About Blank Slate
The History of Blank SlateThe Making of Blank Slate
The History of Blank Slate
Blank Slate began as the slate on the afternoon of July 4, 2000. Its real beginnings, however, were much earlier. I'd attempted the creation of a personal website many times before, but either wasn't satisfied or didn't have enough time (or skill) to complete the work. With each revision of the site, I learned more and decided that one day I would actually get this up and running. And so I did.
The second major revision happened a year later, on July 4, 2001. I guess on Independence Day both years I had enough free time (weak pun intended) to work on the site. I overhauled the whole site, revising much of the text and changing the site look.
In December 2001, I reorganized the site and vastly enlarged it. A month later, I redid the site with PHP and CSS.
In March 2002, I registered www.blankslate.net and renamed the site from the slate to Blank Slate. I also switched the site over to a CSS-based layout (rather than table-based) and moved to XHTML.
In February 2008, I repurposed the site as an archive of my work, rather than a collection of links with some content on the side.
The Making of Blank Slate
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Version 1: 4 Jul 2000 to 25 Nov 2000
I did this in pure HTML. Not all that great, frankly. :) |
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Version 2: 25 Nov 2000 to 3 Jul 2001
This one stuck around for a while. The black background is kind of cool, but I like the current color scheme a lot more. |
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Version 3: 3 Jul 2001 to 9 Mar 2002
This was the first version of the site that I was actually proud of. It had a very clean, aesthetic feel to it. I've kept most of the layout in the latest version. |
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Version 4: 9 Mar 2002 to 20 Mar 2002
This didn't last long. :) (It was too gray when viewed under Windows. And I didn't really like it. |
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Version 5: 20 Mar 2002 to 25 Mar 2002
An intermediary stage. I like the logo, but I wanted to redesign the site with CSS so I abandoned it. (I planned on redoing it for the new color scheme anyway.) |
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Version 6: 25 Mar 2002 to 29 Mar 2002
This is the first all-CSS layout. No more tables. :) I'm going to change the color scheme soon, but this one is tolerable. |
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Version 6.1: 29 Mar 2002 to 14 May 2002
This color scheme was slightly better. Maybe. :) I like the new logo more than the old one. |
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Version 7: 14 May 2002 to 28 Oct 2004
After battling with finding a good color scheme using the old layout, I decided to return to the white background and go with a clean layout. I like this a lot more than the last one. |
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Version 8: 28 Oct 2004 to 11 Feb 2006
Almost the same, just another logo change really. |
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Version 9: 11 Feb 2006 to 3 Apr 2006
While version 8 was good and lasted a while, my web design sensibilities had changed and it was no longer all that beautiful to me. This one is a temporary fix and I'll be redesigning the CSS layout from scratch over the next couple of weeks. |
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Version 10: 3 Apr 2006 to 19 Feb 2008
I redesigned all of my sites in a unified theme, and I've got to say that I'm much, much more pleased with this layout than I was with the last. No more constraints. :) |
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Version 11: 19 Feb 2008 to present
Went for a more subdued look. |
Blank Slate runs off a hand-coded PHP template hosted by BlueHost. Let me just say that BlueHost is amazing, and I highly, highly recommend them to everyone. As far as the graphic design goes, everything is done in Photoshop and Illustrator on my Mac. And I edit the PHP source using TextMate locally or Vim via ssh.
