online history over the years and how I got started with creating content in this crazy online world of the interwebz.
My first website
One of my first, if not the first, site that I put online, was a webpage at Glendale Community College (GCC). At the time, I was the proud owner borrower of the not-so-sexy address gecko.gc.maricopa.edu/~wanovack/index.htm. This was sometime in early 2001.
Screenshot via archive.org
The image above only shows the final iteration of what that site looked like and unfortunately, archive.org doesn’t have any of the previous versions preserved.
I had some text, hyperlinks, background color and even an image (fancy) on the right. The image is unavailable as it wasn’t archived.
Judging from the screenshot, it looks like I was primarily interested in comedy and skateboarding at the time.
But, as you can see from the unnecessarily huge text located top-center, this page was no longer relevant as I began using Geocities as my primary web space.
Moving into the Geocity
By April of 2001, I had setup my very own Geocities site. Ahhh, the drag and drop of Geocities’ Java based “Page Builder” app. Quite buggy, but it worked adequately enough.
My first blog
My Geocities website was my first blog. I actually had a “News” page where I would write updates about my life, with the date stamp manually entered above each entry. The URL was distributed to my friends and family, who would visit my site, read my updates occasionally and leave comments on my guestbook.
Over the years, my Geocities page changed a bit, but it kept the main features of a News page, photos, a guestbook and links to external sites that interested me.
Below is a screenshot of the final iteration of my Geocities site, before Yahoo decommissioned Geocities in October 2009.
The age of the Content Management System
After abandoning my Geocities sites, I moved on to bigger and better things, grabbing my own domain name and setting up a website running on Postnuke.
Eventually, I transitioned to WordPress, which I now use as the primary platform on the majority of the sites that I own, including WesleyTech, PhoenixNorthgate, this site and a few others.
How did you get started blogging?
I started blogging to get my POV and my photography out there. I dabbled in blogging in 2005 and the posts were more of a journal of drunken rants. My second attempt was still sort of a journal but way more opinionated.
It wasn’t until the last year that I’ve been serious about my blog. It helps me secure photography work and gives me an opportunity to answer questions to help beginners.
Blogging can definitely help bring in business, in any field.