 |
 |
 |
 |
Web Stuff
My very first web page, designed way back in 1996 (I think), was a pretty horrid affair, now I look back at it. On the plus side, it was all hand-coded HTML, so I was learning a new skill. On the downside, I chose horrid backgrounds (with a different one on every page, of course), tacky graphics, and the web-site structure was pretty poor.
Here's a view just of the title page:
Pretty awful, huh? But it served it's purpose, I guess.
I finally grew embarrassed of my awful home page, and decided to do a revamp. This time it would actually be legible and have a better structure. It also needed a name, and the title The Thugdome just appealed to me. (I've used the alias Thug for many, many years.) That sounded like a bleak sort of place, so I added animated flames to the logo to make it all dark and edgy. (Ooooh!) You have to remember, I was playing a lot of Doom and Quake back in those days.
This all happened at the end of '97/start of '98. I updated the site quite regularly back then, so I don't have a copy of all the versions, but here's the home page from 1998. (I stopped hand coding during this time too, but I always check out the HTML that's created by other software and optimise it where I can.)
Looking better, huh?
This basic design saw me through until 2000. I added a few bits, cleaned bits up, added navigation methods, etc. I expanded my Ranting section from just the one rant on religion to a whole plethora of them. But during 2000 the site rarely got up-dated. Life got too busy, and though there were things I wanted to do on the site, I just didn't have the time.
During this time in stasis, The Thugdome looked like this:
(If you've been looking at the "Alt. Text" for the images, you'll note that "Version 2" of the site has been left out. That's just because it looks so similar to Version 1".)
And thus we get to the present time! In 2001 I got off my arse. I had finally decided to do a Phil Foglio tribute page, plus I thought it was time to get some of my software up on the web, so this necessitated an entire redesign of the site. The site needed to be more professional looking, but I also didn't want to loose the "charm" (I know, I'm kidding myself) of The Thugdome. So, I created a new "vestibule" area (The Crossroads) to separate the main sections then set about creating two whole new sections in addition to giving The Thugdome a much needed overhaul. (Since I was now living in another country, a few things had to change! Plus, those cheesy animated flames had to go!)
After a couple of months work, I got the new site up in May, 2001.
I hope you like it. (But if you don't, well, I don't really care... How's that for honesty?)
Incidentally, a lot of the work on The Thugdome was powered by:
 | and |  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|