Like a lot (likely most) of web developers, I keep folders on my computer for each website I create. And for me at least, these folders are like time capsules to the past. Old tech, bad code, outdated design trends (hello gradient borders) take me back to a bygone era. Not just of the web, but of my own personal journey breathing life to all kinds of wacky things.

In these folders, live my old personal websites. My personal projects have always served as playgrounds and classrooms, where I learn, try new things, and get to do whatever I want. It’s freeing and fun. And it’s this spirt that gave me this career I have today.

Because my personal websites serve this role, I tend to redo them when I need a reason to try something new. This has been true for my very first website, and is still true today on this page you’re reading. Unfortunately I stopped numbering them at chris-bauer-4, so when I was creating this newest wackyness, I started counting them all. Or at least trying to.

So lets go public with this. And I’ll add a few details with what I remember about each.

Geocities

Heck yeah, starting off with a banger. Of course I can’t say I “developed” it but it was pretty fun at the time (read: quaint) to tell people I have a website.

WordPress #1

These weren’t the earliest days of WordPress, but they were pretty far back there. This was before it even had a menu system, the menu links were all built by hand.

I also was learning css, php, and WordPress all at the same time, so it was an adventure.

WordPress #2

Still no menu system, but on this one I loved the pattern on top of a gradient, although a client told me the leaf looking thing was supposed to point up or down, not to the side. I also setup a sprite so the menu icons turned to color WITHOUT A HICCUP WAITING FOR A MOUSEOVER IMAGE TO LOAD!

Drupal #1

A wild dive into Drupal, I needed a sandbox to play around in after my career went in that direction. And I got one. Although in the early days of Drupal I’m not sure I’d call it “playing” as much as “crying.”

Drupal #2

I’d call this one a “decision” I made completely rebuild the site, but we all know Drupal 8 made that decision for us. I did get to play around with my first front end framework during the beginnings of material design.

I found a budget alternative to Pantheon style hosting for this one. The host had the weirdest interface but I could backup or deploy the site’s database and files in a (read: many) clicks. Still glad to never type mysqldump again.

Astro

PHP is javascript and javascript is PHP. This was a fun project that wasn’t to practice a tech I used at work, but instead learn a new tech and possibly bring work in that direction. I also like that Astro is front end framework agnostic. I thought I’d get some react practice but so far haven’t seen any reason to not just use Astro components.