Online Longevity - my mid 90s website still going strong!
Today I was watching a video on the first bloggers, and it occurred to me that I was blogging back in the mid 90s and yet the pages I created are long since dead and buried, fading away long ago with my University & Geocites Accounts. Then I recalled that I had built a website while working at the University of Toronto back in 1995/96 and that I had last updated the website with a slick javascript drop-down menu and stylish background some time in mid 1997. So I looked up the site, and behold, they have not changed it from my original 1997 design! WOW 12 years and the site has remained virtual unchanged. They have of course updated and augmented content, but my original structure, headings, logos & navigation have remained and somehow stood the test of webtime!
I don't know how or why this has happened. It was a simple site and the original requirements were to keep it lean and image free for quick modem downloads. It seems those simple requirements have sustained the site over all these years, despite various boards and directors that have come and gone and all the part-time students that have worked there and must have looked at the site and said "whoa this is old". Although the site looks dated and shows its age, with horrid framesets and poorly created images, its a useful site and seems to have worked to serve its purpose.
I'm sure they have plans on the books to re-develop some time soon, but hope it sticks around a while longer as a reminder to my naive begging into web development. I recall the last re-design meeting I had with the stakeholders who took issue with my radical drop-down menu navigation, thinking no one would be able to figure it out how to use the site, and also thinking that the should do the main APUS logo in black and white to save on bandwidth, as their students were lucky if they even had dial-up. I also recall setting up a PC as a kiosk in the office next to the photocopiers to service the students that had no internet access, and didn't want to walk all the way to the library to get information. If only we had also severed coffee we would have been the first internet cafe in town....
As I look to my team of developers to create the next evolution of our online newspapers sites and i sift through tweets, blogs and stories of the latest news on HTML 5 and happenings at GoogleIO, I smile thinking how a simple basic site written so many years ago can still be relevant and useful today.
I don't know how or why this has happened. It was a simple site and the original requirements were to keep it lean and image free for quick modem downloads. It seems those simple requirements have sustained the site over all these years, despite various boards and directors that have come and gone and all the part-time students that have worked there and must have looked at the site and said "whoa this is old". Although the site looks dated and shows its age, with horrid framesets and poorly created images, its a useful site and seems to have worked to serve its purpose.
I'm sure they have plans on the books to re-develop some time soon, but hope it sticks around a while longer as a reminder to my naive begging into web development. I recall the last re-design meeting I had with the stakeholders who took issue with my radical drop-down menu navigation, thinking no one would be able to figure it out how to use the site, and also thinking that the should do the main APUS logo in black and white to save on bandwidth, as their students were lucky if they even had dial-up. I also recall setting up a PC as a kiosk in the office next to the photocopiers to service the students that had no internet access, and didn't want to walk all the way to the library to get information. If only we had also severed coffee we would have been the first internet cafe in town....
As I look to my team of developers to create the next evolution of our online newspapers sites and i sift through tweets, blogs and stories of the latest news on HTML 5 and happenings at GoogleIO, I smile thinking how a simple basic site written so many years ago can still be relevant and useful today.
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