About a year ago I wanted myself to count on the web, to give myself my own place to express myself. So I signed up for my first domain name and web hosting account. Three days later I was ready to go live. I was very exited!
There it was, my first domain. Iceco.be. I quickly designed a logo and put up a coming soon notice, and started working in the background. The proud of every beginner. The main goal was to set up a portfolio site and provide lots of articles on designing. I wanted to be a good resource. How naÔø?ve. In this post I will take you on a quick journey of how me on the web evolved the past year and more.
<!--more-->I've been in web design and development for many years now, but never really as intense as the past year. About a year, a year and a half ago I rediscovered the pleasure of creating and designing a webpage. The two years prior to my redicovery I was practically separated from my computer. Before those two years I had tried making websites first with HTML, later using flash.
I had been using my fathers domain, which redirected to the free web space from our internet provider. But I wanted more; I had just started out with PHP and MySQL and the free web space doesn't support this.
After a couple of weeks I had a design ready and went live. I found the template I created at the time, made a nice screenshot for you. The site was in Dutch and had no content what so ever besides the short autobiography I had written. It stood there on the web like that for about five months. I simply didn't have the time to write the PHP backend and had absolutely no inspiration for content to put online.
It was near the end of these five months I discovered the world of blogging. The person who left the greatest impression I think was Adam Polselli. I wanted what he already had. So I started rethinking my site and a redesign was in the make. Here are two templates I made at the time, they never made it through. #1 and #2 (this last template is that basis of this sites previous design, despite for the color scheme).
While working on the new site and rethinking everything I started to realize the domain wouldn't suite the more personal touch of the site. So I started thinking of a new domain. But the obvious wasn't to hide; my internet nickname became my domain. Begin December the new site was launched at the new domain sken.be, the one your at right now.
In the beginning I had iceco.be redirected to sken.be, to help old traffic find there way to the new site. (what old traffic?). After a month it was disconnected. I never really thought up a good use for the domain, so and now five months later, the domain has disappeared (or at least it will within a couple of hours). What a tragic end for what was to be my great breakthrough. :P
Overall conclusion:
- I switched from Dutch to English
- I feel much better at this new domain
- I enjoy writing for the web every once in a while (I need to get the frequency up)
- this post is much longer than anticipated.
I hope you have enjoyed our journey, and watch your step while leaving the building.