Welcome to the History section of my site. The following paragraphs should give you a good idea of how my site has advanced through the years, all the way from my humble beginnings, not knowing any HTML, to the present, and finally the future of my web site.
Welcome to Version 8 of my website. Don’t let the Starbase 156 branding get in your way, that’s actually the name for Version 3 of my site, originally located at http://www.geocities.com/starbase156. In any event, I have reverted back to a format similar to Version 4 of my website. I felt that the old website (Version 5) didn’t have enough of me in it. The code was written by someone I don’t know and I didn’t even understand half of it. So here I am, or rather, here you are: looking at my master piece. All the coding you see on this website was done by me, save a few snippets of JavaScript or CSS styles generated by Dreamweaver. I hope you like it. While I’m on the topic of Version number’s, I might as well give a brief overview and perhaps even a glimpse into the future.
Version 1 – This was all the way back in 5th grade, 6 years ago! The site was hosted by xoom.com and I used a very simple web-based HTML program of theirs to create it.
Version 2 – This was some years later, 8th grade if I remember correctly. My previous site had disappeared for some reason, I have no idea why. So I opened up a site on geocities.com. This is where I coined the name Starbase 156. Version 2 actually made it to the public eye for only a few months before I reconstructed it. Microsoft Word 2000 was used to create the site, but the code it produced was to messy and many browsers could not read it.
Version 3 – Was the last version to be hosted on geocities servers. In fact, it’s still there today. If you want to see it, let me know. Anyways, Version 3 was my first run-in with an LCARS type display. If you don’t know what that is, just think Star Trek. I used Frontpage Express 2.0, a free skimped down version of Frontpage that was bundled with Internet Explorer. This is the best free HTML editor I have found. There is no verbose HTML and it’s relatively small. Unfortunately, it only handles .htm and .html files, not .shtml.
Version 4 – Was a dramatic change. Originally it was labeled Version 3, but that’s wrong. This version was the old white background with black text. Very sparse, very fast, very very cool. I first dabbled with Server-Side-Includes with this version. I later upgraded the site to PHP.
Version 5 – Is the one you just came from. The website engine was designed by ldu.neochrome.net. It’s a very good engine, but I didn’t have the time to read pages and pages of code to find out how it worked. I used the engine for about 6 months before I started to rewrite Version 4.
Version 6 – Much of the design is taken from Version 4. I also reused some old Flash files I had made a long time ago, but had never used and had wanted to use them. The whole site is based on PHP and mySQL, with a bit of Flash thrown in for good measure.
Version 8 – The site you are at right now…more details to come later.
Version 9 – Sometime down the line, there will be a version 9. Hopefully not before college. In fact, hopefully I won’t have to do a version 9 until after college. Version 9 will be great, I can promise you that. It will feature images-on-the-fly and flash-on-the-fly. I hope to have my Big Database Project Finished by then. No word yet on the design or what it will be programed in. If it’s not programed in PHP, it will probably be ASP.
Last updated on December 26th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
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