Scott.Buffington.me

The first few years I had a website I would redesign my websites all the time and I really had some hideous designs in the early days. But I also had a few I really liked too. The last time I redesigned I believe was when I moved to my current domain name, so it has probably been three years or more since I made a major web design change to this website. Most people are using Wordpress or another piece of blogging software where they can just move to a new theme. While I do have my homegrown solution written in a way where I can mostly drop it in, it requires a little more work to get everything just right with a new HTML design. In other words I do not have it coded in a way where it uses themes.

So what spurred this change? I am beginning to play around with HTML5, so if you are viewing this design in a browser that is not capable of displaying HTML5, it might not look quite right. Although I am sure it is readable, you might be missing some of the little touches. I do not have everything HTML5 compliant, I just wanted to start to move that direction. Overall I really liked my old design, but I felt it was time for a change. I hope for those that visit, the new design is pleasing.

Those of us that were the early denizens of the Internet will not only remember GeoCities for its aesthetics, but also because many of us got our HTML feet wet there. Anyone seriously interested in having a web presence quickly moved from the likes of GeoCities and Angelfire to their own domain and paid web hosting. Yahoo has announced that sometime in the next year they will be officially closing GeoCities and its fabulous collection of blinking gifs and animated banners.

GeoCities lost popularity with Internet beginners when blogging services and social networking sites the likes of MySpace and Facebook came onto the scene. MySpace allows the ability for Internet newbiess to make even more annoying web pages than GeoCities could have ever dreamed, comprised of horrible gifs and loud auto-playing music and videos. While Facebook prevents it's userbase from making the world's ugliest website, it makes up for these shortcomings with the endless parade of brain numbing applications, all stealing your privacy away with hardly an afterthought from the Facebook community.

Sure MySpace and Facebook are superior in many, many ways, but GeoCities will always have a warm place in my heart and many others. One of the true pioneers to the Internet we know and love today will soon cease to exist. Those of us who were here in the beginning will always remember the many black back grounded GeoCities sites with midi music and blinking gifs for as long as we live.