How Far Have You Come Since Your First Website Design?
Like most people my age, I started using the internet around 1994 and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Soon after first navigating through this new toy known as the Internet, I discovered web design. Back then, web design was a little different than it is today. A website just wasn’t cool unless it had tons of bright colors, vibrant repeating backgrounds, lots of animated gifs and line breaks, and blinking text. Oh, and I almost forgot, if you didn’t have either a tripod, anglefire or geocities account for hosting your site, you just were not cool.
Seriously, No Laughing
At the time I discovered web design, I was also a huge pro wrestling fan, so what could be a better website topic than wrestling? So, without further ado, here is my first website. Unfortunately you will not be able to admire my great graphic design work as the images on the site do not work. I’m sure you can imagine though. Just envision the best Microsoft Paint work you’ve ever seen! 
Paving The Way For The Future
Even though my first site was terrible, I feel like it set the tone for things to come in the future. Had I not designed that site back then, who knows, I may not be designing sites today. I like to think that I’ve come a long way since my first design. I know a lot more about colors, typography, and my knowledge of the whole design process is light years ahead of where I was back then.
Show Me Your Designs
I know a lot of you probably don’t have access to your first design. I was totally shocked to find out mine was still online, but if you’re able to access it, share it and share your story in a comment below of how you started and where you’re at today compared to when you started.
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Comments
Ur first site seriously attack my eyes.. but ur new one is really cool and clean..
Posted on Fri Jun 29, 2007
David: Yeah, I’d love to see some of your early stuff if you ever get around to pulling them from your computer and putting them on the web. 
Daravuth: Thanks for the compliment on the new site, and yes I agree, my first site was very hard on the eyes! It’s almost enough to make a person go blind.
Posted on Sat Jul 7, 2007
My first site was a tribute to Final Fantasy VII in 1998, the Geocities account is no longer around but you can imagine a 35x85 logo repeating for the background, one page with no hyper links to other parts of the site (you just scrolled for different sections and had some anchors (no back to the top links tho), a lot of horizontal rules and of course all text was centered. My next site had actual pages, left justified text, and used a rudimentary table layout. I really wish that first page was still around, I might take a stab at recreating it at one point on Geocities. BTW anyone remember the Geocities <NOSCRIPT> hack that allowed you to have your page sans advertisement?
Posted on Mon Jul 16, 2007
Hi Igor, thanks for the comment.
Ah yes, the old 35x85 repeating logo. I never used it on my first site, as you can see, but it does have the loud, almost blinding repeating image, lol.
I can’t say that I remember the Geocities hack, as I was more of a Tripod user myself, but I did have a short lived Geocities account if memory serves correctly.
Nice site by the way. I’ll be checking it out more often.
Posted on Tue Jul 17, 2007
Here’s my first...
And my current latest isn’t that great, but I’m currently working on something new that will be incredible! :-D
Posted on Wed Jul 25, 2007
Brian: Your first site is definitely better than my first attempt. I see you used to big, repeating image in the background though, nice one!
I would love to see your final result of the site you’re working on.
Posted on Wed Jul 25, 2007
My first site wasn’t really a site at all,it was a myspace page back when myspace was just a few million users strong. OMFG. Yes I know. Not only does that tell you how late in the game I started but it lets you know that I was a nincompoop. My 1st myspace page was hideous. But I thought it was gorgeous. But at least I learned what a stylesheet was and because myspace forced them on you, I abhorred tables for layout from the very start. After I’d done all I could do there I moved onto a paid account with angelfire. Sad, very sad. I don’t know if my first site can be seen but let me try finding it
http://www.angelfire.com/planet/mccormicky/
ha ha, just a surly growl about ads, I forgot about that.
So you can’t see the horror that it once was.
Posted on Sun Aug 19, 2007
I remember my first website was made in swish using a template, and I thought it was the best thing out there. Haha how wrong was I!
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
mccormicky: I apologize for not responding to you comment when you left it back in August. I must have totally missed it.
Wow, a myspace page for your first site? I still don’t have a myspace page. There are a lot of myspace pages that are popular though from what I understand.
However, I used Angelfire myself. I’ve used all three of those big free site builders when they were big back in the 90’s. Tripod, Angelfire, and Geocities.
Thanks for commenting. Hope to see you back.
Thomas:Ah yes. I remember Swish. I started to use it a little back in 2002 when I was having a hard time learning Flash on my own. At the time I heard Swish was the easy to use alternative to Flash. I found it to be difficult as well and gave up. Sure don’t hear much about it anymore, that’s for sure.
Thanks for stopping by to comment.
Posted on Tue Sep 18, 2007
Haha, nice first website. Mine was 8 years ago when I was 12. Good ol frontpage… It look very similar to yours however had a black background and many animated gifs. It was for my basketball team… “The Mini Raptors”
Posted on Fri Jan 11, 2008
Jacob: Ah, you couldn’t beat Frontpage about 10 years ago. Best thing since sliced bread for the web designer. At least you were using a “professional” application (can’t you call it that?) to develop your site. I was using Angelfire’s built in web builder.
Gotta love the animated gifs!
Posted on Fri Jan 11, 2008
Wow man you really liked Sting
Lol I remember all that stuff, back when wrestling was good and I would stay up until 2am to watch WCW (i live in UK).
My first website was a crappy message board thing that ahs long since been removed, the background was not as offensive as that one but it was still pretty bad.
Posted on Wed Feb 6, 2008
Craig: Yes, I was a huge Sting fan back then. As soon as Sting started dressing the Brandon Lee in “The Crow,” I thought it was the coolest thing in the world (The Crow is a favorite movie of mine). I’m glad the days of those backgrounds are over! I can’t believe something like that ever used to be the “in” thing to do. hehe
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
Posted on Wed Feb 6, 2008
My first website was an online marketing site to help business owners promote their website. The site was complete, designed in a neat, easy-to-navigate fashion, and was specifically targeted to online business owners, but it lacked one thing—the right start-up promotion. I tried everything I could think of to promote the website, but it just didn’t seem to soar.
Posted on Sun Feb 17, 2008
Byra: Yeah, promotion is a big part of running a site. It can really make or break your success. Sometimes it can be difficult for sure.
Thanks for stopping by.
Posted on Sun Feb 17, 2008
Nice. I wish I had access to my first site, I know it was very similar to yours. A lot of animated gifs, tacky background and a guestbook. I should dig through archive.org for it.
Posted on Sun Mar 16, 2008
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My name is Deron Sizemore and I am a web designer, web publisher, blogger and serial internet entrepreneur living in Lexington, Kentucky.
Hi Deron,
Thanks for the email, and I’m loving the background for your first site design!
Unfortunately mine isn’t online, although I do have the files still on my computer (only started web design three years ago). Maybe I’ll put them back on a sub-domain sometime soon.
Nice idea for a post though. All the best.
Posted on Tue Jun 26, 2007