Thoughts
Random thoughts I thought worth sharing on here. Updated irregularly.
1.29.26: On building a website after years of just using social media.
I never thought I'd be coding a website again after god knows how many years. Probably the last time I did any code outside of putting links in my Substack posts, I was dealing with a Wordpress site (my old, long deceased music blog The Groove Music Life and its predecessor, Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama), both destroyed by Russian hacker peckerheads who were probably warming up to steal the 2016 election for a certain orange shitweasel and his Vladdy Daddy).
And even though I utilized Phoenix Code to work on this website, I had forgotten how fucking hard it was to build a website pretty much from scratch.
Back when I first got onto the internet in 1997 -- the days of dial-up -- HTML was a somewhat mysterious, but not hard to deal with, language. I am not a coder by any means. My computer education was learning various accounting programs in college (I have a degree in Accounting Technology) plus later self-education via books once I got onto the Internet. I had had computers in my bedroom at home in the past, but nothing that could connect to the Internet -- which wasn't completely open to the public yet, just services like Compuserve and AOL as well as independent bulletin boards -- all of which were in major cities and not little towns like mine, and thus requiring a long-distance phone call. And, but, also: Computer programs were things you bought on a floppy disc packaged in box, before they morphed into CD-ROMS packaged in a jewel case that itself was packaged in a box, or if you were able to access a BBS somewhere, you could download "shareware" made by independent coders, or you could buy them from an ad in a computer magazine. But I digress.
Also back then, once the internet was a thing, you had limited options if you wanted to build a website:
- You had a teeny little bit of space that your home internet provider "generously" offered you on their servers, as part of your account -- and nothing you could launch the next dot-com juggernaut with, either.
- You were in college and could get a little space on your school's server, especially if they had a computer lab. My late friend Cyndy Donlan (who passed a few years ago) and I used to visit the Hazleton Campus of Penn State University and use their computer lab to access the Internet, pre-1997.
- You discovered Geocities and all of its "neighborhoods" that you could put your website in. That's where I had put one of my first websites. Geocities was one of the big three of freebie websites alsong with Tripod and Angelfire. Tripod I didn't like, despite its more professional feel -- they had a fuckton of pop-up ads, and Angelfire, a more chaotic option which was bought out by Lycos, who also owned Tripod.
- You bought a domain name -- which back then cost $100 and could only be purchased from a company called Network Solutions (until other services like Register.com and GoDaddy happened), and then you also had to find server space that didn't cost you an arm, a leg, and your firstborn.
I think what I'm getting at as I hack away at the keyboard on my iMac at 2:30 in the AM is that I had forgotten how much passion making a personal webpage took. Watching a bunch of Neocities tutorials was my first reminder. Actually doing the coding was the second. And in the process, I reawakened that passion that I had for making websites, which has become another creative outlet for me already along with music, writing, cooking and drawing (the latter of which is simply a glorified bad cross between Charles M. Schulz and Raymond Pettibon unless I take my sweet time doing it). And honestly? I'll take it. So don't be surprised if you se this site get pimped out in the weeks and months to come.