You know, I never thought I'd be going back to my web roots one day. I remember creating my very first website in...gee, it must've been 1994 or so, when I used Netscape Composer to create what was most likely the GAYEST LOOKING site in the world (think rainbow navigation buttons and animated sparkly gifs). Thankfully, though I wasn't out yet, I was indeed gay so that just happened to work in my favor.
I remember HTML before CSS was really a thing - when you coded color and styles directly into your site and used HTML tables FOR EVERYTHING. Yeah, it was kind of a mess. And kind of cool. And kind of funky and, looking back at it...kind of perfect.
Now, I'm not going to lie, this site is NOT trying to be pre-modern-internet. I'm definitely using CSS, which wasn't introduced until 1994. I'm using a smattering of PHP to make the site just 'work', and PHP wasn't introduced until 1995. I'm certainly using HTML 5 to make things easier, and that wasn't brought to the world until 2008, although to be fair, HTML existed in some form since 1993. I'm also using SQLite to pull off things like this blog post, the visitor counter, and the guest book, and SQLite did not exist until 2000. And, yes, I'm hosting this on a VPS server under my control and using technologies like SSH and git to make the workflow easier.
Despite that, this is still a 'retro' site to me. How so? Well for one, it looks retro as hell. I haven't added many sparkly gifs yet... but give me time. Mainly, though, I'm calling this 'retro', because I coded and created this with my own two hands. It belongs to ME. It isn't posted on some giant conglomerate's system, it doesn't use software that could disappear tomorrow or be subject to updates that throw my entire site into disarray or cause so much overhead that pages load at a snails pace. My site isn't secretly tracking users in the background, it isn't part of social media, and the only terms of service that apply to my site ARE MY OWN. No one call tell me what I can and can't do, or what I can or can't post, or what style my site must follow. It's all up to me, and if I decide to burn it all down tomorrow without a trace, I can do that, too, without worrying that some database somewhere is secretly keeping all of my data and using it to track me. This is MINE, this is for ME, and if someone else happens upon it and likes what I have chosen to show and publish about myself, that's great, too.
So, I hope you like what you see here. If so, feel free to drop me a line. If you want to get into starting your own indie web project and need some help or direction, feel free to reach out. I've been programming for over 40 years and I've loved it all, and if I can help you find that spirit, top, I'm more than happy to help.
Welcome to my hilltop...